Budget

CMH hawley

Please tell me that quicken updated the budget to show positive income - expenses =$. Any budget I have worked with has shown the positive - the expenses = + or -. Make sense? If not I am supposed to manually do the figuring? Where do I find what is left over after expenses?

James J

@CMH hawley  are you referring to that bar that's above the chart, the bar with "Spending" on far left and "Savings" on the far right?

I find that to be so unintuitive.  I really dislike it.  For example, in my chart, if I choose to show "Budget only", then I can see at the very bottom of the far right column, the column titled "2022 Summary", that I have a negative number because my budgeted expenses exceed my budgeted income.  But in that bar at the top, I don't see any negative numbers.  It has this green bar at the left, not sure what that's supposed to tell me, and at the right it shows my budgeted expenses and savings, which are zero, but it doesn't show there that I am planning to spend more than I am planning to earn. 

CMH hawley

You are completely correct James. I sued MSN for years and their budget took the cake! So are you; saying to switch my budget to "budget only"?

Chris_QPW

The bar at the top of the budget isn't "influenced" by what setting you have like Details, Budget only, ...
It is always taking budget/actuals into account. 
It is looking at the whole year and every EXPENSE category.  It doesn't look at income categories at all.

Note I almost never look at the Graph view, I look at the annual view. All the bars on the Graph view take up so much space it is hard to really "read" the budget.

If you switch to Balance Only you should see the category(s) that "overspent".  EDIT:  Switching to Balance only is so that it is easier to spot the over budget(s) in the table below, it doesn't affect the bar graph at all.

Example:




Note that the "actuals" depends on if you include reminders or not.  If you are including reminders, then they will be used for any future "actuals".


The number under Spending it the total of the "actuals".  The number after Budget at the end of the bar graph is the total budget number of the expense categories.

When looking at the budget table itself it is important to understand what "fields" you are looking at.
You have Budget, Actual, and Balance.

If one is setting up a budget and wants to know "Is my income that I think I'm going to get, going to cover the expenses I think I'm going to get?" then you want to be looking at the Budget numbers, and selecting Budget only allows you to see just that and more of it on the screen than say Details.

You will notice that if you don't select any income categories then the Budget Only total at the bottom right with be the same number that you see after the Budget: at the top left above the bar graph.

The Quicken budget doesn't show Budget number as positive numbers for income and negative for expenses, they are all shown as positive numbers.  For the math, definition income categories are positive and expense categories are negative.  For sure if I have an income category of $1000 and an expense category of $1500 the total at the bottom of the column will be -$500.

Once you have your budget setup and want to monitor it that is when the actuals and balance come into play.  And note that if you try to "look in the future" for these two if the reminders are off you have no future actuals and as such can't predict the future.  And even if you turn on the reminders, the prediction for the future for the actuals will only be as good as your reminders covering all your future predictions on your spending.  And of course, that directly affects the future balances.

James J

I don’t use that graph at the top at all because I can never make heads or tails of it. 

When I’m setting up my budget for the year, I select “Budget only” so I am easily able to allocate thus year’s income to all the spending categories I’ve chosen to include in the budget. This lets me see if my total planned expenses are more or less than total planned income. 

Then when using the budget on a regular basis, I mostly view the table in the “Balance only” mode, so I can see how much money is left in each category at any given time. If I have overspent in a category, then the balance shows up in red font with a negative sign in front of it. 

I like the table, but never have understood or found utility in that bar graph. 

CMH hawley

just where do you find this "budget" only?

James J

Here at the top:

CMH hawley

BINGO! Thank you so much and now I can see the differences! Now I have to figure out how to get back to the planning itself. Again thank you.