Help me understand Balances and Rollover Reserve

Question

Help! I'd really like to use budget function but these discrepancies are throwing me. In a month where expenses were $1171 LESS than budget for month, the balance only increased by $732.
 BTW, I did reset all January balances to zero. 
 I also don't understand the difference in Totals Balance and Rollover Reserve at the bottom. Thanks for any enlightenment.

I'm using Quicken Premier for Windows 10 Enterprise
 Version R35.31    Build 27.1.35.31

Chris_QPW · Answer

I assume you are talking about the totals at the bottom of the month columns.
Are you sure you are rolling over every category?
Are you sure that they are all reset in January, and all using the "both direction" rollover?

Have you looked at the January numbers and see if they make sense, before looking at the next month?
If they don't have you looked to see if there is a given category(s) that are wacky?

I don't and I can say that the numbers can get pretty confusing if you are doing only part of them.

For instance here is my January:

To get the $233 I had to go to each category that with a rollover and add them up.
Note that those rollovers can only be applied to the given category and they can't be applied to the short fall/gain of the overall budget.

For example:

224 + 3 - 289 = -62

So $3 from the $233 was used here, but no more, even if it wasn't used in another category, because this category only had $3 extra in reserve.

Bottom line is looking at the total rollover reserve is very misleading, since the individual amounts have to be applied the individual categories that they go with.

Rusty Dockery · Answer

Thank you! Your comments and example make perfect sense. However, I'm looking at:
 Rollover Balance last month  12,052
 Budget this month                  7,435
 Actual this month                   1,865
 Balance                                 20,211 (I would expect 17,622)

I have each category rolling over and I reset January Balances to zero. Got an idea what's causing the discrepancy?

Chris_QPW · Answer

When using this kind of rollover:

The rollover amount can be positive or negative.  If it is negative it will reduce the balance amount.
Without actually seeing the amounts and such no one can really tell you exactly what is going on.
But one thing I would do is look at individual categories to see which balance are negative and look at all the details including clicking on the balance to full math.