expenses showing up as negative income in reports

Q accounts

I have entered 2 reimbursements exactly the same way -- but one turns up in a inflow/outflow report as an expense (good) but the other shows up as negative income (bad). I can't figure out why but I would like them both to be expenses!

Jon

Did both transactions have the same category? The category determines whether something shows up under Expenses or Income.

Q accounts

Yes. they are both categorized as "reimbursement" — I've looked at how I entered them and for the life of me I can't find any difference. but I'll double check… maybe I have two categories of reimbursement. Quicken seems to keep ev;erything…

jacobs

What report are you using? If it's the old Category Summary report, this is a known flaw in that report: if the category total for the time period is positive, it's Money In, and if the category total for the period is negative, it's Money Out — irrespective of whether the category is defined as income or expense. So if you have a reimbursement in an expense category which is larger than your expenses in that category for the time period of the report, it gets flipped based on the credit balance.

If you use any of the regular modern reports, like Category Summary by Month or Transactions by Category, this won't happen; expenses will always be in the expense section of the report, even if the expense is positive from a credit/reimbursement.