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I'm getting an "items budgeted elsewhere" value in my salary budget

aaron_dean80

I'm trying to track down an extra amount of money that doesn't exist that Quicken keeps calculating is part of my salary. I'm paid bi-weekly and the budgeted value is equal to the actual value if I add up the 2 transactions manually, yet the Quicken budget has about $327 extra dollars of "items budgeted elsewhere" that simply doesn't exist. I've looked all through my Quicken file and cannot identify where it is calculating this money to come from. Any ideas?

-UPDATE: I found that it is ADDING the value of my HSA deduction, which I categorize as a Transfer to my HSA account and the after-tax deduction of my cell phone cost that my company charges me for "incidental personal usage" (it's $20/m so I'm not overly fussy about it). Why it's adding that cost and not the transfer off of my paycheck to my 401k account is beyond me. Quicken really works in mysterious ways. Anyway, does anyone have any ideas how to get quick to stop adding a deduction from my paycheck?

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Quicken Francisco

Hello @aaron_dean80

Thank you for reaching out to the Community regarding your issue, although I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing issues with your budget. That is quite odd and thank you for letting us know you were able to find exactly what was happening. I'm wondering here if we could get some screenshots of the budget and the transaction as well to see if we might be able to find something that's causing the issue. I'll leave an article down below on how to do so.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7867159/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-from-windows#latest

Once you get a chance to upload photos we'll see what we can do in order to fix the issue you're having.

Thanks,

Quicken Francisco

aaron_dean80

Sorry it's taken so long to reply; been travelling a fair bit for work. Attached is the screenshot of the wayward budgeted item that's adding extra to the budget and should not be; it should already be included in my taken home pay amount.

ItemsBudgetedElsewehere01.PNG

Quicken Francisco

@aaron_dean80

Thank you for the updated photo. I'm wondering here if we might just need to adjust the budget to include some exclusions. This may not work but it's worth the attempt to see if that might help us. We can check to see by going to the budget main screen. From there in the top right click on budget actions and then the last item Budget Preferences. I believe the first option on top should be the option (Don't include savings account to savings account transfers) that may work for us but we can also test the second one as well.

Another idea I have is we might need to see if the changing we might need to play around with the category a bit to see if that might be part of the issue but it's difficult to say without seeing the budget firsthand.

In any case try the first step recommended and see if that helps with the issue. If not we'll see what we can do to get the categorization working better. Let us know how it goes once you get the chance!

Thanks,
Quicken Francisco

Chris_QPW

What "items budgeted elsewhere" is that you have duplicated the same category in the budget.
Most likely you have selected to budget the paycheck/net amount, and then also included a category that is used in the paycheck.

For instance including the paycheck and Tax:Fed.

So what Quicken is doing is compenstating for the fact that you have already deducted Tax:Fed on another line by adding back this amount on the net paycheck amount.

aaron_dean80

Francisco,

No I've tried a few different iterations of that and I made sure that "don't include savings account to savings account transfers" is unchecked. I've also had the HSA account checked and unchecked in the "select accounts" window. Currently it sits as unchecked. I've tried checking and unchecking the "TO Fidelity HSA" only to see it show up at the bottom of the Personal Spending list and then to get doubled up as an item budgeted elsewhere in the paycheck. So Chris, I've tried that suggestion.

Under Personal Income I do not have the Salary checked, I'm using Net Pay under Paychecks only.

I think there is a bug in the way Quicken is calculating this pre-tax deduction but I don't know why its not doing it for the transfer to my 401k account. All other pre-tax deductions on my paycheck are regular expense categories.

Chris_QPW

Note it can be any category (or transfer) that is in the paycheck.
Examples:
Starting without any duplicate categories/transfers:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/pc/7tnxe46jdts8.png

Notice the total is $914.

Test with a selecting a transfer to the 401K account.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/z2/nqbrr28uk1ts.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/h3/9hc81kp18xyz.png

Remove transfer

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/88/6nzsui6dbrkb.png

Another this time a regular category.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/so/m7s9xzdd2oaq.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/32/1fck6p705s1u.png

I suggest that you duplicate your budget and remove all categories except the net paycheck and then start putting back categories/transfers until you hit the duplicate(s). You if it is just one duplicate you might be able just to look at the "items budgeted elsewhere" total and find the category/transfer that lines up with it.

Bear in mind in all the cases above the total is $914, so Quicken is doing the right thing, as in adding in the duplicated category/transfer and in the net pay section and then removing it in the other category/transfer line.

aaron_dean80

Chris,

I thought I explained above that the category that is duplicated is the transfer to my HSA account. This is not an account with a category, I show it as a transfer to the account on my paycheck details, as I do for my 401k contribution. I have unchecked the transfers boxes for those account and the HSA continues to show up as the item budgeted elsewhere and yet the 401k transfer does not. I have duplicated the budget and taken basically all of the steps that you outline above and still come up with this problem.

Chris_QPW

OK, I was able to reproduce this. It seems that if your transfer is to a 401K it does it right, but for an extra transfers, like to a HSA, it messes up.

With this paycheck reminder.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/zz/e5sil5pam5an.png

With only this paycheck selected.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/aa/v4bk9dc34om3.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/zg/hbpne6yec5th.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/4o/6ohj4agl5zhg.png

The actual net should be $1,275.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/b4/wvxbz16zmdnh.png

aaron_dean80

You got it! Now what's the solution!? Anything I can do to help or try?

Chris_QPW

Only the developer can provide a solution. You might want to submit this as a problem using Help -> Report a problem, and put in a URL link to this thread. But don't expect a direct response or a fix any time soon.

So the only thing left is workarounds. One might be to use individual categories instead of the net Paycheck selection. The other might be just to ignore it. There isn't really a perfect workaround for this problem.

aaron_dean80

I can just ignore it for now, it's not killing me but it's like fingernails on a chalkboard at the end of the month!