Remove categories from Spending reports

sysop

I have several categories set up which are essentially "wash" categories:

General Authorization / Void Authorization
Xfer In / Out (moving money between accounts)
Balance Adjustment (specifically so that account balances will match)

How do I configure these, or remove them from the Spending reports as they are not actual spending categories?

sysop

By "wash" categories, what I mean is that they are neither expenses nor income, but sort of "transfers" or just balance "corrections".

Xfer In / Out is where I will movie money from one checking account to another. Or, I might send money from my bank checking account to PayPal to cover an expense. It's not income, but just transfer of funds. PayPal will also sometimes do this automatically if there is not enough funds in the balance, it will "xfer" money from another bank account. I do not want these categories listed in my spending reports.

Authorizations are just temporary holds/releases. They are neither income nor expense. Many times in PayPal, there are 3 transactions for one expense: general authorization, void of authorization and the actual actual final debit transaction. So, I don't want the authorizations to show on the spending reports, just the final transaction, which I assign to the correct category.

And Balance Adjustments are just that. Again, neither income nor expense, but a way to correct the balance for an account which is showing on the Quicken Accounts screen. Definitely don't want these on the spending reports.

It looks like I can only categorize as income or expense. But, even the Balance Adjustments, which are uncategorized in my system, still show on the spending reports. How do I work around this?

sysop

Those "Balance Adjustments" are also showing up on my Schedule C report as "Unspecified Income/Expenses".

UKR

Balance Adjustments can be categorized just like the Opening Balance in each of your account registers: use the name of the account register in square brackets, e.g., [AmEx 1234]. This "transfer to self" effectively hides any amounts from income or expense reporting. Quicken will prompt you to verify if this is what you want to do; respond to allow it.

Transfer In/Out: You don't need to create two separate transactions for transfers between accounts. Just create 1 transaction and, e.g., categorize your PayPal transfer from Checking as Category = [PayPal]. Quicken will create a linked pair of transfer transactions for you, one in Checking, one in PayPal account. Again, nothing will show as income or expense, but if the report has a Transfer section, transfers to/from accounts will be listed for reference.

IMHO, Authorization holds or other temporary transactions should NEVER be made available for downloading, in any account. I would delete both temp transactions from the register. And I would demand that PayPal stop downloading those.

sysop

> @UKR said:
> Balance Adjustments can be categorized just like the Opening Balance in each of your account registers: use the name of the account register in square brackets, e.g., [AmEx 1234]. This "transfer to self" effectively hides any amounts from income or expense reporting. Quicken will prompt you to verify if this is what you want to do; respond to allow it.Transfer In/Out: You don't need to create two separate transactions for transfers between accounts. Just create 1 transaction and, e.g., categorize your PayPal transfer from Checking as Category = [PayPal]. Quicken will create a linked pair of transfer transactions for you, one in Checking, one in PayPal account. Again, nothing will show as income or expense, but if the report has a Transfer section, transfers to/from accounts will be listed for reference.IMHO, Authorization holds or other temporary transactions should NEVER be made available for downloading, in any account. I would delete both temp transactions from the register. And I would demand that PayPal stop downloading those.

Thank you! This absolutely resolves my problems! Adjustements and Xfers use the [transfer] categories and I tag them appropriately. I simply delete the authorizations and voila, my reports are far more accurate. Brilliant!