Budget Report Issues Have Returned

David Minches

The issue with zeroes showing up in reports has returned. I ran an actual vs. budget report and all the values for income categories are zero even though the totals are non-zero. This is an issue which was there for months but eventually went away with one of the upgrades. It has now returned.

Jim_Harman

What version of Quicken are you running now? Go to Help > About Quicken and let us know what it says there.

I assume it is the Current Budget report that you are running. Is it the budget amounts that are zero?

And if you go to Planning > Budgets and click on Manage Budget Categories, are the expected categories still selected?

David Minches

I am running r23.14.

The budget amounts are zero in both the budget and the report. The actuals are also showing up as zero in the report but they are not zero. If I click on each of the zeros I can see the individual transactions.

I just went into "managing budget categories" and selected the income categories (they weren't selected before). When I ran the report the actuals are now non-zero.

Thanks for that tip. I didn't think that the amount had to be budgets in order for the actuals to show up as non-zero. Is that intended?

Jim_Harman

By default the Current Budget report only includes categories you have selected in the budget and year at the top of the report.

If you click on the gear to customize the report then click on the Advanced tab, next to Categories you can select Budgeted only (the default), Include all, or Non-zero actual/budgeted.  I think the third choice may be new.

Jim_Harman

I edited the title of this discussion to describe the issue more clearly

Tom Young

"or Non-zero actual/budgeted.  I think the third choice may be new. "

I haven't used the "budget" feature or run a current budget report probably for 4 or 5 years now after Quicken made a pig's breakfast of the budgeting process and mangled the budget report itself, sometime around 2013?  But I used to use both before that and the "non-zero actual/budgeted" was certainly around while I was using Quicken's budgeting tools. 

Just for grins I ran a Current Budget report and I didn't see any zeros in the "Actual" column; the numbers were all there.

David Minches

There are many issues with the actual vs. budget reports. For example, it always uses my 2018 budget even though the report was saved with the "2019 budget" selected.

David Minches

> @Tom Young said:
> "or Non-zero actual/budgeted.  I think the third choice may be new. "I haven't used the "budget" feature or run a current budget report probably for 4 or 5 years now after Quicken made a pig's breakfast of the budgeting process and mangled the budget report itself, sometime around 2013? 

You do your budgeting in spreadsheet as opposed to in quicken?

UKR

I'm guessing that the important part to remember is:
First set up your budget in the Planning tab / Budgets, preferably the Annual view, with all desired Income and Expense categories showing.
After that has been completed, you can run Budget Reports. The report generator will now know which budget table and year and categories to pick.

David Minches

Except it always defaults to the 2018 budget even though I created a 2019 budget and then created the report.

UKR

David Minches said:

Except it always defaults to the 2018 budget even though I created a 2019 budget and then created the report.

Let's try some "Troubleshooting 101" to ensure the Quicken software is installed and updated properly and that your data file is in good working order.
Please perform all the steps in this document:
Troubleshooting 101 - Fixing Software Installation and Data File Problems

Jim_Harman

Are you running a saved report or the stock Current Budget report? Perhaps a saved report remembers the budget and year settings

David Minches

I am running a report I created on my own. I have made other customizations to the report but the budget year one doesn’t seem to want to stick.

Jim_Harman

OK, also note that the stock Current Budget report honors the default date range you have set in Edit > Preferences > Reports and Graphs. If you have that set to Last year or a custom date range for last year, you will get 2018 data. Maybe your saved report is doing the same thing.

David Minches

The report is set to bring up “year to date.” The actual are fine but the budgeted amounts are wrong (2018) unless I change it.

Jim_Harman

I do see something odd going on with the budget year in saved Current Budget reports. I set up a report to use last year's budget and then saved it.

When I re-open the report, the budget year is set to 2015, which I think is the year before the budget template was created. 

I tried this again and it is not repeatable, so it's unclear what is going on here.

@David Minches I suggest you re-create the report from scratch and see if that fixes the budget year problem for you.

David Minches

Jim, that seems similar to what I am experiencing.