Budget Isn't Seeing All Transactions

jmine83

The budget view I see is presenting some very strange results that just isn’t right.

It's failing to recognize actual money spent like it’s failing to see the transactions recorded.

For example, I have categories Car:Payment:Interest and Car:Payment:Principal which I set a budget of $0 and $261 on.

For past months of the year, for example January, it shows 0 / 261 for Car:Payment, 0 / 0 on Car:Payment:Interest, and 0 / 261 on Car:Payment:Principal.

The correct results should be 261 / 261 for Car:Payment, 0 / 0 on Car:Payment:Interest, and 261 / 261 on Car:Payment:Principal.

The attached screen capture expenses-wrong.png shows the budget home page in question and showing what I'm talking about. Then if you look at income-right.png, this shows all the income reporting figures are correct. Then car-transactions.png shows my checking account where the car payments are there, and even all the other reports and sections of Quicken see and acknowledge the car payment transactions; but budget isn't for some reason. This has been going on for weeks even before the latest update that allows you to choose which accounts are included in the budget.

How do I fix this?

jacobs

@shalafarky  This is a new feature in the 5.17 release, so the first thing is making sure you've updated to 5.17.

Click on Edit Budget. At the bottom of that screen, you'll see a new Select Accounts button next to the Select Categories button. Click Select Accounts and select the accounts you want included (just as you do when customizing a report).

John_in_NC

Those are transfer transactions, and that is why they do not show in your budget.

Even when you exclude the account on "other side" of the transfer (Toyota Financial Lease), the transfer will not show as spending/income.

jmine83

> @John_in_NC said:
> Those are transfer transactions, and that is why they do not show in your budget.
>
> Even when you exclude the account on "other side" of the transfer (Toyota Financial Lease), the transfer will not show as spending/income.

I see, although it does pose a problem that I'm not sure what the developers of Quicken had intended exactly for the end users to follow to make the budgeting work accurately.

To use the car payments as the example, what we have by using the transfer is a transaction pair that complements each other. One negative transaction in the checking account and one positive transaction in the loan account. Where the loan account shows the remaining balance/payoff amount.

So I gather what's happening is that since each transaction of the pair shares the same category identifier, and the amount of each in the pair is always equal to each other, but where one is positive and the other negative, combined the software adds them and thinks its zero.

If the end user is locked out from being able to include transfers in the budget, then how was it intended that loan and credit card payments be accounted for correctly in the budget?

John_in_NC

Yes, to Quicken, you are simply moving money between pockets. Thus, it doesn't see any income/expense items.

You only will be able to see transfers once (and if) the developers decide to include/exclude them. 

jmine83

> @John_in_NC said:
> Yes, to Quicken, you are simply moving money between pockets. Thus, it doesn't see any income/expense items.
>
> You only will be able to see transfers once (and if) the developers decide to include/exclude them. 

That's disappointing. Sounds like a known issue then? Guess I'll keep my eyes open to future Quicken updates if this gets fixed. Much appreciated John for your feedback.

jacobs

Yes, being able to budget for fund transfers, such as loan payments, is a feature that has been a top-voted request from users for a long time. The developers have acknowledged this and said they are working towards it, but that it would take a lot of code revising. We don't know how much longer it will be until this functionality is released.

JSM1198

I was super-excited to finally see Quicken added the ability to include/exclude accounts in the budget setup in version 5.17. Much to my dismay, it still doesn't fix transfers to an excluded account.

Chris_QPW

Fixing the "transfer" problem in Quicken Mac is a much more difficult problem than filtering the budget by accounts.  For the accounts all they have to do is change the database query to only return values for the given accounts.

For transfers they need to do something about the whole way Quicken deals with transfers so that they don't end up double counting transfers which in the past could also have a category.

jacobs

@JSM1198  and @Chris_QPW  If you look at how they tackled inclusion of Transfers in Reports in the past year, I think we get a clue how they might tackle the similar need for budgets. Being able to select accounts selectively, as added in this 5.17 release, is also a necessary building block.

shalafarky

@JSM1198 how can I exclude/include accounts in the budget? not obvious to me. thanks!

jacobs

@shalafarky  This is a new feature in the 5.17 release, so the first thing is making sure you've updated to 5.17.

Click on Edit Budget. At the bottom of that screen, you'll see a new Select Accounts button next to the Select Categories button. Click Select Accounts and select the accounts you want included (just as you do when customizing a report).

Robert Silvey

Including/excluding transfers is an essential feature of personal budgeting. Please expedite this long-promised feature

jacobs

@Robert Silvey  As was answered in the other thread you posted in, Quicken has committed to adding the ability to selectively include transfers in budgets. They've bene working on underlying pieces this for a long time; being able to select Accounts in budgets (just added), and to selectively include/exclude transfers in reports (added in the past year) both seem like pieces that likely pave the way for transfer in budgets. I'd guess that we'll finally see this functionality sometime this year, but there's no way to say when. (And Quicken never says, because things can and do happen during development and testing that disrupt the best plans and timetables.)

shalafarky

Thank you - that was the answer!

> @jacobs said:
> @shalafarky  This is a new feature in the 5.17 release, so the first thing is making sure you've updated to 5.17. ;)
>
> Click on Edit Budget. At the bottom of that screen, you'll see a new Select Accounts button next to the Select Categories button. Click Select Accounts and select the accounts you want included (just as you do when customizing a report).