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How to make categories in a Split transaction show up in Reports (Q Mac)

SAFM

Hi everyone, I have read questions and answers regarding this topic, but they are years old and I can't solve this as previously advised.

When I run a Category ---> Transaction report, expenses that are with a Transfer with Split transactions will not show up. I was shocked to discover that I may have been missing this for a while!

Here is my problem in more detail. I transferred money to my college student to reimburse him for college expenses. In my entry for the transfer, I added many Splits to account for different items, from tuition, books, parking, etc. Then, when I ran a report yesterday, I realized that these items did not show up in the category.

In the customize section of Reports, under the Advanced tab, there is a box to "Include all Transfers", which I checked. However, that did not solve the problem.

Has anyone found the workaround for this? I would truly appreciate it as this is driving me crazy. Thanks!

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Accepted answers

jacobs

There are a few layers in your question…

First, you typically don't want to "Include All Transfers" — unless you have constrained the report to only include selected Accounts. Why? A transfer takes money out of one account and puts it into another account, so if you include all accounts and tell the report to Include All Transfers, the two sides of the transfer will cancel each other out, and the transaction will not appear on the report. If the report is just for a limited accounts, such as a a checking account or a few credit card accounts, all it well. Otherwise, in the Advanced tab, you'll want to use "Include only transfers with account outside of report" and make sure that only one of the accounts involved in your transfers is included in the report; that way, you'll get the transfers to the account not included in the report.

Next, I should note that the problem I think you've run into isn't specifically about splits. Splits do, indeed, show up in reports as you'd expect. But…

In accounting, transfers are movements of funds between assets (checking to savings, for instance) or between assets and liabilities (checking to a loan, for instance), but the transfers are neither expenses nor income. It sounds like you created a transfer and then used splits to assign categories to the transfer. That's a problem — as you've discovered.

The former Quicken Mac product manager announced awhile back that the head honchos at Quicken had agreed that Quicken should not allow a transfer to also have a category. Quicken Mac allows this because the code it was based on from the 2010 era Quicken Essentials for Mac program lacked the capability to specify transfers in reports or budgets. That functionality has been added to Quicken Mac over the years, but the developers haven't — yet — made the program disallow a transaction to have both a transfer and a category. Supposedly this is coming, but in the meantime, you can get in trouble with these improper transactions. The code for reports isn't expecting to deal with transactions which are both transfers and categories, which is why transactions you may expect to see in a report are omitted.

So let's explore how to fix this. You wrote that you transferred money to your college student. I don't know their name, so I'll just say it's Susie. If you're not tracking Susie's finances, then you could do this by making Susie the Payee, not using any transfer, and doing the splits to specific categories as you've done. In other words, if you Susie $500 and want to record that $300 was for books and $200 was for food, you'd enter a transaction in your checking account where Susie is the Payee and the two splits use those categories and amounts. That accurately reflects the money going out of your account and being categorized appropriately.

But you indicated you used a Transfer in Quicken. Can you clarify what account in Quicken you transferred this to? Is it a checking or debit account for Susie? And you're tracking the flow of funds in that checking account? In that case, your transfer from your checking to Susie's checking account should be entered as a simple transfer, with no splits. That mirrors what happened in the real world: a transfer of funds from one bank account to another. Then, in Susie's account in Quicken, you'd record transactions for spending out of the account, and categorize them appropriately: one transaction to College Bookstore for $180 for books, one transaction to Local Grocery Store for food, etc.

But maybe you're not aiming to track each transaction Susie makes? In that case, in Susie's account, you could record a lump transaction — call it "Susie spending" — to use up the money you sent, using splits to categorize what you intended the money to go for. I'm not sure this does anything more form you than my first scenario of recording a payment (not transfer) to Susie in your checking account, with the appropriate splits. The only advantage to having a separate account for Susie in your Quicken is if you're tracking the flow of money in and out — entering manual transactions, or downloading from the bank, if you have access to the account — and want to keep tabs on the balance so you know when to send more money. In any case, if you use transfers, they're uncategorized, and you have separate transaction(s) to categorize the expenses.

Post back if that makes sense, or if you have more questions (or if I've misunderstood the scenario).

All comments

jacobs

John_in_NC

Hi, SAFM:

This is difficult to troubleshoot without being there standing over your shoulder to see what is really going in.

To try to figure out what is going on, I would create a new (test) Category by Transaction report. You can let it be the default YTD. Set the Categories to "Clear All" so none are selected. Then, under Advanced, set it to show All Transfers. Save.

You should only see transfers between accounts-including those in split transactions.

What do you see? This should isolate your transfers and help you figure out what is going on.

SAFM

Hi John,
Thank you so much for your input! Ok, when doing exactly what you said (which was a great idea to isolate the transfers), I got all of the transfers between my accounts. But only the simple ones that are not split transactions. Absolutely no transfers within a Split are there.

I was worried that I may have seen somewhere that this was a glitch in the Quicken for Mac, so I'm not sure if it can even be done. But again, still shocked that all of my split transactions haven't been accounted for in my reporting all this time!

The only way I can think of to "trick the system" would be to track every transfer transaction separately, and not use a split. That would require many transactions for one (actual) transfer, but at least it would be accounted for, what do you think of that?

UKR

So we can all understand what you're doing ...

Can you please capture an image of the register view showing one of the transactions including Split detail, 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.

SAFM

Hi Jacobs,

Thank you so much for your input as well! You have understood the issue perfectly, and thanks to your answer, I think I may have an idea how to capture these, but please tell me what you think.

So here is the situation in detail, going along with how you described:

Susie is a college student who has an account in my Quicken list which I transfer funds to on a monthly basis for school. Since starting college, I have stopped entering/downloading transactions in her account since I am leaving Susie to manage how she spends her money. So as you can guess, the balance nowhere matches what is there in actuality. I only keep it on the list so that I can track my transfers to her.

So, if I understand correctly from your answer, one way I can fix this is by making Susie a payee for the monthly transfers and reimbursements of college expenses. That makes sense because I could then still make it one transaction with all of the Splits. That's a definitely possibility.

The other way I could track it is to continue to transfer the money, and then I would need to record a transaction in Susie's account for the various expenses. And then I would need to include her account in my report, which I don't typically do.

Have I captured your answer correctly? And thank you again for your input!

jacobs

SAFM said:

So, if I understand correctly from your answer, one way I can fix this is by making Susie a payee for the monthly transfers and reimbursements of college expenses. That makes sense because I could then still make it one transaction with all of the Splits. That's a definitely possibility.

Exactly. If you're not using Susie's account to reflect how much money she has, why go to the bother of having the account at all?

SAFM said:

The other way I could track it is to continue to transfer the money, and then I would need to record a transaction in Susie's account for the various expenses. And then I would need to include her account in my report, which I don't typically do.

Yes. It makes sense that you'd exclude her account from some of your reports, like Net Worth, since it doesn't reflect an accurate balance and it's no longer your money. But you could include the account for expense reports, because then expenses are in that account.

From what you've described, having the separate account seems like it's just making extra work for you. You're not tracking the balance. You have to record transfers, and then record expenses from the account (real or made up) to "use up" the money in the account. "Pay" Susie when you send her money, recording splits for what the money was targeted towards, and you're done.