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Budgeting: Category Group - Income

malukaly

I have submitted this request several times over the years, but I would really like to get it resolved. I love this product. Thank you in advance.

The issue is when creating a budget report while using category groups. There is a coding issue when combining Income, Expense, and Transfers. It will not total. All other groups will total. The reason for combination of these types is to have a group that shows income from a payroll check. You have the income (base salary), the expenses (taxes, insurance, etc.), and transfers (401k, flex spending, etc.) The result should total to the net check.

Please advise

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Quicken Sarah

Hello All,

Thank you for taking the time to share the details of this issue with the community, although I apologize for any frustration or inconvenience experienced.

@Chris_QPW is correct, this behavior is a known issue that has been reported previously, however the ticket is still open.

I have re-reported this behavior to our Product and Development teams for further investigation and resolution and will be back to share any updates/resolutions as they become available.

Thank you,

Sarah
(QWIN-17700)

All comments

Chris_QPW

Why don't you just select the Paycheck in the budget?

malukaly

Not sure what you mean. This is part of a whole monthly budget report for more than just payroll. Can you clarify?

malukaly

See attached image. You'll notice on the House Mangement line, albeit blurred, has a total where the Salary Income line does not.

image.png

Chris_QPW

There is two ways to budget a paycheck when you are only interested in the net amount the easiest way to do it is just add it to the budget with:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/qd/lgcqa6bd2mer.png

This gives the net amount that is deposited in your account.

The other way of course is all the individual categories, which you are doing.
But as you have found that might be difficult to get right with transfers and such.
And I'm not really sure what problem you are running into with that approach, so I thought I would see if the Paycheck approach will work for you.

malukaly

I did use the Paycheck functionality a few years ago successfully and then something happened where it went wonky, so I created a memorized transaction that stores all the categories and transfers. Easy to reconcile. Now I just need the report to allow me to use the Category Group feature.

Thank you for your explanation. I don't have the Paychecks function on the Select Categories option because I don't use the function to record my checks.

malukaly

For reference . . .

image.png

Chris_QPW

malukaly said:

For reference . . .

Are your categories marked hidden?

As in why don't they show up in your 1-Salary Income category group?
How did you even select them for your budget?

Anyways that seems different from your original question so my next post will be about that and not this screenshot.

Chris_QPW

Here is my attempt at reproducing that you are showing.

I created a "Flex Spending" savings account.
Then I created the "1 - Salary Income" group.
Then created the category Salary as an income, and assigned it to that group.
Created Salary Expense as expense and assign it to that group.
Created Income Taxes as a sub category of Salary Expense assigned to the group.
Created STAX as a sub category and assigned to that group.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/jo/0xlpqgt7pomi.png

Assigned the "TO" transfer for the Flex Spending account to that group.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/7i/hoa9umo0lgve.png

In budget selected categories from the "1 - Salary Income" group.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/eu/u5xf7nl38mbf.png

Entered split transaction in checking account (for June since July is going to be prorated).

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/k2/2pcwqz4ywrrk.png

Brought Current Budget report and customized it so that it is by Category group, and includes all transfers.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/my/7tdnumaqm5au.png

Which as you can see appears to be correct.

And the Annual view seems fine too.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/a1/qets8q0o3ac0.png

malukaly

Nice work and follow up! :)

So, my Flex Spending account is an Asset account. Did you set yours up as a Savings or Savings Goal Account? Would that make a difference?

I can replicate your same steps and get the same results. The part that you are missing is to have the whole budget report. So, if you were to add just an expense section, you would see totals in your Expense section bar, but none in the 1-Salary Income.

None of the items I am working with are hidden.

Thank you very much!

malukaly

Additionally, the annual view on the Planning Tab shows the subtotals just fine on my side as well. Just the budget report using Category Groups. Totals will show for Cash Flow and Income & Expense, but Category Groups it has this flaw.

Chris_QPW

malukaly said:

Nice work and follow up!

So, my Flex Spending account is an Asset account. Did you set yours up as a Savings or Savings Goal Account? Would that make a difference?

I can replicate your same steps and get the same results. The part that you are missing is to have the whole budget report. So, if you were to add just an expense section, you would see totals in your Expense section bar, but none in the 1-Salary Income.

None of the items I am working with are hidden.

Thank you very much!

At first I was thinking it would because I somehow got a 401K transfer to be in Personal Expenses instead of 1 - Salary Income, but I think that was just some kind of typo on my account because when I tried to reproduce it it didn't happen the second time.

I will extend my test and see if I can see the same results.

On the "hidden" that was only in reference to your last screenshot that showed no categories when selecting "1 - Salary Income" in the budget category selection.

malukaly

Ahh understood. Here is another copy. Originally, I was pointing out that there was not Paychecks

image.png

Chris_QPW

Yeah I see it now. And come to think of it I believe this was reported years ago.

It doesn't have to be an expense category group. Once you add the second category group the first category group no longer has the totals. But only that first one. You can add several category groups and it will only be the first one that doesn't have the totals.

Jim_Harman

So put a dummy group at the top?

malukaly

Not really. Go to the report and uncheck Flex Spending from the category list. You will get totals.

malukaly

I am pretty sure it is an issue with the report itself. You get totals in Planning. You get totals in Income & Expense and Cash Flow. You just don't when using Category Groups in a budget report.

Chris_QPW

@malukaly @Jim_Harman was suggesting adding a dummy category group at the top as a workaround.

I tried it and it seems that the problem is more complicated than I thought.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/ty/u56c61igk7ey.png

Chris_QPW

The problem is that it doesn't include the total if you include the transfer.
This "Fake Group" was working correctly up until I added the transfer.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/tq/wgdkx52orage.png

malukaly

So, I think that we are on the same page. Do you know how we can get this escalated to Quicken Dev?

Bob_L

Full disclosure: I do not use Category Groups in my budget.

My question though is would it work to not use category groups and instead re-arrange sub categories to get the grouping that you want?

Better yet maybe @Chris_QPW or @Jim_Harman can explain what I am missing by not using category groups?

malukaly

The benefit of using Category Groups is group revenue or expenses in ways other than P&L or Cash Flow to see their impact for spend and/or budgeting. I have developed mine over years, but have these primary groups: Salary, Other Income, Funding (In), House Management, Discretionary, Debt Management, and Savings.

This way, I can tweak budgets accordingly. Salary and House Management may be more static where the others are more discretionary for projects, etc.

Hope this helps.

Chris_QPW

malukaly said:

So, I think that we are on the same page. Do you know how we can get this escalated to Quicken Dev?

The best we can do is a thread like this, but maybe even more important submit the problem with: Help -> Report a problem...

The moderators/others might look at threads and when they find one that they think is important forward it to the developer group, but there isn't any guarantee that they will do that. The Report a problem is stated to be directed to the developers so at least it is a step in the right direction, but note you will get no feedback from it.

But this thread has played an important role no matter what. There are many factors to determine what they will work on or not and when, but one thing that is very important is to be able to reproduce the problem as easily as possible. If you have a problem that is impossible to reproduce, they may never even start on it, or give up after a time. Reproducing a problem is the first step in fixing it.

Now that we know for sure that it is the transfer in the category group that problem can be described very easily and not to much text (the Report a problem doesn't give you a large amount of space to describe the problem). I have already submitted this problem, but more people reporting it is better.

Chris_QPW

Bob_L said:

Full disclosure: I do not use Category Groups in my budget.

My question though is would it work to not use category groups and instead re-arrange sub categories to get the grouping that you want?

Better yet maybe @Chris_QPW or @Jim_Harman can explain what I am missing by not using category groups?

That is actually not true, everyone uses Category Groups in their budget.
Personal Income and Personal Expenses are both category groups, they are just some of the built in ones.

When you go to the Annual view you will find it is organized by category groups.

As for why to use them over sub categories?

It is sort like ask people why use tags instead of using categories alone.

It provides another way to group categories in budgets, reports, and a few other places. For instance these are the category groups I use in my budget.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/vt/bk9outuo9mtu.png

BTW you will notice that I have separated Income and Expenses for each.
When you look at @malukaly 's 1 - Salary Income he has mixed income and expense categories, which is desirable to view it like a split transaction. The reason I haven't done that is over the years the budget has had problems adding up everything correctly with the income and expense categories are mixed in the same category group. Looking at the current results though, it seems that at least most them have been taken care of. But if you do one should be aware of this option (right click on a category group in the budget view):

This is what you get when income and expense categories are mixed.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/oh/dkex2qii6a8h.png

This is what you get when they aren't.

This setting determines how they are added up.

Bob_L

Thanks for the two explanations. I can see how combining expenses and income may be helpful, and I may give it a try. (I guess I am just too used to a "normal" income and expense view)

Chris_QPW

@Bob_L It isn't just combining expenses and income, in fact you can see I didn't do that at all. But what I did do is breakout my business from my personal, and my consulting from my "QPW". I just like budgeting/seeing these separate. But I actually don't use the category grouping in reports much since I just keep separate reports for most of this. Maybe one reason I got use to not doing it in reports is because you can group by category group in most reports.

And one thing I have never done is have a transfer in my budget.

malukaly

Chris and bob, thank you for your interaction and your troubleshooting. Chris, do you have a link to do the Report a Problem? I thought that I was doing that here.

Thank you!!

Chris_QPW

@malukaly It is a menu in Quicken: Help -> Report a problem...

Jim_Harman

I have not had much luck with the Help > Report a Problem approach.

One method that does give problems some visibility is Idea posts on this forum, where users like us can submit and vote on the ideas we think are most important. These are periodically reviewed by the Quicken staff and are sometimes fixed or implemented.

Quicken Sarah

malukaly

Any update? Is this being worked on?