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Categorize only my portion of an expense

FredMaine

I've seen other discussions here about this but haven't seen a solution that I understand, I guess. This is for home, not a business.

I pay a phone bill in full from my checking account. I am reimbursed for the rest, with deposits into checking account via my Venmo account (also an account in Quicken). I transfer the Venmo money into checking myself, and it shows in checking as a transfer.
Unfortunately the transfers to checking do not happen all at once. I transfer a lump amount at will.
So, there are several transactions:

Acct Checking. Payee: Verizon Category: partially Bills & Utility, partially ?
Acct Venmo. Payee: Harry paid Category ?
Acct Venmo. Payee: John paid Category ?
Acct Venmo: Transfer to [Checking]

Remember the transfer to checking may include other unrelated reimbursements via Venmo.

Basically, how do I deal with the three categories above that are unassigned, without them being an expense or income?

Fred

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Boatnmaniac

You might want to try setting up 3 custom expense subcategories:

Bills & Utilities:Phone:Fred
Bills & Utilities:Phone:Harry
Bills & Utilities:Phone:John

When pay the Verizon bill, enter the payment transaction with a split category:

Payment Amount: The actual amount paid.
Line 1 of the split: Category = Bills & Utilities:Phone:Fred. Amount is your share of the bill.
Line 2 of the split: Category = Bills & Utilities:Phone:Harry. Amount is his share of the bill.
Line 3 of the split: Category = Bills & Utilities:Phone:John. Amount is his share of the bill.

When the payments come into Venmo from Harry, assign the Bills & Utilities:Phone:Harry category to it. This will will be a positive "expense" and will offset the negative expense of the bill from the split category of the payment transaction.

When the payments come into Venmo from John, assign the Bills & Utilities:Phone:John category to it. This will will be a positive "expense" and will offset the negative expense of the bill from the split category of the payment transaction.

When you do the transfer from Venmo to your checking account, just do it as a transfer. No need to categorize it any other way because the debits and credits take place in the checking account when the bill payment is made and in the Venmo account when the reimbursements are received.

What I like about this method is that you can pull an Itemized Categories report and you can easily see how your share of the bill is cumulating and how Harry's and John's shares of the bill are being zeroed out as their reimbursement payments are coming it.

Questions?

Boatnmaniac

@FredMaine -

Is it possible to have the Harry and John categories be neither income or expense, so that I don't see that on reports or budgets?
…or do I filter it out of reports?

Categories must be income, expense or transfer. There are no other options. I suggested setting up expense subcategories because until Harry and John reimburse you they really are your expenses. But assuming they do pay up on time, everything balances out and those subcategories will end up showing a net $0.00 balance.

If you want to keep them out of reports and other Quicken planning tools (such as the Budget), you can customize them to exclude those subcategories for Harry and John.

I have used the method suggested by @UKR in the past as well. It is a viable alternate method but I prefer to use the subcategories method I described. The subcategories method can also be set up to be very flexible so it can accommodate many other types of split expenses beyond just the phone bill. If you have other shared expenses, let me know what they are and I'll spell it out how the subcategories method can comfortably accommodate them, as well.

One nice advantage of @UKR's suggestion is you'll be able to see the account balances in the sidebar with a simple glance over there. But if you want to see the transaction details you'll either need to pull up an Itemized Categories report or go to the account registers.

The subcategories method can provide the same balance picture but you will need to pull up an Itemized Categories report to see it. That process can be set up so all it takes is a single click to see the balances of both subcategories and the transactions details with a single click: Open the default report, customize it to show only the Harry & John subcategories and then save it with a custom name. Then go to View > Customize Tool Bar > Add or Remove Saved Reports > select the customized report you just saved > OK > Done. Now your customized saved report will show up as an Icon with Text in the Toolbar. A simple click on that Icon will quickly open the customized report showing you both Harry & John's balances status with transaction details visible at the same.

Tags, as mentioned by @Q97, is another method some use for this type of thing.

The bottom line is that whichever method you choose it is a personal choice matter. All are viable methods.

Boatnmaniac

@FredMaine - It is not unusual when creating new categories that the new categories do not get included in various saved reports. Was the Itemized Categories report you opened a saved report? If, so, then I suspect this is what happened with that report. It is an easy fix:

In the report, click on the Gear icon at the top right of the report. This will open the customization popup.
Click on the Categories tab and scroll down to where the 2 new subcategories for Harry and John are. If the boxes for them are not checked, check them.
Click on the Accounts tab and make sure Venmo is checked.
Click on the Payees tab and click on Select All.
Then click on OK.

Do the transactions for Harry and John now show up in the report?

Boatnmaniac

OK, thanks for letting me know. Yes, the graph view on the Spending tab will only show categories and sub-categories that have a balance other than $0.00. However, you should be able to see all of the individual transactions, even those that end up canceling each other out, in the register directly beneath the graph view

Any other questions regarding this?

All comments

Boatnmaniac

You might want to try setting up 3 custom expense subcategories:

Bills & Utilities:Phone:Fred
Bills & Utilities:Phone:Harry
Bills & Utilities:Phone:John

When pay the Verizon bill, enter the payment transaction with a split category:

Payment Amount: The actual amount paid.
Line 1 of the split: Category = Bills & Utilities:Phone:Fred. Amount is your share of the bill.
Line 2 of the split: Category = Bills & Utilities:Phone:Harry. Amount is his share of the bill.
Line 3 of the split: Category = Bills & Utilities:Phone:John. Amount is his share of the bill.

Questions?

FredMaine

Actually I like that. Is it possible to have the Harry and John categories be neither income or expense, so that I don't see that on reports or budgets?

FredMaine

…or do I filter it out of reports?

UKR

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20414499#Comment_20414499

The original suggestion by @Boatnmaniac was:

You might want to try setting up 3 custom expense subcategories:
Bills & Utilities:Phone:Fred
Bills & Utilities:Phone:Harry
Bills & Utilities:Phone:John

If you have other shared expenses, e.g., Food, Electricity, etc., setting up additional subcategories for each situation might quickly become unwieldy.
I would suggest setting up two offline (manual) Checking accounts, one each for Harry and John.
Your own expense categories for Bills & Utilities:Phone, Bills & Utilities:Electricity, etc. remain unchanged and only apply to your share of the expenses.

Now, with these accounts in place, your Phone bill would be categorized as follows:

Bills & Utilities:Phone your share of the bill
[Harry] a transfer to Harry's "account" for his share
[John] a transfer to John's "account" for his share

Venmo payments by Harry or John, when they arrive, are recorded as transfers into the [Harry] or [John] account, respectively.
As a result, the balance in the Accounts for Harry and John is reduced by the payments they made.
You can see, at a glance, by looking at the Account Sidebar, if they are paid up, have paid more than their share or still owe you money.
Budget reports or views, unless you explicitly include transfers to/from these accounts, won't be impacted.

Q97

Depending on what aspect is most important to you, another option is to create Tags for Harry and John to track their portion of the expenses.

Boatnmaniac

@FredMaine -

Is it possible to have the Harry and John categories be neither income or expense, so that I don't see that on reports or budgets?
…or do I filter it out of reports?

If you want to keep them out of reports and other Quicken planning tools (such as the Budget), you can customize them to exclude those subcategories for Harry and John.

Tags, as mentioned by @Q97, is another method some use for this type of thing.

The bottom line is that whichever method you choose it is a personal choice matter. All are viable methods.

FredMaine

I'm still reviewing the above suggestions. I'll be back 🙂
To add a little detail:
This is the only shared bill, and I don't expect that to change.
The exception would be, for example, the odd concert ticket where I am reimbursed for someone's portion. I'm leaving that one out of this discussion for the moment.

FredMaine

@Boatnmaniac, I tested your method, here's the result.
The bill comes in and I pay it. (Electronic check). It appears in the check register.
Neither of the others has sent me money.
In the check register: I split the transaction right away, and enter the amounts that the three of us owe, assigning each to the correct sub-category. In the Split Transaction window, the split total shows the total bill amount, with zero remaining.
In the Venmo account register, the payment from one of the other two comes in, and I assigned the payment to his sub-category.
Then, I looked at the "Spending" page,and the only piece of the pie chart that shows up:
Bills & Utilities:Fred (just my portion of the mobile bills)
The other two don't appear, even though one has paid and the other has not. I thought that was curious.
An Itemized Categories report shows me, and both of the other two folks, but zero in their amount column - again whether they've paid or not.
That said, the report does show just the amount that I paid, which is what I was looking for in terms of my spending budget.
Is this in line with what your method should show?
Thanks!

Boatnmaniac

In the report, click on the Gear icon at the top right of the report. This will open the customization popup.
Click on the Categories tab and scroll down to where the 2 new subcategories for Harry and John are. If the boxes for them are not checked, check them.
Click on the Accounts tab and make sure Venmo is checked.
Click on the Payees tab and click on Select All.
Then click on OK.

Do the transactions for Harry and John now show up in the report?

FredMaine

It seems that all were already checked, but I selected all payees anyway and clicked OK, and yes now the items appear in the report.
That certainly seems to work well, although I must admit, entering a positive amount in the split, which then shows up as a negative number in the itemized category report, is confusing. I do see though, that when the payment comes in via Venmo it nicely zeroes out.

FredMaine

When I drilled down into the pie chart for spending, I was surprised to see just the subcategory for my portion of the billing. I expected to see three tiny slices in the chart. I assumed it was because they both had paid and that zero amounts may not show, but I tested that by going to the Venmo account and removing the category from one of the payments. Still just my portion there. It is what I wanted to see, but I guess I don't understand that either.

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20414978#Comment_20414978

Glad to hear that the Itemized Categories report is now reflecting the data correctly.

Yes, it can be a bit confusing when entering transactions in Quicken. In general, we just need to remember that we generally need to enter positive numbers into transactions, regardless of whether it is a deposit, a payment or a transfer. Quicken will make sure they will be reflected appropriately as positive or negative numbers in registers and reports.

The same general rule applies to most (not all) split categories….just enter positive numbers and let Quicken do the appropriate math. (There are times when one might want/need to enter some split categories lines as positive numbers while others need to be entered as negative numbers, such as in paycheck deposits where the splits need to capture the gross pay less the individual payroll deductions so the transaction total equals the net paycheck deposit amount. This exception is also important to use with IRA distributions when there are income taxes withheld.)

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20414991#Comment_20414991

Are you referring to a Spending report, such as Spending by Category or some other such report? If so, which one?

Or are you refer to the Spending graph view on the Spending tab?

FredMaine

Yes, the graph view on the Spending tab. I may have spoken too soon though. The sub-categories do appear, if the balance is not zero, perhaps.

Boatnmaniac

Any other questions regarding this?

FredMaine

Thanks for the help.