How do I stop transfers from showing up on the Income & Expense card on the new Dashboard?

jdap

I've never understood why Quicken counts transfers as Income/Expense and it's always been a pain in the neck to have to customize reports to accommodate this anomaly. However with the new dashboard card, I see no way to even do the clunky workarounds.

1. Can anyone provide a reasonable explanation why when I move money from my left pocket to my right pocket (e.g., from investment to checking) Quicken decides that I have income? Because I definitely have not had income.

2. Even if someone has a reasonable use for this, can't it be a global option. I.e., I NEVER want to see transfers as either income or expense.

3. At a bare minimum, can we get customization on the dashboard cards like we do on reports?

Chris_QPW

This isn't a problem with how the transfers are recorded, it is how the income/expense reporting is working and the fact that the new Dashboard doesn't allow you to customize it.

And you can even see it in the report if you click on the Income and Expense Dashboard card.

For instance, here is what I see in my report (Notice the TO which indicates it is a transfer):


The way it is setup right now, just moving money around is reported as an income or and expense (but for a special case of this).
Here in November, I moved 50,000 from one account to another:


And I notice that this isn't limited to the new Dashboard.
Reports -> Spending -> Income and Expense by category, then I select Last Quarter and get the same thing.


When I customize it and look at the Accounts selected I see that it has selected all the bank accounts.
The problem here is that High Yield Savings 4345 is an investment account. As such it only has one side of the transfer and this why it is reporting it this way.  With a report I can customize it to fix this.  With the new Dashboard cards I can't.

The real bottom line is that the new Dashboard is "flashy", but lacks a lot of the customizations that the old one has, and are needed to really provide people with what they need.

Chris_QPW

The reason it has to be customization that fixes this problem is because I can tell you that there are people that will argue with you that a transfer from their investment account to their banking account is income when they are taking money out in retirement.  And on the same line of thinking there are definitely people that want the transfer to their mortage to be records as an expense.

Quicken Inc has to start with some assumptions, and I don't think that they are all that bad for most people, but the lack of customizing it is going to be "dead stop" for a lot of people.

If they want this to really be the future, they better have more customizing.

UKR

How, exactly, are your transfer transactions categorized?

If both the Transfer-from and the Transfer-to accounts are within the current Quicken data file, then a correctly categorized transfer should use the Transfer-to account register name, surrounded by [square brackets] as the category. This prevents a transfer from showing as either Income or Expense. In certain reports and views it will optionally show under a Transfer group, separate from the Income and Expense categories.
Here's how I record a transfer of money from my "P... Checking" account to my "P... Savings" account:

A linked transfer transaction will appear in the savings account, with "[P... Checking]" as the category.

Of course, this requires that you either record transfers manually before they appear in an OSU download or you manually review and categorize correctly a downloaded transfer before you accept it into the register.

jdap

That's not what I am seeing. My transfers are always recorded as you describe, yet they are showing in the Income & Expense card and report as Income/Expense. I am running Quicken for Windows Version: R38.30, Build 27.1.38.30

Chris_QPW

This isn't a problem with how the transfers are recorded, it is how the income/expense reporting is working and the fact that the new Dashboard doesn't allow you to customize it.

And you can even see it in the report if you click on the Income and Expense Dashboard card.

For instance, here is what I see in my report (Notice the TO which indicates it is a transfer):


The way it is setup right now, just moving money around is reported as an income or and expense (but for a special case of this).
Here in November, I moved 50,000 from one account to another:


And I notice that this isn't limited to the new Dashboard.
Reports -> Spending -> Income and Expense by category, then I select Last Quarter and get the same thing.


When I customize it and look at the Accounts selected I see that it has selected all the bank accounts.
The problem here is that High Yield Savings 4345 is an investment account. As such it only has one side of the transfer and this why it is reporting it this way.  With a report I can customize it to fix this.  With the new Dashboard cards I can't.

The real bottom line is that the new Dashboard is "flashy", but lacks a lot of the customizations that the old one has, and are needed to really provide people with what they need.

jdap

After some playing around, it seems to depend on the type of account. Tfr to/from bank accounts doesn't show as income/expense. But when you transfer between other types of accounts it does. Like @Chris_QPW, my case was also a transfer from investment to banking. Also from banking to Property&Debt accounts shows as expense. And while, arguably, banking->debt might make a tad bit more sense -- moving from investing to banking is DEFINITELY NOT income.

Yes, getting customization into the panels would help, but just seems like the whole "we will decide for you what's income and expense" is not a good starting position. It should be up to me what I classify as income or expense.

Chris_QPW

The reason it has to be customization that fixes this problem is because I can tell you that there are people that will argue with you that a transfer from their investment account to their banking account is income when they are taking money out in retirement.  And on the same line of thinking there are definitely people that want the transfer to their mortage to be records as an expense.

Quicken Inc has to start with some assumptions, and I don't think that they are all that bad for most people, but the lack of customizing it is going to be "dead stop" for a lot of people.

If they want this to really be the future, they better have more customizing.

acaruso1011

I agree with this issue and hope that Quicken eventually allows edit to these dashboard reports. I know there are options within the Reports Customization to ignore, but this apparently does not carry forth to the dashboard graphs. I tried to click down into the graph to the underlying report and edit, but it does not save it back to the dashboard. Frustrating. Clearly there is a desire for both methods so this should be enhanced to display on the Dashboard.