Can you set up a budget for yearly total instead of by month?

Question

I would like to watch my budget as a yearly total instead of a monthly budget. Is this possible in Quicken?

Philip107 · Answer

I do my budget as Sherlock suggests but there are issues with it.

First of all, viewing the budget any other way than Yearly will show you indications that you're out of budget. You'll see in any month other than January that you're out of budget because there is no budget for any month other than January. Rolling over an excess from the previous month does not set the current month's budget to that rollover amount. Also, I've seen in Budget Reports the same over budget effect. Quicken does not see the rollover as a budget amount. So although from a Yearly perspective you're not over budget in any particular month, from a monthly perspective you're over budget in every month except January.

So, yes you can work with a Yearly budget this way but it's just a work around. Quicken does not really support a Yearly budget as we yearly budget users would like. Shucks who budgets monthly anyway.

UKR · Answer

You can also set the budget's Graph View to show a bar graph for either the entire Year or Year to Date or a few other date ranges.
Feel free to experiment with the available settings.

Sherlock · Answer

When you set up the budget, I suggest you use the annual view, allow rollovers, and set the annual budgeted amount in the first month, and zero for the remaining months.  It's not as difficult as it seems: set the first month to 0, select gear icon and apply..., then enter the correct amount.

To watch the budget as a yearly total, I suggest you select Yearly in the graph view.