I use Quicken 2017 Premier and wish to set-up a 2021 budget.

Stocks1524

I have set-up a duplicate budget using the categories from my 2020 budget. How do I remove the monthly2020 budget "action" items from the newly established 2021 budget. Should I use another method of establishing a 2021 budget, instead of the procedure I used?

GeoffG

You will need to define action items. I reviewed the budget, but did not see that description listed. Also, as we are still in 2020, do you see it when you forward into January?

Chris_QPW

To create a budget where 2020 isn't included you need to either wait until 2021, or set your system clock to 2021.

Whenever you create a budget it is for the year you are in.  If you then click on the arrow to go into the next year, you are then "extending it" into that year.  And there isn't any way to delete a year out of a budget.

Chris_QPW

Actually I just tested it and setting your clock to 2021 isn't going to get it.
Well not without even more complications/workarounds.

What happens is sure enough you get a budget set for 2021, but as soon as you set your clock back to 2020 and open that budget Quicken is going to force it to put 2020 into that budget.  So you would have to make sure that you don't open that budget until 2021.

And I take it that you don't want 2021 in your 2020 budget.  Well the only way that will happen is if you never open your 2020 budget in a future year.

My real suggestion would be to just extend the budget into the next year, and not try to have a separate budget for each year.  You are just going to be fighting Quicken and sooner or later it is probably going to win and extend your budget one way or another.

GeoffG

Chris_QPW said:

To create a budget where 2020 isn't included you need to either wait until 2021, or set your system clock to 2021.

Whenever you create a budget it is for the year you are in.  

That is not entirely correct. There are two methods for creating a budget. You can extend the current year into the next by extending out. This makes the budgeting more difficult in my opinion.

The better method is to copy 2020 Budget as 2021 Budget or create new. This creates a completely independent budget from any other year. It has a clean beginning and end. You can easily go into next year (2021) and establish and view any month as well as the entire year regardless of what the system date is.

I have completed next years budget and can select from the dropdown any budget year 2021, 2020, 2019 or 2022 if chosen.

Chris_QPW

I would like to see the steps you are taking.

In none of the dialog have I seen a prompt for stating I want a budget for a given year.

If I do: Budget Actions -> Create new budget:




If I do: Budget Actions -> Duplicate this budget

GeoffG

The first image shows the last 4, current and future budgets.



Instead of selecting Duplicate Budget, select Create new.



This image shows 2021 Budget and selecting > takes you to January. Can scroll through the entire year in Graph view.


I've been doing budgets this way since 1992.

Chris_QPW

It isn't a matter of scrolling through a given year, it is a matter of if 2020 included in the budget meant for 2021 or not.  I see no way to create a 2021 budget without including 2020 as long as your system clock is in 2020.

The "indication" that this is true is if Quicken asks you to "extend" the budget when changing to another year.

For instance.  I just created a new budget (the only one is this data file).


Notice that it is says December 2020. So clearly 2020 is already created.
If I select the right arrow icon to go to the next month I get.


This is the process of extending it into the next year.  But that doesn't mean that the 2020 part goes away.

The same is true if I go back to January 2020 and select the left arrow icon:


This extends the budget into the past.

And you couldn't have done this since 1992, because in 2012 they changed the budget system.  Before that it was a budget per year, now and given budget can have multiple years in it.  Now you don't have to look at those years, but they are still there.

Another indication of this behavior can be seen in the reports.
Here is the Current budget report for the one that I just created (I didn't "extend it" yet):


Now I'm going to extend it into 2021, and go back to that report: