Difference total in budget doesn't match (Q Mac)

jmorria

The difference total in the upper right hand corner of the annual budget screen doesn't match when I add up the monthly difference totals month by month. Why is it different?

jacobs

jmorria said:

Thanks for all the help but I tried the cents idea and no change other than a couple of cents. I like to see the amount in the upper right corner so I can tell how much extra funds I have outside of what I budgeted.

I agree that it should work.  For what it's worth, I tried it on a different test file on a different computer, and the upper right total matched the Summary section total, which also matched the total of the columns and rows.

I was just noting that since the upper right is showing your entire year budget versus your YTD actual, I'm not sure how helpful that really is. I supposed if you created a budget that came out to a zero difference between income and expenses, then the total in the upper right is showing your actual versus budget variance. But if your starting budget had more income than expense, or vice versa, you need to deduct that budget bottom line to see how you're actually doing versus the budget. I think the much more useful value is if you set the columns to the right of the categories to Year-to-Date — that gives you a better idea of actual versus budget ignoring future months. Unfortunately, it's most useful near the end of each month, because you have all of the month's budget cmpared to most of the month's actual; then on March 1, it's not as useful because it's comparing your January + February actual to your January + February + March budget.

But going back to the original problem, some additional questions…

When you were adding the monthly difference totals month by month, did you use all 12 months? (Just asking because you might logically think to only add January and February, but the value in the upper right uses the whole year.

Do you have the light gray columns to the right of the categories column, before the January column? (If not, click the "<<" icon to make them appear.) With those grey columns showing, are they set for January-December or January-February? (You toggle this by clicking on the "v" icon to the right for the 2022 heading.) Set it to "Entire Year Budget Totals" so it displays "January to December" under the 2022 heading. Does the value on the Difference line in the right column here equal the Difference value you see in the upper right? 

In the Summary section at the top of the budget, it shows rows for Income, Expense and Difference. If you add the Difference values for the 12 months, does that total match either the value on the Difference line in the gray column or the value in the upper right? 

With all these questions, I'm trying to understand what isn't adding up for you. There should be three ways of getting the same value: the upper right, the Difference row in the full year total column, and adding up the 12 monthly Difference amounts. I'm asking which of those do and don't agree.

UKR

Can you please capture one or more images of the parts of your Quicken window showing the issue, sensitive information blacked out as necessary to protect your privacy but annotated to describe the situation, and attach the image(s) here?
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7867159/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-from-windows

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7663259/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-from-a-mac

Please save images to files of file type PNG, JPG, or GIF only. They're easier to work with than PDF files.

jacobs

I admit I've never paid much attention to the number in the upper right of the Quicken Mac budget screen, because it shows the difference between actual and budget for the entire year. Since in February it's comparing actual to budget for 10 months which haven't occurred yet, I don't know how the value is useful. Nonetheless…

I agree that the number in the upper right doesn't match anything I can figure out! It doesn't match what the Summayr section of the budget shows; it doesn't match the sum of the detail line items; it doesn't match onscreen or exported and totaled in a spreadsheet.

Here are two screenshots from a file with dummy data I use for testing Quicken. This is the top left of the budget screen, showing the summary section with full year (January through December) values:

In the left column, you can see that there is zero actual income or expense for the current year to date because this file doesn't have any actual posted transactions in the current year. It shows budgeted income of $199,874 and budgeted expenses of $216,669, for a bottom line of $16,795 in excess expenses over income. in the right column, this shows the $16,795 as a positive value,  because my bottom line of zero is $16,795 better than my budgeted total of -$16,795. So far, so good.

But here's what it shows in the upper right:



It says its the January through December difference, but $35,373 is way off from $16,795. I thought perhaps something was signed wrong and it doubled the difference, but $16,795 x 2 is several thousand dollars off from $35,373.

I exported the full budget, created formulas to sum the Difference columns for each month, and got a total difference of $16,803 — which is $8 off from the Summary total above. Because this screen and export is using rounded values, that made sense. What didn't make sense is why the two totals in the upper right and upper left don't agree with each other. 

And then for the next startling discovery. I clicked on settings and switched the budget screen to use cents. To my surprise, the value changed not just to show center, but to show the correct value!



Even after toggling cents off, the correct value of $16,795 remains. And after quitting and relaunching Quicken, the correct value remains.

My conclusion is that when rolling the budget over from 2021 to 2022, something in Quicken's budget wasn't reset correctly, and that for some reason toggling cents in Settings forced it to recalculate properly. Very weird!

@jmorria Did you have a 2021 budget which you then reset for 2022? If so, could you try the long-shot action of going to Settings and toggling cents on or off to see if the value in the upper right changes. 

jmorria

Thanks for all the help but I tried the cents idea and no change other than a couple of cents. I like to see the amount in the upper right corner so I can tell how much extra funds I have outside of what I budgeted.

jacobs

jmorria said:

Thanks for all the help but I tried the cents idea and no change other than a couple of cents. I like to see the amount in the upper right corner so I can tell how much extra funds I have outside of what I budgeted.

I agree that it should work.  For what it's worth, I tried it on a different test file on a different computer, and the upper right total matched the Summary section total, which also matched the total of the columns and rows.

I was just noting that since the upper right is showing your entire year budget versus your YTD actual, I'm not sure how helpful that really is. I supposed if you created a budget that came out to a zero difference between income and expenses, then the total in the upper right is showing your actual versus budget variance. But if your starting budget had more income than expense, or vice versa, you need to deduct that budget bottom line to see how you're actually doing versus the budget. I think the much more useful value is if you set the columns to the right of the categories to Year-to-Date — that gives you a better idea of actual versus budget ignoring future months. Unfortunately, it's most useful near the end of each month, because you have all of the month's budget cmpared to most of the month's actual; then on March 1, it's not as useful because it's comparing your January + February actual to your January + February + March budget.

But going back to the original problem, some additional questions…

When you were adding the monthly difference totals month by month, did you use all 12 months? (Just asking because you might logically think to only add January and February, but the value in the upper right uses the whole year.

Do you have the light gray columns to the right of the categories column, before the January column? (If not, click the "<<" icon to make them appear.) With those grey columns showing, are they set for January-December or January-February? (You toggle this by clicking on the "v" icon to the right for the 2022 heading.) Set it to "Entire Year Budget Totals" so it displays "January to December" under the 2022 heading. Does the value on the Difference line in the right column here equal the Difference value you see in the upper right? 

In the Summary section at the top of the budget, it shows rows for Income, Expense and Difference. If you add the Difference values for the 12 months, does that total match either the value on the Difference line in the gray column or the value in the upper right? 

With all these questions, I'm trying to understand what isn't adding up for you. There should be three ways of getting the same value: the upper right, the Difference row in the full year total column, and adding up the 12 monthly Difference amounts. I'm asking which of those do and don't agree.

jmorria

Thank you so much for all your help I can use the column you mentioned and it gives me a yearly total. Thanks again!