I am having problems setting up budget categories (Q Mac)

Cathy G

Budget categories that I have not checked keep showing up in my budget. They are 0 and I don't want them but I can't get rid of them. I'm used to using Quicken for PC, and this is quite a learning curve.
TIA.

John_in_NC

Hi, Cathy.

I haven't seen this in all the time I use the budget module in Quicken for Mac. But, I do realize it can take a little bit of understanding to figure out what is going on.

Any details you might be able to provide will really help here, such as if these undesired categories are part of Parent:Sub Category relationship.  How those are selected will definitely impact budget inclusion.

Please advise! Thanks.

BARBARA KISLEY

I can not seem to get out of the categories list when I set it up to use in budgeting. I must exit the whole quicken

jacobs

BARBARA KISLEY said:

I can not seem to get out of the categories list when I set it up to use in budgeting. I must exit the whole quicken

Can you see the bottom of the categories window, where the Cancel and OK buttons are? 

If not, what happens if you press Enter? If the cursor is in the Search box near the top, try pressing Tab to change the focus to the categories list, then press Return.

Cathy G

@John_in_NC I figured it out. I had set Show to 'Used' then selected 'None' which only cleared out the 'Used' categories, not all of the categories, which is why I still saw other categories in my budget. Thanks for your help. I just wish my 20 years of budgets had transferred over from PC to Mac!

jacobs

Cathy G said:

I just wish my 20 years of budgets had transferred over from PC to Mac!

@Cathy G I understand wishing your current budget had transferred over, which it unfortunately does not. But I'm interested in what you do with many years of past budgets? I don't think I've ever looked at a budget from prior years, only actual income/expense data. What do you use past budgets (beyond last year's when creating this year's) for? Just curious.

india just

Count me in as curious also!  I've only used the budget function for quick rough cut projections.  Mostly to help others with concept and actually as promotional aspect to Quicken and money mgt in general. I use it as an introduction to friends, showing my real numbers and what they look like in the software.  Show and tell if you will.

I do rely on historical charts and graphs to answer questions and reveal performance, just not budgets.

I have found the net worth chart, and investing returns/projected returns to provide the most value for look forward tools, especially with regard to the "am I saving enough?  What will retirement look like?" type questions.

Cathy G

I guess I don't really need the old budget reports. I usually print them out at the end of the year anyway. I use the budget reports (at least I did in Quicken for Windows) to track my monthly spending per category relative to my budgeted amounts. I can track the spending with the Category Summary report, and I did figure out that if I export my Budget to a CSV file, it actually also exports the actual spending. So I'm not sure why Quicken for Mac doesn't show that as a report option, since the data is there.
I don't track my net worth in Quicken. I just log in to my asset accounts directly. The fewer places I use the passwords, the better for my peace of mind.

jacobs

Cathy G said:

I did figure out that if I export my Budget to a CSV file, it actually also exports the actual spending. So I'm not sure why Quicken for Mac doesn't show that as a report option, since the data is there.

@CathyG  I'm confused by your statement. If you select Print on the budget screen, the resulting report includes columns of Actual, Budgeted, and Difference for each month for the entire year -- the same data as what you get in the export.

What's lacking is the ability to specify the time period you want to print, which would typically be January through the prior month (e.g. January through May currently). Also lacking is a total column on the Detail report, although you can get totals by doing the Summary report. Hopefully, the developers will address these shortcomings with budget reporting in the not-too-distant future, as they've been on the feature wishlist for a long time.