Changing imported Interest Income categories to Investments: Income (Q Mac)

JayDC

I recently imported 30 years of Q07 to Q2020. All went successfully with a few minor quirks. I love the new Quicken! One thing.... I had accounts Income: Interest and Income NT (not taxable) Income. Now after importing info from Financial Institutions, I find that Quickenn is putting things under Investments: Interest and Investments: Interest Tax-Free. Is there a simple way that I can change all my previous transactions to match Quicken's categories, which cannot be changed. I tried to merge them, with no success. I don't want to edit them one by one. Appreciate comments on how to accomplish this. Thanks

John_in_NC

Hi, JayDC:

Yes, the new version of Quicken is much nicer.

You can batch change multiple transactions. Do what you need to do to search/filter them so that all the transactions you wish to change are showing. Then, select them all and hit command+e to edit. Any Category (or other detail) you enter there will be applied to all transactions when you save.

JayDC

Thanks John, I tried this and for some reason you are unable to change to categories that Quicken has set up under Investments. For instance, I selected all my transactions under a category that I had created called Income:Interest. Then selected Edit and changed that category to Investments:Interest Income. It won't save them to that category. Very strange. I think it has to do with those categories that are non-editable under Quicken.

JayDC

The categories that I am speaking of are designated as "required" when you select Window:Categories

John_in_NC

JayDC said:

The categories that I am speaking of are designated as "required" when you select Window:Categories

Correct-you cannot change them. 

My apologies regarding the confusion: I was not suggesting changing the Categories in the Category list. I was answering your question regarding how to batch change the transactions to the new Quicken "required" category. That is what it sounded like you wanted to do.

My instructions regarding batching changing are to be done in the actual register(s) of your investment accounts. You can select the Investments header in the sidebar to search for the old category you wish to no longer use. Then, batch change those transactions using my instructions to the new category. Then, you can delete that older category if no longer in use by any transactions. (You might still use Income:Interest in other, non investment accounts, though.)

Please post back with more detail if that is not what you wished to do.

JayDC

Thanks John. I was doing it correctly. That is, going to the transaction register, searching globally for Income:Interest. They selected all of them and tried to change to Investments:Interest Income. Can't be done. Quicken won't allow this for some reason. If you are able to create an Income:Interest category and then create a transaction. Then try to change it as you suggested. It doesn't work to change to Investments:Interest Income. Confusing why not.

John_in_NC

Thanks for pointing that out, and you are correct! 

I have used the batch change (for categories) in non investment accounts, and only used it for adding memos/tags when in the latter (where it worked.) Now I know.

JayDC

So...I wonder how this works. When I import transactions from Merrill Lynch, Quicken automatically puts dividends under either Investments: Interest Income or Investments: Interest Income Tax Free. (Not always, but sometimes). I am assuming it decides based on whether the account is classified under Brokerage or Retirement account. But, it will not allow me to manually put a transaction under one of these accounts. I have tried individually and I can enter the same "Type", same "Payee" and the same "Category". Once I save this, it reverts back to Income:Interest, which is the account that I set up myself. This seems like a major glitch and it should be addressed or answered by a Quicken tech rep. Your thoughts?

John_in_NC

JayDC said:

So...I wonder how this works. When I import transactions from Merrill Lynch, Quicken automatically puts dividends under either Investments: Interest Income or Investments: Interest Income Tax Free. (Not always, but sometimes). I am assuming it decides based on whether the account is classified under Brokerage or Retirement account. But, it will not allow me to manually put a transaction under one of these accounts. I have tried individually and I can enter the same "Type", same "Payee" and the same "Category". Once I save this, it reverts back to Income:Interest, which is the account that I set up myself. This seems like a major glitch and it should be addressed or answered by a Quicken tech rep. Your thoughts?

Whether or not it shows as Interest Income or Interest Income Tax Free is based not on account type, but how the security is setup.

If you go into the Security list and edit, there is a checkbox for being tax free. Selecting this gives the respective category (as it is tied to a different tax form/schedule.) 

JayDC

I don't think that is entirely true. Under my old Q07 I had to name securities differently to handle this. For instance, XOM and XOM-IRA. The second would be the tax free version. The ticker symbol would be the same. Under this security, I would check the Tax Exempt box. I see that this box still exists, however, it is my understanding that if a security is under Brokerage it is is taxable and if it is under Retirement is is not. So, I changed all my securities to have a common ticker. That solved a lot of problems. However, since you brought this up, I went back and looked at an Income Report and it does lump all XOM dividends under Investments: Dividend Income. It does not separate them for Retirement accounts and categorize this as Investments:Dividends Tax Free. This brings up an entirely different problem and may going back and creating a different name for all my securities in IRA's and checking the Tax Exempt box. YIKES! But....that is not the problem that I originally questioned, which was the ability to change categories previously entered into the Investments: Interest (or now Dividends (tax exempt or not). This is really a giant mess that no one has clearly answered.

John_in_NC

That tax free box is to indicate if the Security itself is tax free (such as a municipal bond.) This flag is so the tax report shows up on a different form/schedule and uses the different category. You would not check that box for XOM, regardless if you don't have to pay taxes on it because it is held in a tax sheltered retirement account.

If you use the Tax Schedule report, this will (at least in my experience) draw only from your taxable accounts. It will not pull Interest Income for XOM from a retirement account. Other reports don't filter this way, and I suspect that is what is causing your concern/reason to want(ed to) have separate tickers or categories in the past.

Now others can chime in, as I don't use that tax report much. (I let TurboTax handle the nitty gritty.) But, it should break things out for you.

JayDC

John, thanks for the Tax Report clue. Yes, that seem to segregate out any non-taxable Interest Income or Dividend Income or Interest Income by Investment Account and recognizes that IRA's are not taxable. I see that checking the Tax Free Box for some securities would be important, but not for the run-of-the-mill securities like XOM, for instance.
In regard to consistency for your personal system, it appears that there are three places where Dividend Income might reside. One: •Div Income, Two: Investments:Dividend Income or Three: a category you might set up on your own such as Income:Dividends. In regard to modifying an imported system or doing housekeeping to keep things in the same place for ease of reading income reports over the years, it would be nice to be able to make modifications to previously entered or downloaded transactions. However this is not possible because of one reason: The "Type" of transaction cannot be globally changed. This "Type" action is what triggers the Category. For instance, if you say Payment/Deposit, you can put dividends under Income:Dividends or NT Dividends, however, downloaded transactions automatically establish a Type, called Dividend Income which goes to Investments:Dividend Income. Once this is accepted, the only way to get them into another category is do it "one by one'. It is strange that there are three options under Type for Dividends. One is Payment/Deposit, second is Dividends and the third is Income:Dividends. I am not sure what Quicken was trying to do in creating so many options for this type transaction. But.....the bottom line, unless I am missing something, that transactions cannot be modified globally if the Type is what has created the subsequent Category. Your take on this?

John_in_NC

No, I don't see a way to change globally. I suspect that is because (and as you noted) you would need to change the "Type" for the transaction to get the respective "reserved" investment category, and that batch editor doesn't allow to change that field. It is a carryover from when the new version of Quicken for Mac didn't support investment transx.

A Payment/Deposit category can take on any category and not just investment ones.

I cannot answer as for why the developers allowed the older •Div Income to only change it. I can see how it would be annoying if you wanted consistency.