Budgeting - Sub Category not calculating correctly

Katie G

I am looking at the budget by month and comparing actuals to the budget. The two subcategories are accurate but the number shown in the category is not correct. So sub category one says I am under by $200, subcategory two says I am under by $150 and the category they role into says I am over by $120. I have had other similare issues with calculations in this product. Amu help would be appreciated.

jacobs

It comes down to what you entered in your budget. Quicken will let you enter values for sub-categories, and will sum them together to fill in a value for the main category. It also lets you fill in values for sub-categories and a value for the main category, if you want to budget for one or more specific sub-categories but not all the sub-categories.

For instance, you could have an Auto category with sub-categories for Gas, Service, Tolls, Parking, and Rental. In Edit Budget, If you fill in values for each of the 5 sub-categories and nothing for the main Auto category, Quicken will total the amounts for you. But let's say you want to budget just for Gas, and then put in a value in the main Auto category to cover everything else — so you might enter Auto:Gas for $150 and Auto (main category) for $300. If your actual expenses for the month are $100 for gas and $500 for service, your budget would show you are $50 under for Auto:Gas yet $200 over for Auto.

The bottom line is that if you want Quicken to use the sum of sub-categories of a category, only fill in a value for the sub-categories and blank out any value for the main category — then Quicken will fill in the sum of the sub-categories for the main category value. To make it easier to avoid mistakes, when you Select Categories for inclusion in your budget, if you know you are going to budget the sub-categories, check them but do not check the main category. When you do this, you'll see in the Edit Budget screen that the main category name is in italics, and the values for the main category are gray and non-editable; this is telling you the main category consists solely of the sum of the sub-categories.