How to have an online transfer between 2 accounts show up in my budget?

Mary108

I make a monthly transfer from a savings account to my daily household checking account, but am unable to have it show up in my budget? How can this be done? I need a way to categorize it. For example: paycheck but the transfer fills the category. I have tried doing it as a split transaction but then the transfer isn't deducted from the savings account, but the paycheck designation shows up as a deposit in the checking account? There must be a way to do this? Thanks for any assistance.

Tom Young

Understand that the basic concept of "budgeting" typically involves true income and expense items.  Fundamentally, moving money from a savings account to a checking account is the equivalent of moving money from your right pocket to your left pocket; it doesn't change your net worth, it isn't an "income" or "expense" transaction.

However, Quicken can accommodate you here, though it's going to take a little customization of your reports ("actuals") and your budget ("planed/hoped for outcomes") and probably a little experimentation. 

The basic concept here is to treat an Account, (Quicken-speak for "a balance sheet account), like a Category, (Quicken-speak for "an income or expense account.")  In other words - and I'll just deal with the "report" aspect, though the "budgeting" aspect is similar - you'd customize your report by clicking on the Category tab in the customization window and ticking the box next to one or the other of your checking of savings Accounts, or both, such that transfers do act like income and expenses in the report, labeled "TO [Account Name]" or "From [Account Name]" in the Income and Expenses area.  Of course to make this work you also need to click on the Advanced tab of the customization window and allow transfers to be shown.  (There are different options as to which transfers get shown so you'll have to play around a bit here to get things right.)

The other thing you need to watch out for when setting up transfers as "Categories" is that you might end up seeing both sides of the transfer showing up in your report, that is a "From [checking Account] up in the income section and a "To [savings Account] in expenses.  The cure here is to uncheck one of the other Account on the Accounts tab of the customization window.  (This stops that unchecked Account from "feeding" information to the report.) 

Or, you can end up with double counting income or expense in the report.  The example here might be that you want to count your entire monthly mortgage payment as a form of expense, but doing so would double count the "mortgage interest expense" line item in the expense section.  In the case you'd want to eliminate the mortgage interest expense as a Category in the report.

You'll undoubtedly need to play around a bit to get things "just right", but it can be done.

Mary108

Thanks, got me to where I needed to be. Really appreciate the response.