How do I get a custom Category Group to show up on the list when I want to use it?

Steve1096

I've created a custom category group. But the custom group name does not show up in the list of Groups (ie Personal expenses, business expenses, etc.). How do I make it visible so I can use it?

Sherlock

Custom category groups appear on the Category Groups tab of the Customize window of reports and in Budget views.

Tom Young

@Steve1096

Yes, Category Group is basically a reporting function, not a categorization function.  The point is to be able to sweep up a group of Categories where you want to see a dollar total but don't care particularly about the composition of those dollars.

Sherlock

Custom category groups appear on the Category Groups tab of the Customize window of reports and in Budget views.

Steve1096

Soooo, what I'm hearing is that custom Category Groups are useless for everyday categorization of transactions?

Tom Young

@Steve1096

Yes, Category Group is basically a reporting function, not a categorization function.  The point is to be able to sweep up a group of Categories where you want to see a dollar total but don't care particularly about the composition of those dollars.

Steve1096

Thank you Tom and Sherlock. I should have been more clear about why I was asking the question. I am a longtime but basic user and now newly retired. We have savings and social security. I am creating a budget. Our personal expenses will exceed our SS. I want certain expenses, ie foreign travel, to be in a Category Group named something like "Drawdown from Savings" so that I can budget and track my drawdown... and the rest of my budget will --- hopefully --- balance with our SS income. It sound like it can be done but the day to day categorization will not be super-transparent that "foreign travel" will be a separate type of "Personal Expense."

Tom Young

"but the day to day categorization will not be super-transparent that 'foreign travel' will be a separate type of 'Personal Expense.'"

At the transaction level it will be as separate as any other Category you might use such as  Groceries, Dining Out, Auto Insurance, Medical bills and any other expenses you might have. 

You don't count on the entry of individual transactions to somehow alert you that this is a custom Category Group item, the Quicken reports do that for you and you can run those ever single day if you chose to do so.  (You might even be able to budget at the Category Group level but since I just don't use Quicken's budgeting process I'm not sure about that.)

Sherlock

Steve1096 said:

Thank you Tom and Sherlock. I should have been more clear about why I was asking the question. I am a longtime but basic user and now newly retired. We have savings and social security. I am creating a budget. Our personal expenses will exceed our SS. I want certain expenses, ie foreign travel, to be in a Category Group named something like "Drawdown from Savings" so that I can budget and track my drawdown... and the rest of my budget will --- hopefully --- balance with our SS income. It sound like it can be done but the day to day categorization will not be super-transparent that "foreign travel" will be a separate type of "Personal Expense."

If you want the day to day categorization will not be super-transparent that "foreign travel" will be a separate type of "Personal Expense", I suggest using a parent category instead of a category group.  For example, create the category Drawdown from Savings with the subcategory foreign travel.  

Chris_QPW

Sherlock said:

I suggest using a parent category instead of a category group. 

Just filling in a bit to show the difference.

A category can exist only in one category group.  So if I have a category of Dining, I can't have it both in "Personal Expenses" and a category group "Foreign travel".

You need a new category, and using a parent category to group all of the non Social Security categories together might be nice so that they aren't spread all over the place when you go to enter them in the register.

It all depends on what you want to do.  Here is an example of what a custom group looks like in the budget:


Variable Expenses is the custom group.  Auto is a parent category.

When I think of this statement:

Steve1096 said:

Thank you Tom and Sherlock. I should have been more clear about why I was asking the question. I am a longtime but basic user and now newly retired. We have savings and social security. I am creating a budget. Our personal expenses will exceed our SS. I want certain expenses, ie foreign travel, to be in a Category Group named something like "Drawdown from Savings" so that I can budget and track my drawdown... and the rest of my budget will --- hopefully --- balance with our SS income. It sound like it can be done but the day to day categorization will not be super-transparent that "foreign travel" will be a separate type of "Personal Expense."

I think @Sherlock is correct and I also suggest that you have a second budget.
As you can see above you can have the "non Social Security categories" in a custom category group, but what no matter what you do if you include those categories in the "Social Security budget" then you are going to have do some math to take them out of the totals to make sure you haven't exceed your Social Security in the other categories.

But if you have one budget for the expenses/categories that are going to be paid by Social Security, and one for the categories that aren't, then you can just look at each budget and quickly see where you are for both.