Expenses not included in report if they were transfers between checking accounts

akincaid

The Category Summary report seems to work as an acceptable substitute for a Profit & Loss Statement, EXCEPT it doesn't include expenses that were transferred between accounts. My college student and I move funds back and forth between her account and mine, and I have coded each debit or credit with the category (such as College Expenses: Rent), but any funds I transferred to her to cover her expenses is excluded from the report's total for that category. I use my checking account as the "master account" to track expenses and income, so the categories need to show up when I run a report, even if the actual check was written from my daughter's account. How do i accomplish this?

jacobs

Money moved between accounts are not expenses. You may think of them that way, but they aren't. When you transfer money from one account to another, you still have the same amount of assets, just in different places.

Quicken should be blocking users from adding an expense category to a transfer transaction, but due to a loophole rooted in Quicken's past, it can still be done if you enter the fields in a certain order. Quicken has said they will close this loophole and prevent transfer transactions from having categories in the future. So if you're doing this today, know that at some point, you won't b e able to. And I'd suggest not doing it any more, so you can code your expenses properly.

In your case, you're tracking money you give to your daughter. When you send her money, it descrease money in your checking account and increases money in her checking account. How do you track money coming out of her checking account? Do you download transactions or manually enter them for that account. It's those transactions paid out of her account which are the actual expenses, such as rent. Putting funds in her account isn't an expense; paying the rent from her account is the expense.

Is there a reason why you don't include your daughter's account in your income and expense report? Then those expenses would show up.

Jon

Try excluding your daughter's account from the report. Bring up the report, then click on the Edit button. On the Accounts tab, select the radio button for "Selected Accounts" and then uncheck your daughter's account. Then on the Advanced tab, select the button for "Include selected transfers with accounts outside of report" and check the box next to Transfers.

If that gets you the results you want, you can save that report so you don't have to keep doing this every time. Your saved reports will show up under the "My Reports" tab on the Reports page.