combine amounts in comparison reports

mikebello

when running an income/expense comparison report by category, the accounts in the transfers section are different line items showing from and to amounts. is there a way to have one line item from that transfer account showing either a positive or negative balance as a result of the combined from and to transactions?

for example:

from savings has a balance of 1000
to savings has a balance of 3000
so the report should read, savings, (2000)
showing that overall the user has transferred a total of 2000 to their savings account.

i want to simplify the report by subtotaling the two amounts into one line entry on the report

Sherlock

No.  There isn't a way to combine the FROM and TO transfer transactions in an Income/Expense report.

Note: FROM is an expense (an outflow), TO is income (an inflow).  To combine the two, instead of using transfer transactions, you would enter individual deposit and withdrawal transactions using a common category.  The report would then aggregate the transactions by this shared category.

Tom Young

To flesh out @Sherlock 's suggestion, you might create a Category called "Transfers between Checking and Savings" and determine if it's going to be thought of as an Income or Expense. 

Accordingly, when make a transfer of $100  from checking to savings you'd enter a Payment in the checking Account of $100 and use "Transfers between Checking and Savings" as the Category, and then go over to the savings Account and make a Deposit of $100, again using the Transfers between Checking and Savings Category. 

The net of transfers would show up in either the Income or Expense section of a Spending Report depending on which you selected when you set up the Category.  Depending on the net flows between checking and savings, the number might show up as either a negative "income" or negative "expense."  Only you can decide if this "netting" process is worth the extra work.

I'll point out that transfers between checking and saving amount to moving money from your left pocket to your right pocket and don't really amount to an "income" or "expense."  Accordingly, transfers of this sort are usually left out of Spending reports.

mikebello

thank you both @Sherlock @"Tom Young" for your responses. i guess there's no easy way to combine both amounts so it can only be one line entry but just to continue the conversation...so in the income expense report, as part of salary a 401K contribution amount comes out and goes into... a 401K account. in the bottom of the income expense report, you see the line item for 401K contributions as a transfer out. i think what I'm doing is seeing it as a balance sheet/income statement where my balance sheet has current account balances and i/s is my bottom line with or without these transfers i can review what my net bottom line is for the year. believe it or not i still use Microsoft money(even though it has been supported for over 10 years) because i prefer the reports i can generate from money vs. quicken such as the income / expense report where money combines all transactions into a net amount. i like using quicken but a few odd little things like this situation is the reason i haven't been able to fully only use one software to manage my finances. all in all, thanks again for your feedback!