Customize Budget Report Categories

rmk28027

I am try some problems with a Budget report, total expenses by category does not equal total expenses on Budget report.

In looking at the categories that are included in the Budget report I noticed that some of the budget sub-categories I have set up do not appear under the Categories tab for customizing the report. For example, the category for Tax Spouse: Federal and Tax Spouse: State do not appear. The only two sub-categories that appear are Tax Spouse: Fed Est and Tax Spouse: SDI.

I have checked and it looks like all of the categories and sub-categories are set up correctly on the Category List.

Also, even though I have de-selected the category for Tax Spouse, the amount for Tax Spouse: Fed appear on the report. However the category for Tax Spouse: Fed does not appear on the Customize tab.

Any ideas of where I should look?

FWIW I am running the most current version of Quicken Windows.

Chris_QPW

This sounds like a bug that I have hit since the "new customize dialog for reports" came out a couple of patches ago.

Try selecting "Switch back to old interface" in the customize dialog.

And those missing subcategories should reappear. It seems that the new interface will not show the subcategories that have no usage in them.

This might not address your original problem, but at least you will be able to select things that the two reports match.

rmk28027

Thank you for the "old interface" fix. That appears to have fixed the issue with the category selection.

However, the issue with the report totals not being accurate still exists. The budget report shows a total for expenses of $92,853 while the expense by category report shows a total of 77,853 for the same categories.

If I run the budget report and include all expense categories for 2023 and compare it against the expenses by category report, the budget report expense total is over 3 times greater than the expenses by category report.

The amounts shown for the individual categories match between the two reports. For some reason the total expenses shown on the Budget report does not equal the totals for the individual categories shown on the report.

Shouldn't the total for the equal the total of the individual displayed categories?

Am I missing something?

Chris_QPW

Here are a few of thoughts on this.

First off what the two reports select by default can be very different. The budget report is going to only select the categories that you selected in the budget (and even though I don't have my budget selecting accounts, that probably would be true too). Plus at least by default, budgets normally don't include transfers, but the category report might have them.

This is where checking the Advanced tab really matters. There can also be some confusion to what is and isn't included because the arrangement might be different. For instance, "Auto" shows up twice in my budget report and only once in the category report. That is because I have some categories under Auto in a category group called Variable Expenses. Because the format of the budget report isn't showing category groups "Variable Expenses" doesn't show up, but still it separated them.

And that brings me to one of the warnings, and that is if you are using custom category groups make sure you aren't mixing income and expense categories in the same custom category group. Quicken has a problem with dealing with them like that.

Past all that, when the defaults were selected, mine were a ways different, but when I drilled into each category and saw what was or wasn't included in each report I was able to get a given category total the same (taking into account the separation of the categories for category groups). I did all of my income categories and they totaled correctly. I didn't do all of the expense ones, but they were coming in line. I didn't see any "math errors", it was all about what categories that were selected.

Oh, and I should point out that if you see TO XXXX or FROM YYYY those are transfers. You can either exclude them on the Advanced tab or you can remove them on the Category list. They are the Account names you see near the bottom of the Category list, and in the old custom dialog will have the types like Bank.

rmk28027

I understand that different report may have differing default when it comes to selecting categories/transaction when preparing the report. I also understand that chaning some of the settings on the Advanced tab will yield differing results even for the same reports. In fact after playing with the Advanced settings for my Budget report I was able to identify which setting created the unusual totals.

My issue really comes down to the inability to audit and verify the report totals since in some cases it appears that Quicken does not provide the detail information to support a reports totals.

Also, in cases where the report total does not match the line details it is impossible to verify the accuracy of the report.

In the case I mentioned above, where the report total was three times the expected amount I am willing to acknowledge that the higher number may have been correct, but without showing the details of where the total came from it is hard for me to accept the total as being accurate.

It is sort of like when you doing math problems in school and the teacher required you to "show your work." Quicken is not showing their work.

Thanks again for your input.

Jim_Harman

Remember also that in most cases you can double click on a summary number in a report and see the underlying transactions.

Chris_QPW

As @Jim_Harman whenever I had a difference, I was mostly able to drill all the way down to the transactions to see what the differences were in both reports in most cases. But in the case of the budget report, I did hit a few that I couldn't go to the transaction level. That happened whenever the Actual amount was in black/a total. For instance, Salary Spouse. But in that case, it matched on both reports. On the budget report the only ones you can drill into are in blue. Looking at, that seems to be some kind of quirk with the paycheck transactions. I don't see the same thing on our social security entries which are normal split transactions.