Why are two categories in my Budget v Actual report showing zero in the Actual column?

cls4

When I click on the zero the underlying transactions are there. This is happening for two categories in Income. One is an HSA Account contribution made by my employer and is part of a paycheck transaction like my employer's contribution to my 401k. The second is dividend income. Everything was working as of Dec 31st. I recall this happened a few years ago after a Quicken update and I found the fix on this Community. It was simple and something I had to do in the Budget under the Planning tab but I can't remember what it was. This time I don't know if the problem is related to a Quicken update like the last time or was something I did in setting up a new budget for 2022. I am using Quicken for Windows.

Jim_Harman

I think you need to make sure the categories are included in your budget for this year.

Chris_QPW

Exactly what categories are you selecting the Actual amount (that is zero) for?
And have these transactions already happened for this year?

The reason I ask is it sounds like the HSA is a transfer, and as such would need to be selected in the Transfer FROM selection in the budget.  The dividend is a hidden category that would have to be selected.

And if the transactions haven't already happened in this year, then you would have to have a reminder set for them and include reminders in the budget.

cls4

Thank you both for your responses. Actually, this problem wiped out the amounts all the way back through 2021 and probably earlier than that. I printed out the report for the month of December on 12/31/2021 and there are actual figures of $121.68 in the HSA line item and $1,520.36 in the _DivInc category. Now when I view the report for Dec 2021 those same categories are showing $0 even though there are underlying transactions when I click on the $0. Given this information I don't think my reports in 2022 are going to work correctly and I would like to figure this out before too much time goes by.

Chris_QPW

This sounds like a problem with the budget getting corrupted.  Have you tried creating a new one and see if the actuals are correct in it?

You should also try File -> Validate and Repair File -> Validate File -> OK

Also are you using sync to Mobile/Web?
There have been some reports of it messing up budgets.

cls4

I did go through the File-Validate and Repair File-Validate File process with a Quicken help representative on Sunday. It did not solve the problem. He suggested that I go to a backup file but then told me because I have a Schwab account that it is necessary to get next level authorization and those folks were not working on Sunday. He said to call on Monday but I was at work. I will try to create a new budget to see if that works and if not, I will attempt restoring a backup file. Thank you for your help Chris. I am pretty sure I am not syncing to Mobile/Web. My files are backed up to OneDrive and I only access Quicken from the application on my laptop.

Jim_Harman

Your data file should not be stored in a directory that OneDrive accesses, it should be on a local hard drive.

cls4

Thank you! I am not sure exactly why I started using OneDrive but I will resume saving to my hard drive and backing up to my external drive.

Chris_QPW

Note it is perfectly fine to store the backups on OneDrive, it is only the data file you open in Quicken that shouldn't be in OneDrive.