Quicken for Business Setup: Use of Tags
I apologize for what may appear to be a naive / simple question.
I created two businesses, let's call them ABC and DEF. The creation of the two businesses resulted in the creation of two business tags similarly called ABC and DEF.
The Quicken Help File — at least as I read it — suggests / recommends that all business transactions be tagged to / with the corresponding business tag (i.e., ABC or DEF).
This is confusing to me because:
i) If there is a need to tag all business transactions with the corresponding business tag then the functionality / usefulness of the tag field is limited / useless as the tag field can only accept one tag (i.e., the tag field cannot be use to provide further reporting or search granularity).
ii) Why is it suggested / recommended that all business transactions be tagged to / with the corresponding business tag as I would have thought that the account selection could / would be used to ensure the correct company is selected (i.e., ABC or DEF) and then the tags could be used to provide further granularity (i.e., by using tags other than ABC or DEF).
QUESTIONS:
i) Is the best practice / recommended approach to a) use the account section to ensure the correct company is selected (i.e., ABC or DEF) and b) use the tags to provide further reporting granularity (i.e., meals, travel , etc.).
ii) Is there a reason that the Quicken Help File suggests / recommends that all business transactions be tagged to / with the corresponding business tag and what is it (i.e., when would the business tag be needed / useful, wha am I missing)?
iii) What else should I know in terms of best practices that I have not asked?
Thank you.
Comments
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I have never used Quicken's business features, so I can't be of much help.
What I can tell you is that transactions (and split lines) can indeed have multiple tags. Separate them with colons, the same as a subcategory is separated from a parent category. The difference is that there is no hierarchy of tags and you can add them in any order.
So you could have a transaction tagged ABC:Meals (but Meals is probably better as a Category than a Tag).
Quicken user since version 2 for DOS, now using QWin Biz & Personal Subscription (US) on Win10 Pro.
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@Rocket J Squirrel Awesome, thank and very helpful. I learnt something new.
Two quick follow ups:
i) If I tag a transaction as having two tags such "HST:ABC", will the transaction appear in a report that has only the HST tag?
ii) Would still appreciate / like to know why Quicken suggests / recommends that all business transactions be tagged to / with the corresponding business tag as I would have thought that account selection could / would address this need.
Thank you!
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i) Yes. Filtering of tag is a OR operation not an AND operation.
ii) I also don't use Quicken business, but my guess would be there are times like in reports where the "account context" isn't there, and the transaction has to stand on its own.
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@Chris_QPW Excellent and thank you!
i) This is great and I will give it a try! The OR filtering is the only way it could / would work.
ii) With there being multiple tags allowed I will follow Quicken's suggested practice for now but see whether there is a need over time.
PS. Would be great to have someone from Quicken answer!
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