Business and personal income/expense with Quicken Deluxe (Mac)

The drummer

Hi, what exactly mean that Quicken Deluxe for Mac can do "Categorize & separate personal, business & rental income/expense" as per product information?

I want to track income / expenses from a home business within the same Quicken file and I saw that Quicken Deluxe (the version I am using) has this feature.



Thanks,

jacobs

I would guess that the chart is simply indicating that you can use appropriate categories in Quicken Deluxe to separate your business and personal expenses. For instance, if you're using Quicken Mac and haven't deleted some of the default categories, you'll see main categories for Business Income, Business Expenses and Business Services with a couple dozen sub-categories. You don't need mouse those; you can create your own as you see fit. But the point is that if you use categories for business expenses and income, you can construct reports for your business and non-business financial activities. There's no special feature signified by this item on the feature chart; it's just using Quicken the way it allows you to.

The drummer

Thanks much. That's what I thought. I deleted long ago the unused categories as I have created my own and wanted to keep things streamlined. I guess I have to figure out a way to do it.

I wanted to keep things separated from personal, like we have "Separate Accounts" for instance. Anyway, thanks.

jacobs

If you open the Categories window, click the gear or ••• button, and there's an option for Add Default Categories. That will add back any of Quicken's default categories you may have deleted.

Alternatively, create a new file (File > New > From scratch) and you can look at the default categories Quicken provides. (Sadly, there's no way to print the list, but you can take screenshots before switching back to your regular Quicken file.

If you want to keep your business and personal income and expenses separate, you might want to consider using a separate file for the business. when my wife ran her own business, we used Quicken, but the business file was separate from our personal file. It pretty much depends on the nature of the business. If it's an LLC, you really should keep the books separately. If it's not, then I'd ask if you have a separate bank account; if not, perhaps keeping everything in one file will work out okay.

The drummer

Again thanks a lot for your inputs. Very helpful. Have a good weekend.