Create auto split category transactions based on payee

chelly

With certain payees, the category splits are always the same, either by percentage or dollar amount. For example, if I make a purchase at "Joe's Groceries", the split is always 5% sales tax, and the rest is always groceries. When I make my monthly insurance payment, a certain fixed amount is categorized for insurance for each vehicle we own. Setting up these splits to enter automatically based on payee would save users from having to enter the splits every time.

Rocket J Squirrel

You can do this already. Create a transaction with the split set up the way you want it, then memorize that transaction.

Jim_Harman

You can set up Reminders or Memorized transactions with splits for fixed dollar amounts, but AFAIK not for percentages of the total amount.

splasher

In Quicken for Windows, it is possible to save a split as a percentage.  Right click on an existing split transaction and select "Memorize Payee" and you get this pop-up:

Rocket J Squirrel

Jim_Harman said:

You can set up Reminders or Memorized transactions with splits for fixed dollar amounts, but AFAIK not for percentages of the total amount.

You can. When memorizing a split transaction, Quicken prompts whether to use percentages.

There is a caveat though. I used to use this at stores where I always knew the entire purchase would be taxed at a known rate. But over time, the splits became inaccurate. I believe each transaction was computing the split based on the previous such transaction, and the numbers tended to drift over time. I don't know whether this was ever fixed.

Rocket J Squirrel

Off topic 1: @splasher beat me to the post, but my post took longer to construct.

Off topic 2: taxing groceries is unethical. @chelly must live in West Virginia.

In any event, this idea is already implemented.

Sherlock

Jim_Harman said:

You can set up Reminders or Memorized transactions with splits for fixed dollar amounts, but AFAIK not for percentages of the total amount.

If you haven't already, you may want to review: https://help.quicken.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=3216344

Chris_QPW

Jim_Harman said:

but AFAIK not for percentages of the total amount.

If you go to the register and put in a transaction where you put in the payee, then the amount and split it and enter the numbers like 90%, 10%, and then memorized that transaction it will ask you if you want to save it as a percentage.

Jim_Harman

Aha. The trick is to start with a total amount, then enter the percentages. I started with zero, and it didn't ask about percentages.

chelly

This has all been very helpful, thank you. Now I need to figure out if I can have fixed amounts and percentages in the same transaction i.e. for my utility bill, my water, sewer, and trash are always the same fixed amount (they don't meter water here), but the electric varies, and the sales tax is of course always a percentage.

Rocket J Squirrel

A split can be amounts or percentages, but not a mix of both. It makes my head hurt thinking about how that would work.