Summary of Calendar Year Budget value incorrect

MCMAHST

On my Jan-Dec 2024 Budget Summary at the top right hand of the budget sheet, it shows a negative value of -$54,304 when the actual summary should be +$58,732. Any idea what this is happening?

MCMAHST

Here is a screen print of the situation.

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @MCMAHST,

When did you begin to notice this issue? After a recent update? Do you receive any error codes or messages?

Thanks!

jacobs

@MCMAHST That number in the upper right is a pretty useless one, in my opinion. It is showing the difference between your income minus expenses budget for the whole year  and your actual income-minus-expenses year-to-date.

Let's look at a made-up example:

              Full Year     Year-To-Date   

                Budget         Actual        Difference

Income         $180,000       $30,000        –$150,000 

Expenses       $200,000       $25,000         $175,000 

Difference     –$20,000        $5,000          $25,000

These are the numbers you see at the top of your budget in the Summary section, if you have the 2024 column visible and set to show January to December (in the drop-down menu under 2024, this is “Entire Budget Year Totals”). In this example, the positive $25,000 is what would show up in the upper right of the budget window.

In this example, my full-year budget is for a $20,000 loss (excess of expenses over income, in the first column), while my year-to-date is currently a positive $5,000 (second column), the difference of which is a positive $25,000 (third column). But what does this number mean? I think it's pretty meaningless. How useful is it to compare your 12 month budget to your current under-one-month actual?

A much more useful value to look at, in my opinion, is visible if you switch the 2024 column to show just January (or in future months, January-current month) (in the drop-down menu, this is “Budget Year-to-Date Totals”). In my made-up example, that might look like this if I were doing this in March:

              Jan to Mar     Year-To-Date   

                Budget         Actual        Difference

Income          $28,000       $30,000          –$2,000 

Expenses        $30,000       $25,000           $5,000 

Difference      –$2,000        $5,000           $3,000

Now we're looking at my budget through March versus my actual income/expenses year-to-date through part of March, so I can see I am $2,000 below my budget in income (first row), $5,000 below my budget in expenses (second row), with the total difference of $3,000 ahead of budget (third row). That tells me what I'd want to know: my bottom line is $3,000 better than I had budgeted year to date. 

Let me know if any of this isn't clear. Every time I look at this, I feel like I need to figure it out from scratch again. 😉

MCMAHST

The explanation was fine. it just doesn't make sense someone who created this program will produce something so useless, and make it bold text 50% larger than any other text. Did the have any Accountants on staff when they made this program?

MCMAHST

To answer Quicken Jasmine, I just purchased this program 5 days ago, and this was my first of two budgets I created for my Wife and I. So far, Ive had mixed results using the program. If I had a choice, and I wasn't using my Mac for this effort, I would have bought Quickbooks for the MS DOS. Ive used that for years in a business setting, and only bought this because Mint was departing the scene.