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Quicken Mac version not subtotaling correctly

MCMAHST

I didn't initially notice when I created my first budget on my Mac, but, for example, the Utilities Category has 4 Subcategories, and those do not add up to the total for Utilities. How can that be? What could I be doing wrong? I verified I only have 4 sub categories under Utilities. but the totals for them do not add up to the sub of those 4 sub categories. Help!

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Accepted answers

Jon

Which set of numbers isn't adding up, the budgeted amounts or the actual spending amounts?

For the budgeted amounts, parent categories default to being the total of the subcategories but you can override that by entering a number for the parent category. To get rid of that, you can edit the budget, select the amount for the parent category & delete it, then hit return and it should go back to being the total of the subcategories.

For the actuals, the totals include not just spending in the subcategories but spending in the main category, for example if you had 1 or more transactions categorized as "Utilities". The only way to fix that would be to recategorize those transactions so they are in one of the subcategories.

All comments

Jon

Which set of numbers isn't adding up, the budgeted amounts or the actual spending amounts?

jacobs

This can happen because the Edit budget screen allows you to enter subcategory amounts only — in which case it will sum them for the category amount — or to enter values in subcategories and the main category, in which case the amount will not be the sum of the sub-categories.

For instance, let me simplify to an example with one category and two sub-categories:
   Auto
      Gas
      Parking

If you enter $50 for Gas and $25 for Parking, the main Auto category will show $75. Makes sense so far, right?

But say you also have some other Auto-related expenses, but don't want to include additional subcategories in your budget. So you can enter $50 for Gas and $25 for Parking, and to allow for $30 of other Auto expenses, you can enter $105 in the main Auto category. Visually, it now looks like the subcategories don't total to the category — because they don't, intentionally.

To further complicate things, Quicken tries to be smart when you're doing this, so let's say you enter the main Auto amount as $40 for "other" auto expenses, and then enter $50 for Gas and $25 for Parking. Quicken will add the $50 and $25 subcategory values you just entered to the previously-entered $40 in the main category, resulting in the main category showing $115. It makes sense when you're entering it, but it can be quite confusing if you're just looking at the budget.

The way to get the category total back to being just the sum of the subtotals is to blank out the value in the main category cell. So in my example, where it now shows $115 at the value for Auto, if I click in that cell and click delete or enter zero, the value will become $75, the same of the $50 and $25 subtotals.

In your case, click on the main Utilities cell and press delete or zero; the value in the cell should now become the sum of your four sub-categories.

MCMAHST

Thank you all, interesting feature. I was able to correct the issue.

KS Longtime User

I found this to be untrue…. I have entered zero as you suggest and the results now show 0 for then main category…. There has been a subtotaling issue in Quicken Mac for several years and I just manually change things. I wish they would fix this

KS Longtime User

If Quicken wants to be "smart" they would either not allow entries in a category if there are subcategories, or allow the entries, but auto create an "other" subcategory for the other value to show up in… the $40 in the example above would show up in the auto-generated "other" subcategory and not be hidden.

MCMAHST

Yes, I agree. A category, if it has sub categories, as in any typical accounting software, is by function, a summary of the sub categories. I’m not sure who advised Quicken on the Mac version of the system, but this makes no sense. So, you do what you have to do until someone realizes the function is not in the mainstream of thinking and creates an improved version. Something I hope happens in the future.

jacobs

A category, if it has sub categories, as in any typical accounting software, is by function, a summary of the sub categories.

I think the idea for this design was that people might not want to budget for every subcategory of every category, so they’d give you a way to budget for any subcategories you choose to, and to lump other spending under the main category. It does make sense once you understand how it works, but it’s definitely not easily discoverable or initially intuitive. And I stress there are probably better user interface designs for this.