Why do income and expenses add together in a budget

mikelewis7

I have a subscription so I am using the newest version of Premiere for Windows. For the first time, I have added income to my budget. After creating the budget, I see the expenses and income add together for the totals. Shouldn't the totals be the difference between expenses and income? If I have $10,000 in income and $5,000 in expenses, my total should be plus $5,000, not $15,000. Is this a problem Quicken is aware of or am I wrong in my premise which I don't think I am? I would appreciate any help I can get.

Mike Lewis

Sherlock

The budgeted expense should be subtracted from the budgeted income in the budget total.  
The actual expense should subtracted from the actual income in the actual total.  
The expense balance should be added to the income balance in the balance total.

I suspect you're looking at balance.

Note: Expense balance should be actual expense subtracted from budgeted expense.  Income balance should be budgeted income subtracted from actual income.

NotACPA

Do you have the proper Tax categories assigned to each income category?  Do you have tax categories assigned, as appropriate, to expense categories?

It's via the tax lines that Q determines what's income and what's expense ... and NO tax line equals an expense.

mikelewis7

Sherlock,

Thanks for the response, but I'm sorry to say it's not the answer. I'm retired so my budget is fairly simple. The first line of the Expenses says Personal Expenses and shows the total of the budgeted amounts of the expenses for each month. The First line of the income says Income but has no totals. The very last line of the budget says Total and shows the combined total of the Personal Expenses and Income. For example, in one month the expenses are $5,067.29, the income is $5,173.27. The total should show a difference of +$105.98. The total shown on the budget is $10,240.56 which is the total of expenses and income. This is true for every month and the overall total under the Summary Balance column. I don't know why the income doesn't total or if this might have something to do with why I get a combined total rather than the difference, but it's not right and I have no idea what to do. Not the biggest problem because I can easily make the deduction manually and know the difference, but I think the budget should do this automatically.

Mike

mikelewis7

NotACPA,

Because we are retired, the only taxable income we have is Social Security, and both show as taxable so this is not the problem. There are a couple of other sources of income that are not taxable. So I have taxable and non-taxable income and both combine in the total with the expenses so I don't see how this can be the problem. I have to believe that Quicken knows income from expenses and should be able to total them correctly. Income should be a positive amount and expenses should be negative much as they know when you pay a bill it subtracts and when you make a deposit it adds. Shouldn't be brain surgery.

Mike

Sherlock

mikelewis7 said:

Sherlock,

Thanks for the response, but I'm sorry to say it's not the answer. I'm retired so my budget is fairly simple. The first line of the Expenses says Personal Expenses and shows the total of the budgeted amounts of the expenses for each month. The First line of the income says Income but has no totals. The very last line of the budget says Total and shows the combined total of the Personal Expenses and Income. For example, in one month the expenses are $5,067.29, the income is $5,173.27. The total should show a difference of +$105.98. The total shown on the budget is $10,240.56 which is the total of expenses and income. This is true for every month and the overall total under the Summary Balance column. I don't know why the income doesn't total or if this might have something to do with why I get a combined total rather than the difference, but it's not right and I have no idea what to do. Not the biggest problem because I can easily make the deduction manually and know the difference, but I think the budget should do this automatically.

Mike

Perhaps a picture will help:



Note:  Only BALANCE adds in the Totals.

Tom Young

@mikelewis7

I think you've been clear.  Using @Sherlock 's picture above I think that the "Personal Income" line is blank and the "Totals" line reads 10,317 in your case, correct?

Something's not right but offhand I can't think of some sort of error you're making that would result in what you're seeing.  The first thing I might try is to simply create a new budget with a different name and see if this second try works properly. 

If that doesn't work then the next thing I'd try is validating the file:

File > File Operations > Copy

then using the copied file

File File Operations > Validate and Repair

Bob_L

I'm with @Sherlock in thinking that @mikelewis7 is  looking at the balance column.  

mikelewis7

Thanks to all, but I figured it out. Just an FYI, I do know how to read a budget and know whether I am looking at group totals or the overall total and if the overall is the difference to combined, but that was not the problem. The problem was I had once created an "Income" grouping and was using the categories in this grouping in my budget. Quicken obviously does not recognize a user created grouping. As soon as I edited Quicken's "Personal Income" grouping to meet my needs and started using it, the Budget started working as expected. The total for "Personal Income" was created and the overall total was the difference between Income and Expenses. Had I known the user-created grouping wouldn't work I wouldn't have used it. I guess we now know not to create groupings in the budget.

UKR

Looking at the Budget column of the image @Sherlock provided, both Income and Expense amounts are entered as unsigned (positive) numbers.

Did you, per chance, record your budgeted Expense numbers as negative numbers, e.g.,

Income  10,000
Expense -5,000
Total      15,000 ?

That would be why it appears as if the Budget column can't add two and two together. Enter expense numbers without the minus sign (except if you plan on receiving a big refund in an expense category). That makes Quicken correctly calculate Income minus Expense.