New Mac User Wants To Start Anew & Delete All Imported Checking Transactions

T. Atlee

Never used a budget but want to now, so to start "anew" I want to delete years worth of old spending transactions which downloaded automatically and set a budget and track it as of 12/1/2023. Can anyone instruct me how this can be done? Thanks.

Jon

If you just want to start everything over as of tomorrow, then the best thing is to create a new file (you can do that from the File menu). That way you still have the existing file as a backup and in case you ever want to look at the old data.

OTOH if you want to keep some old transactions it's very easy to delete transactions before a certain date, just use the All Transactions register. Select that register in the account sidebar, click on the All Dates pull-down, select Custom Dates, and enter the range of dates that you want to delete. Then select all the visible transactions & delete them.

However, having done that you need to go through all your accounts and set the starting balance for each one. For instance, if you delete all transactions prior to 1/1/23 each account will need a transaction for 12/31/22 setting the balance as of that date. If you have accounts set up for online access Quicken may do this for you automatically by entering an Live Balance Adjustment transaction but I would encourage you to delete those & replace them with fixed transactions so that Quicken won't change them later.

I would strongly suggest you make a backup of your current file before doing any of this, just in case something goes wrong.

As for budgeting, I think it works better if your budget year starts in January; I don't think that's required, but I don't currently use Quicken's budgeting so there are others who could provide better advice on that.

T. Atlee

Very helpful tips Jon, I really appreciate it! The data back up is covered via .csv files and the credit union also keeps the data. I just wanted clean quicken info and I think your tips will get me there. Thanks!

T. Atlee

It worked PERFECTLY- I'm in game game thanks to you, Jon!