Re-ordering category groups in the Budget graph view

Alex91

I've created custom category groups and have them in my budget, however I can't seem to change the order in which they appear in the graph view of the budget. Unfortunately this means I have to continuously scroll through groups/categories I use very rarely to get to the group and categories I want to keep track of closely. I understand from chatting online with support that manually re-ordering the groups within the budget is not possible, but that they should be in alphabetical order...which mine are not. At least in alpha or numeric order I could circumvent the inability to manually change the order by re-naming the groups accordingly. However this is not the case. Any assistance with this would be great. I can still use the budget obviously, it's just really frustrating to not be able to make this seemingly simple change.

Scooterlam

In my tests, I show that new category groups are correctly alphabetized in both Graph View and Annual View (see image).  I added 6 new TEST groups and they all seem to be placed correctly.    Strange that your one category group is not (1 Essential spending).

When I (and others) see odd things happen in Budgets, try: 

1.  Backup my data file.   
2.  Do a File>Validate and Repair File>check Validate File.  and
3.  Restart Quicken and have another look to see if that corrects the existing sort order
4.  If not, then try creating another category group, assign a category and include it in the budet to see if the new group is correctly sorted.    Am thinking that maybe a file corruption issue might be fixed but only for new groups....

Scooterlam

On second look,  if you are assigning both expense and income categories within a category group, this would result in what you see in your original screenshot.  See my image below showing mixed expense and income cats under a group.   Try to avoid mixing expense and income under the category group. 

Could this be the case?

If so, then try to remove the income category from the offending group and have another look.   Still a problem?  Probably....  You might need to delete the category group and recreate it using only income or expense cats under it.    There is historically odd behavior here!

Of course, first backup your file to be safe....

Alex91

Thanks so much for the help. I did the file validation, to no avail. BUT I have discovered that it must be something to do with the categories within the groups that determines the order of the groups in the budget screen. I added 3 new groups. Two of them (with previously unused categories in them), went right into alphabetical order within the budget graph view. The third group I created was titled "Essentials", so should have gone near the top of the groups list. However, I moved some categories over to it that were previously in my "1-Essential spending" group (at the very bottom of the list in the screen capture I posted before), and the "Essentials" group went to the bottom of the Groups list - out of alphabetical order. I'm wondering now if there are certain categories that dictate a specific order within the budget screen.

Scooterlam

Check out my second post regarding mixing income and expense categories under a group.   Do you have income and expense categories included under that new Essentials group?  Image.  That would be one explanation why it does not sort correctly. Have a look.

Alex91

No, my groups don't have expenses and income mixed. All of my income is under the "Personal Income" group and all of the other groups contain only expenses. In fact, the "Expenses" group that keeps getting placed at the bottom of the groups list only has 1 category in it - Auto & Transport: Gas & Fuel. I just tried setting up a brand new budget to see if I could start from scratch and have it organize properly, but it still puts them in a weird order, so it looks like there is something in my categories that's causing this. It looks like I'll just have to live with it being out of order, start from scratch with creating my categories (ugh...) or just move on to a different budgeting tool. Thanks so much for the help, I appreciate it!

Alex91

Oh!...could it be because I have transfers (i.e. TO XXX loan & TO XXX savings account, etc.) mixed in with expenses in the Essential spending group? Would that cause the same problem as having income and expenses mixed? I'll give that a try and see if it makes a difference.

Alex91

That did it! Once the transfers were removed, the group went into alphabetical order. Unfortunately now one of my groups suddenly appears twice in the budget (duplicated somehow...). Moving from one problem to another, but it looks like the original one was solved.

Thanks!

Scooterlam

Good feedback.  Thanks!

Scooterlam

You might want to have a look at some of these search results regarding duplicate categories.  Seems like its a known problem. I did not immediately see a solution in the threads I browsed.   

https://community.quicken.com/search?query=duplicated category group&scope=site&source=community

You can report a problem, in app, by going to Help>Report a Problem and referencing this thread URL.   
Regarding wanting to rearrange category groups, you can always create an Idea post, describe and illustrate your "want".   Quicken product mgrs reportedly use Idea Posts to gauge interest in features through user voting.