Transactions showing in budget even though the category is not selected

I am trying to set up a new budget. However, after selecting the categories that I want included in the budget, certain transactions show up under the 'Everything Else' heading even though they are properly categorized and not selected for the new budget. For instance I have categories for 'John Income' and 'Jane Income'. I am trying to set up a budget for Jane. When I select the 'Jane Income' category to include in the budget, some, but not all transactions that are categorized as 'John Income' show up in Jane's budget under the 'Everything Else' category. I have tried creating new transactions and they still show up in the Jane Budget even though they are categorized properly and the category is not selected to be part of the Jane budget.

Answers

  • John_in_NC
    John_in_NC SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    HI, sviscardi:

    Where exactly are you seeing this "Everything Else?" The only place I see that is when looking at the spending/income pie chart views of registers. 

    I have never seen it in the actual budget module, so I am a bit confused. 
  • sviscardi
    sviscardi Member
    I think I kind of figured it out. It seems the quicken budgets can only go one category deep. It cannot handle subcategories very well. For example if I have a main category of 'Auto' and a subcategory of 'Fuel' if I select the main category of 'Auto' and the subcategory of 'Auto:Fuel' as categories to include in my budget, then Quicken will automatically include an 'Everything Else' line under the 'Auto:Fuel' line in the budget module. It also seems to take every other transaction that is not in one of the categories selected and puts it under an 'Everything Else' heading at the bottom of the budget page. This number does not roll up into the budget calculations but honestly is a little distracting. If I wanted the information to be on my budget page I would select it as a category. I'm starting to look at other programs like Mint. Quicken is just not that good at budgeting.
  • John_in_NC
    John_in_NC SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    The budget handles sub cats correctly, but it does take a bit of understanding to know what is going on. How you select categories to track certainly impacts what is calculated:

    The Parent category can indeed be a "roll up" sum-if you have the parent category checked. If you have individual sub cats selected, and NOT the parent, then the total will be only of the selected categories you are tracking and not a roll up amount. If the Parent IS checked, then it sums every sub cat, even if you don't have them chosen to track in the budget. 

    In your post, if you wanted to only track Auto:Fuel, then you would have that sub cat selected, and NOT the parent cat as that will draw in everything Auto:xyz.

    I have never seen anywhere in the budget module that has an "and everything else" line, but I suspect you might be speaking figuratively how the roll up works. 
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