How do I delete a future budget?

Craig Vorwald

So first things first… I do not use any Quicken on Web tools.

In Quicken, I created a 2024 budget based off of 2023, and then intended to tweak 2024 as needed.

On viewing what was created, I decided I needed to delete the 2024 budget and make a few edits to 2023. While the 2024 budget was displayed, I selected "Delete this budget…". A dialog box is displayed that warns I am about to delete my 2023 budget!

(1) why?

(2) How do I delete the 2024 budget that was created? If I follow through to delete the 2023 budget, ALL my budgets are deleted (going back to 2021).

Color me very confused in PA…

UKR

If you created your 2024 budget by extending the existing budget table with your 2023 data, AFAIK, there's no direct way to remove the data for 2024 from the existing budget table.
However, you can try to copy the budget into a new budget table with a different name. Begin using that new budget table, make your changes and then extend the new table into 2024.
You can also "Create a new budget", give it a different name and begin using that. Immediately after creation it should have the categories and actual data for this year (and nothing for next year)

When you're done creating and massaging your new budget table you can delete the old table.

Chris_QPW

There is no way to delete a year in a budget once it is created, short of restoring from a backup. If you duplicate the budget it duplicates all years in that budget.

Craig Vorwald

Well that is certainly poor design.

I requested a delete of 2024 budget, got prompted to delete 2023 and on accepting, Quicken deleted all years. As designed???

I did a restore from yesterday backup, and we are back to previous state of blissful ignorance.

Thanks for getting back to me!

Chris_QPW

I requested a delete of 2024 budget, got prompted to delete 2023 and on accepting,

I'm sorry, but you didn't.

Your statement implies that you think there is a 2024 budget and there is a 2023 budget.

For example, yes say that I create a new budget for 2023, and then I duplicate with the intention of using it as my 2024 budget. I can change the title to 2024, but I still have a 2023 budget. How do know? When you go to look at the "actuals" you will see they are the ones for 2023, and nothing you can do will change that. If you want the 2024 actuals, you will have to extend that budget into 2024 and now you have both 2023 and 2024 in that budget.

In fact, if you create a budget right now, and don't change your system date to 2024, the budget that you will be creating will be in 2023 and again will have to be extended to see 2024. To top it off if you change your system date to 2024 make a budget, and then put change your system date back to 2023, the next time you open that budget Quicken is going to insist on extending that 2024 budget back into 2023.

As you can see it is literally impossible to have both a 2024 only and 2023 only budget without creating them from scratch while your system date is set to that year, and making sure not to open them when your system date isn't lined up with them.

I'm not much in favor of this design either, I was certainly one of the ones that complained about not being able to remove a year (at least at the "end years"), but the main design for this budget system was finished in Quicken 2013 and they didn't listen to the complaints then so I doubt they will now.

Craig Vorwald

Thanks for this info…

What is confusing is that I APPEAR to have created a 2024 budget… mainly because Quicken calls it exactly that, and it has all the characteristics of a new 2024 budget. In fact, as you can see below, I've already spent money with dates into 2024.

But I never considered that it really doesn't exist until the calendar rolls around to 2024.

Thanks for your clarity and guidance on this!!

Chris_QPW

Try hitting the left arrow button. If it asks to extend the budget into 2023 then you can cancel, and you truly do have somehow created only a 2024 budget. But if it takes you right into 2023 you know that you have both years in that budget. Make a backup before doing this, just in case you have to back out of anything that happens.