Allocate Utility Bill across two months?

Question

My Utility provider (electricity) failed to bill me for one month.  As such, the current month's bill is actually for usage across two months (November/December), BUT is to be paid in January of the following year. This creates an issue for my budgeted electricity usage for January, and December of the previous year records no electricity expense.

Is there a way to allocate a portion of the January payment to the December electricity expense, thus being an accurate representation of my usage and expense allocation.

I am using Quicken Classic for Personal & Business, Windows, (Canada), Version R53.26

Jim_Harman · Answer

If you want to force your Quicken register to match your budget (not recommended) you could enter a bogus transaction in month 1 for the amount that should have been billed and paid that month, and the remainder in month 2, then match the two transactions with the full amount that downloads or appears on your statement in month 2. It will be as if you paid the bill with 2 checks, one in month 1 and one in month 2.

If you do this, be sure to add notes to the transactions so you can remind yourself what happened.

Chris_QPW · Answer

Unless you are a business that is doing accrual accounting, you are working on a cash basis, which means that you pay bills when they come in, not when they are "posted".  In other words, your Quicken transactions should reflect exactly what happened in the real world.

Note if you are doing accrual accounting then someone that is using those such functions in the "Home & Business" will have to answer.

Now from a budgeting standpoint, like @Quicken Kristina pointed out you might want to have the $100 for the first month "carryover" to the next month where you have the actual expense (provided there wasn't any expense in the first month).  That is what the "rollover" setting does.  If you don't have the rollover setting on, the $100 in the first month will not be added to the second month even if no expense in that first month.

What that means in the real world, is that you have to make sure that you don't spend the $100 in that first month, just because it happens to be there since in reality it should be earmarked for paying the bill due in the next month.

This isn't any different than handling something like having to pay auto insurance every 6 months.  You can either budget it just like that as one payment every 6 months or as putting in 1/6 of the amount in every month and having the total rollover into the next month.

Quicken Kristina · Answer

Thank you for your reply,

If I'm understanding correctly, you're wanting to make the actual expense match the allocation?

Based on your example, if you already have it set up to show the allocated expense, then I'm assuming you'd already have the allocation as $100 per month.  If that is the case, then the budget allocation would be $100 for Dec and $100 for Jan.

Once the transaction reflecting the actual amount you paid is in your Quicken, then the budget will see the actual as $200 for Jan (and $0 for Dec, since it won't see any transaction for that month).  Unless you use rollover, that would cause it to reflect as under budget in Dec (Allocated $100, Actual $0) and over budget in Jan (Allocated $100, Actual $200).

Editing the actual transaction when it downloads (or if you manually input, putting in 2 transactions with one dated Dec and the other dated Jan) would force the Actual to match the Allocation.  Or, it may be simpler just to add a note to your budget for those 2 months to explain why the allocation and actuals don't match.

I hope this helps!