Best way to set up categories with duplicates for personal, business and rentals?

Whitney Mintert

I have my personal accounts in the same data file as my business and rental accounts and I use a separate Accounting software for financial statements. That said, I'm wondering how others structure their Category list when you have duplicate items that need to be separated because of the tax schedule where they are reported. For example, I have "Bank Fees:Bank Fees (Business)" that is reported on Schedule C, "Bank Fees:Bank Fees (Personal)" not a taxable event, and "Bank Fees:Bank Fees (Rental)" that is reported on Schedule E. I have all three of them sub-categorized under an overall "Bank Fees" Category. My thought process on that was so I could see "Bank Fees" overarching as a total, then be able to break it down from there into Business, Personal, Rental, instead of having three separate "Bank Fees" categories that don't roll up into the broader category. Maybe it's 6 of 1, half dozen of another, but it looks weird at times when you have repeating categories, sub-categories.

Rocket J Squirrel

Tags. Look at the Tags feature for a method of classification which is orthogonal to categories.

Whitney Mintert

@"Rocket J Squirrel" - thanks for your response. Yes, I use tags as well, and they are super helpful since Quicken doesn't employ the use of classes. My challenge is that the same expense type, depending on its use, is reportable on different schedules so I either have to use a "tree" structure, as explained above, or I have to have three separate expense categories to ensure taxable events are captured correctly. I was just wondering how others structure their category list, in case I'm missing something and there is a better/more efficient way to set this up.