Automatic Budget Creation

T McKannon

Quicken Classic for Windows created a new budget on 1 January 2024 which defaulted to last year's categories and values. There is no option to use actual expenses for the new budget. How can I migrate last year's actual expenses into the new budget?

Chris_QPW

This is something I have complained about for years. There are additional options that you get if you "extend" the budget into the new year, while in the old year. But if you just open the budget in the new year, you aren't given those choices.

That is wrong, you should be given all the choices.

What's more there isn't any way to fix this problem other than going back to a copy of your data file before you opened the budget in the new year, because you can't delete the new budget year (there isn't a deleted year feature). This is also wrong; the user should be able to at least delete the beginning and ending years in a budget (provided there is more than one year in the budget).

See this discussion for more details:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7943848/make-a-2024-budget-now-or-wait-until-2023-is-over

EDIT: To fix. You need to set your system date to 12/31/2023, get a copy of your data file (or do a restore) before you opened the budget in the new year. Do any kind of updates you might want that would affect the budget like finish up entering transactions for 2023. And then go to the budget and "extend" it into the new year:

Basically, when Quicken opens a budget in a new year (if it hasn't been extended into that year already), Quicken picks the first option above. For "automatic" you will want to pick the second option. Be warned, it isn't perfect, but it is the best you will get.

Chris_QPW

I'm going to put a comment it that other thread, that links back to this one. This isn't a mistake; I think both of these threads are closely related.

Chris_QPW

And while I'm on the subject there should be a way to "not" extend into the next year. If open an old budget in a new year, it you might not want the budget extended into that year.

T McKannon

Thank you, Chris!

Agree with your recommendations. I had put-off creating my new budgets and got stung by the automated budgeting feature. I'm certain that it's intended to be helpful by encouraging good financial discipline, but the "feature" needs the flexibility you suggest.

Thanks for the tip to trick Quicken by manipulating the system time. I thought about doing that but wasn't sure it would work. Fortunately, I backed up my file yesterday.

T McKannon

Well, I attempted the system date-time manipulation without success. Even with the system set to 31 December 2023, Quicken cheerfully announced that it had updated my budgets for the New Year. Is there an interaction with the Quicken Cloud or Dropbox that I'm missing?

Chris_QPW

@T McKannon Did you select this button?

And note that given that you are working with a copy of your data file from 2023, and your system date is set to 12/31/2023, the date after that button should be 2023. If it is 2024 you have already extended that budget into 2024.

There isn't any way to delete a year in a budget once it is created. That is the reason this has to be done in a copy of the data file that was created in 2023, not one that has already been extended to 2024.

T McKannon

Got it.