Budgeting Breakdown: Essential Bills vs. Non-Essential Expenses

starblight

Is it possible to make a report that uses my set categories to split out my expenses? I would love to see this on my home screen with a bar graph or pie chart.

1. Required Bills: These are essential expenses that you must pay regularly, such as rent or mortgage, utilities, insurance premiums, and loan payments.
2. Optional Bills: These are expenses that you choose to incur but are not strictly necessary for survival. Examples include dining out, entertainment, and subscription services.
3. Discretionary Spending: This category covers non-essential purchases that you make at your discretion. It includes things like shopping, hobbies, and travel.

If this is not possible is there other ways I could get a similar result?

I am using Quicken Classic Business & Personal

Chris_QPW

There isn't anything that is going to give you a graph that shows what you want. You will have to look at the report.

Jim_Harman

One way you could do this would be by setting up one or more Category Groups in addition to the built-in Personal Expenses.

Then you would assign each of your existing spending Categories to one of these groups. For example I have a group called Needs which would correspond to your Required Bills and I have left all my other Categories in Personal Expenses.

Budgets are organized by these groups, and on the Display customization tab of the Budget reports, you can choose to organize the report by Category Group.

Chris_QPW

The budget on the Home tab will only show one bar graph. The full budget will show categories grouped by the category groups. The budget report can also be customized with the "Organization" of Category Group.

The default category groups like Personal Income, Personal Expenses, Business Income, Business Expenses, … But you can create whatever custom groups you like and move the categories to them. Just make sure you don't mix income and expense categories in a given category group. Quicken allows this, but it tends to mess up things in certain places.

You can access the category groups form the Options button on the Category List or from the Manage Budget Categories → Options

starblight

Thanks for the responses.

I figured out how to create category groups and add categorizes too them. I am struggling on how to then make a report that will show all expenses split between required, optional and discretionary. It sounds like based on both of your posts it can't be done from the home screen and has to be tied in with budgets?

Jim_Harman

Assuming that you have assigned the desired Categories to your required, optional, and discretionary groups, go to Reports > Spending > Current Budget and click on the gear at the top right to customize it. On the Display tab, next to Organization pick Category Group.

starblight

I tried and it requires I setup a budget, I am ok with that if needed. When I setup a budget it looks like the image below. This is all last year and displaying per month. How can I have it show a graph per group per month. I want to see what percentage per month falls under what category group.

Chris_QPW

There isn't anything that is going to give you a graph that shows what you want. You will have to look at the report.

starblight

I am sad to hear that but thanks for letting me know. It was cool to learn about Category Group even if it will not help me with this.

I am considering making my own program that I can export to and get the report I am looking for. But before I do is there any third part program that people use to get more flexible reporting? Maybe another quicken product?

Chris_QPW

You could export that report to Excel and have Excel generate the graph. Other than that, I don't know of any other program, and even if I did it couldn't be discussed on this Quicken forum.

EDIT: Actually, Quicken Simplifi could be discussed a bit, but since almost no one here uses it the better place for it would be on that forum. But I doubt it has what you are looking for.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/

AlexisoftheShire

I created a report call non-discretionary expenses (items I must pay every month). It contains categories called utilities (gas and electric, internet, telephone, tv subscriptions), mortgage(principle, property tax, interest), insurances(auto and home), groceries, auto(fuel and service), and medical(doctor, prescriptions, health care premiums). As you call them basic essentials. This gives me a pretty accurate idea of what must be paid and helps to some extent in predicting future expenses. In my case I export the report to excel and do a rolling last 12 months to get the average of these expenses. Finally, I look at my monthly income, subtract these non-discretionary expenses and it tells me what is left over for discretionary spending such as clothing, gifts, vacation, etc. This enables us to not over spend. FYI.

mshiggins

@starblight in addition to budget reports, category groups are available in comparison and summary reports. Perhaps one of the comparison or summary reports will meet your needs?