Categories not capturing all transactions on reports (Q Mac)

sfdrj

This is an issue I've had for a while, with no successful resolution. In the Budgeting reports, all the transactions categorized are not populating, despite the report parameters indicating that all transactions in all accounts with the specified category are included. What's interesting is that transactions in the same account are not populating, it seems to be an issue related to a debt account?

We own our home and I have a debt account set up for the mortgage on the home. It is set up to include monthly, recurring transactions. I manually update the recurring transaction each month to categorize it for "Mortgage & Rent" rather than a straight transfer to the pertinent debt account — and then have the transfer filled in properly on the split. It shows properly in the debt account and the checking account transactions, but in the budget report it doesn't pull the mortgage transaction. Instead, it pulls a recurring transaction for our storage unit, which is just an ordinary expense ACHing from our account. Screenshots below, with payees/transfer redacted for privacy.

Any ideas to get the monthly mortgage to show up on the budget report — hopefully without breaking the debt account tracking?

jacobs

The problem I see is that you have transactions which have both a Transfer and an expense category. Although it is possible to enter transactions this way, it shouldn't be. It's a loophole due to the long development history of Quicken Mac, and one which the product managers have said will eventually be prohibited because it violates a core rule of accounting: a transaction can be income or expense, or can move funds from one account to the other, but can't be both.

So as you've discovered, this works okay for some purposes, but does not work correctly in others. The solution would be to make your Transfer splits not have any income/expense Category. You can build both reports and a budget to include selected Transfers, if you want to see them for cash flow purposes as if they were expenses. (If you need help with how to do so, just post a reply an I can fill in the details.) Doing it this way will keep your reports and budgets clean and accurate (and will insure you don't have to make changes in the future when the developers finally block Categories on Transfers).

sfdrj

Got it. I see if I update the parameters of the budget report, I can do to [mortgage account]. It's a little clunky, though, since I don't have a good roll-up summary then in the Mortgage & Rent category to capture both our home mortgage and the storage space rent. Then again, at least I'll have both on the report — small victory. Thanks.

jacobs

Yup, you've got it. It is sort of clunky to have transfers separate if you want to see them grouped with other expense categories, but as you said, it's in the report, so it gets you what you need.