Former Mint User - New to Quicken

Joyful1

Greetings!

1-14-24

I moved over from Mint to Quicken Classic Windows and I wanted to start capturing and categorizing only transaction beginning on 1/1/2024 and going forward since Mint captured and categorized all of my previous transaction. I have my Mint data file. The issue I'm having with QC is that it imported a lot of my transactions far beyond the last 90 days and I do not want to spend time re-categorizing them, since I have my Mint data download. Ideally, I would like to delete all transaction on or before 12/31/23. Is that possible? If it is not possible how do I hide all transaction on or before 12/31/23? If hiding those transactions isn't possible -what suggestions do you have for me to only see and categorize transaction beginning on 1/1/2024?

Thanks in advance.

Joyful1

Chris_QPW

Do you have any investment accounts?

Joyful1

@Chris_QPW - I do have investment accounts, however, I will only be using QC for transaction categorization and budgeting. My investment accounts will not be included in QC.

Follow on question:

I've created a category called X - 2022 & 2023 transactions (so that it appears at the bottom of the transaction list) and I plan to move all 2023 transactions and earlier transactions to that category and then hide the category. Will that accomplish my only seeing, categorizing and reporting 2024 and beyond transactions? Do you foresee any problems with doing this?

Chris_QPW

If you aren't concerned about investment accounts, then you can do a copy of your data file that limits by date range.

File → Copy or Backup File → Create a copy or template

The problem that exists for investment accounts is that at any given date you have shares of securities that were bought before that date.

With Investment transactions selected, the investment accounts will be correct, but will not remove transactions. With it deselected it will remove them outside of the date range, but because you are removing the buys, the accounts will be wrong.

For non-investment accounts Quicken will update the opening balance so they will be correct.

The problem with changing all the previous transactions to a given category is the obvious that you will no longer know how they were categorized, but if that is what you want that should be fine.

I will make a special note about the transfers. In Quicken Windows Classic you have "linked transfers". Linking between the two accounts with the ability to jump between the two with a menu selection. A transfer is entered by using the category field with a special syntax. If you were transferring money from your checking account to your savings account, the category would be like [My Savings Account]. This reuse of the category field behaves sometimes like a category and sometimes like a transfer. For instance, you can't hide [My Savings Account] (transfers) in the Category list even though they appear there. And here is some more information on automatic transfer detection:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7944737/faq-automatic-transfer-detection-usage

I might add that even though almost no one mentions it, it is possible to record both sides of a transfer with regular categories and ignore linked transactions.

Chris_QPW

Extra note. If you delete an account (say the investment account) and it has linked transfers going to it, Quicken will change the other side of that transfer in the other account to [Unspecified Account].

Joyful1

@Chris_QPW  - thank you!