Totals On Current Budget Report Inaccurate
I ran a "Current Budget" report for the period 1/1/23 to 6/30/23. Included all transfers, all transactions, accounts and categories. I also ran net worth reports as of 12/31/22 and 6/30/23 to determine the change in Net Worth based on the change in the Balance Sheet.
The good news: the change in net worth between 12/31/22 and 6/30/23 was within $75 of the Net Difference total on the Current budget Report.
The bad news: the total amounts shown on the Current Budget Report are not equal to the sum of the accounts listed in the report, and as a result the report does not really show how Net Worth changed during the 6-month period.
Is there a setting or something I am missing?
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I'm not sure why you'd run a "Current Budget" report if you're running the report to "prove" the change in net worth. I do that proof each and every month using an Income and Expense by Category report. I understand that, properly constructed, the Current Budget report and the Income and Expense by Category report should look exactly the same, but you really don't need the "Budget" column for this exercise.
IF you're trying to understand the reasons for the change in Net Worth over the period - generally The "Overall Total" and change in Net Worth should match exactly - THEN you're going to have to do some analysis to track down the difference. Assuming you are using all the Accounts in the file then exclude the transfers, they most likely are just adding noise to the report and they should not affect your Net Worth. I'd do the analysis first without reference to Unrealized gain or loss in any of the reports. You should be able to reconcile the Spending report to the change in Net Worth to the penny.
"The bad news: the total amounts shown on the Current Budget Report are not equal to the sum of the accounts listed in the report, and as a result the report does not really show how Net Worth changed during the 6-month period. "
Assuming you're referring to the "Actual" column of the Budget Report, I'm not understanding what you're saying here since you suggested that the Report was darn close to the change in Net Worth in the paragraph above.
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Thanks Tom.
I agree I don't need budget for the exercise, but my monthly routine incldues budget v actual. But you are right, for this exercise the actual column is the one to focus on.
Interesting, when I run the Income/Expense by Category report, the "net" number agrees (slightly off) to the change in net worth. which is good. And the totals for income and expense equal the manually added totals of the underlying accounts.
On the Current Budget report, the amount shown for the Net Difference in the Actual column (which number agrees to the change in net worth) is NOT equal to the difference between the amounts shown for INCOME and EXPENSES shown on the report, Further, if one manually adds up the amounts of the individual line items under INCOME and EXPENSES, the totals do not agree to the amounts shown in the report. In other words, it doesn't add up.
This must be an issue with the Current Budget actual column. When I run the Income/Expense by Category report with the same parameters, it works. I also ran the Cash Flow Comparison report and it works. But neither offers the comparison to budget, which is one of the several reasons I use Quicken.
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"Interesting, when I run the Income/Expense by Category report, the "net" number agrees (slightly off) to the change in net worth. which is good."
For your own edification, if nothing else, you should run that difference down. One very obvious source of difference can be an entry erroneously posted into an Account pre-12/31/2022. That will change the 12/31/2022 Net Worth report but won't flow through the Spending report. To try and avoid errors like that, when I figure that all transactions for a given month have been entered, I do File > Set password to modify transactions… You can still edit prior period entries or make new prior period entries if needed, but having that in place slows you down a bit and allows you to ask yourself "do I really want to do this?"
I used to use Quicken's budgeting process, but haven't done so for several years now. But when I did use it I could always reconcile the Budget Report's actual Net Difference to the change in Net Worth. I just ran an Income and Expense Report by Category and a Current Budget for "last year" and they agreed perfectly. I don't know what's going on with your Current Budget report; it may have something to do with entries made in the top-level Category, or something?
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