Setting annual total budget

Dora21

I have a fixed income and I want to monitor my spending against that limit. I need to know if projections from current spending in all categories will put me over that amount. How might I do this? It seems like the budgeting tools are historic and don't allow for setting targets. Is it possible to set a total budget amount in the budgeting tools?

Sherlock

We may set budgeted amounts and Quicken will project from our actual and scheduled spending whether we are exceeding the budgeted amount.  If you haven't already, you may want to review: https://help.quicken.com/display/WIN/Planning 

Sherlock

Dora21 said:

Thanks for the quick answer. I looked through the Budget help/tips/tutorials. I haven't found a solution. Here's the quick example. I have $60,000 to spend for all of 2022. I want to set that limit and see how my categories are performing through the year and try to balance and adjust categories to avoid exceeding $60,000. So, I want Quicken to use $60,000 as the 2022 total budget.

Can I input this value? My searching suggests I cannot. This amount is created internally during budget creation and is not user input.

Here's one way:

Open the Planning tab
Select Getting Started or Budget Actions > Create new budget...

Sherlock

We may set budgeted amounts and Quicken will project from our actual and scheduled spending whether we are exceeding the budgeted amount.  If you haven't already, you may want to review: https://help.quicken.com/display/WIN/Planning 

Dora21

Thanks for the quick answer. I looked through the Budget help/tips/tutorials. I haven't found a solution. Here's the quick example. I have $60,000 to spend for all of 2022. I want to set that limit and see how my categories are performing through the year and try to balance and adjust categories to avoid exceeding $60,000. So, I want Quicken to use $60,000 as the 2022 total budget.

Can I input this value? My searching suggests I cannot. This amount is created internally during budget creation and is not user input.

Chris_QPW

The budget system "allocate to categories" system.  The idea being that you have not just a $60,000 yearly budget, but instead you know how much you would like to spend in each budget.

This system sort of works backwards from what you want.
If a person starts out and says, I need $1000 a month for the mortage, and $800 for food, ...  when they finish, they have a prediction of how much month they will need for the year.  Clearly if they know that the amount of money, they are getting for the year isn't going to cover it then they have to reduce spending or draw from their savings.  One can also add the income categories into the budget and "balance" the income/expenses (in other words have Quicken do the math for them).

If one just has the goal of "Spend less than $60,000" you could just use a report, see how much you have spent in the last 12 months.  I suggest the timeframe of 12 months and not year to date, because you will certainly expenses that show up say once a year or some other period of time where you can't just say "I spent $30,000 in the first half of the year, so I'm OK (a big expense might be at the end of the year)".

Another way to go at this is to go ahead and setup a budget making guesses at what you need in each of your categories, and while using not worry too much about the exact balance of everything per month as long as the monthly/year numbers are still under what you need.

Past 12-month reports can help in setting these.  Depending on how you create the budget Quicken will also make guesses at these and when adding new categories to the budget.

Pay attention to these controls (all three are available when you are looking at Details or Budget Only in the Annual View) :


The first is a graph list of past transactions in that category.
Selecting the gear icon menu will get functions like being able to enter a yearly amount and have Quicken do the math for the months, or set the current amount for the rest of the year.
The last one allows you to decide if you want to rollover any unspent budget is rollover into the next month.

Sherlock

Dora21 said:

Thanks for the quick answer. I looked through the Budget help/tips/tutorials. I haven't found a solution. Here's the quick example. I have $60,000 to spend for all of 2022. I want to set that limit and see how my categories are performing through the year and try to balance and adjust categories to avoid exceeding $60,000. So, I want Quicken to use $60,000 as the 2022 total budget.

Can I input this value? My searching suggests I cannot. This amount is created internally during budget creation and is not user input.

Here's one way:

Open the Planning tab
Select Getting Started or Budget Actions > Create new budget...

Dora21

Thanks Sherlock. I wouldn’t have derived this workaround. It seems to give me the information and projections I’m looking for.