Editing categories of a budget. (Q Mac)

Harold Appel

I am working on a new budget created by Quicken using the previous years data, I believe. If I edit the budget and unselect a category it no longer shows up in the budget but the data from the previous year in that category seems to still be there. In other words, does unselecting a category only work going forward in time and not remove that category's data  from the budget? What am I missing here? I am removing that category because it contains sporadic one time payments that will not be repeated. Please explain how this works.

John_in_NC

You are correct: if you remove a category from showing in your budget, it will no longer appear when viewing past, present, or future budgets. 

Jon

If it's a top level category you're removing (and the subcategories below it), then transactions in that category & the subcategories should no longer appear. But if you only remove a subcategory from the budget, transactions in that subcategory still get rolled up into the parent category.

Here's an example. Let's say I have a category Shopping with a subcategory of Clothing. I go to Target & spend $100 on clothes and categorize that as Shopping:Clothing. If I remove the Clothing subcategory from my budget but leave the parent Shopping category in it, that $100 still shows up under Shopping and gets added into the overall Expenses:

But if I also remove Shopping from the budget, then that $100 no longer appears anywhere in the budget.

in other words, for a transaction categorized as Shopping:Clothing, both Shopping and Clothing need to be removed from the budget to get that transaction out of the budget. That's what I'm seeing.

John_in_NC

The budget is more like a glorified report: the data is drawn from your transactions and isn't "saved" within the budget. Thus, if you add or remove categories to display in the current (or older) budget, it will refresh with the data drawn from your accounts. Think of it this way: you aren't really adding or removing categories, but more showing or hiding them. The backend data remains.

Alternatively, if you edit a whole bunch of older transactions (or even delete them), your old budgets will reflect those changes.

One thing to note: many/most users keep the same budget year to year, and allow it to "roll forward" annually. Only one budget is shown in the list. In this case, showing or hiding will affect current and older years if you scroll back in time. (Again, data is still there, just not visible unless you choose to reshow categories you might have removed.

If you wish to make major changes to the budget, you can alternatively choose to create a new (or duplicate) budget. This will allow you to add/remove categories as you see fit in the current year, and leave older budgets alone should you need to review them at a later time.

Harold Appel

I really appreciate the help but I don't get this, sorry (I am an old timer). So I remove a category from my budget but the transactions that use that caregory are still there...OK...... but those transactions would seem to be orphans without categories assigned to them with respect to the budget and not in any other category. If so, why would they still appear in the budget?

John_in_NC

Hi again, Harold Appel: 

Don't overthink this Nothing you do or change in your budget will affect your transactions or their categories. Nothing will be orphaned.

You can update (add/remove categories) in any budget at any time. When you go to view the modified budget, it will refresh accordingly. 

The budget is really nothing more than a fancy modifiable report. It isn't storing any data-it is merely filtering your transaction data to show the activity on selected categories. 

Harold Appel

Perhaps I wasn't clear or I am underthinking!. When I remove a category from showing in my budget I expect that transactions using that category will no longer appear in the budget. Is that true or not? That's what I expected and what I thought "refresh" would mean. I understand that changes in the budget don't affect the underlying data. I really appreciate the help, thanks.

John_in_NC

You are correct: if you remove a category from showing in your budget, it will no longer appear when viewing past, present, or future budgets. 

lhossus

Might it be that when a sub-category is removed from the budget, the transactions in that removed sub-category are (still) tallied at the enclosing (parent) category? Just a hunch - don't use budgets myself.

Harold Appel

I'll say it another way. I removed a category from the budget but the one transaction using that category was still present in the budget. This shouldn't happen, right?

Jon

If it's a top level category you're removing (and the subcategories below it), then transactions in that category & the subcategories should no longer appear. But if you only remove a subcategory from the budget, transactions in that subcategory still get rolled up into the parent category.

Here's an example. Let's say I have a category Shopping with a subcategory of Clothing. I go to Target & spend $100 on clothes and categorize that as Shopping:Clothing. If I remove the Clothing subcategory from my budget but leave the parent Shopping category in it, that $100 still shows up under Shopping and gets added into the overall Expenses:

But if I also remove Shopping from the budget, then that $100 no longer appears anywhere in the budget.

in other words, for a transaction categorized as Shopping:Clothing, both Shopping and Clothing need to be removed from the budget to get that transaction out of the budget. That's what I'm seeing.

Harold Appel

Thanks, Jon!!! You go. tit!