How do I change Category Groups - Farm business expenses?

Ranchkid 24

I am using Quicken Classic Business & Personal to track Personal and Farm Business Expenses. There are categories that are allocated to a tax line (Schedule F) that do not show up in Business Income or Expense. How do I correct this?

Ranchkid 24

The Category Group will change to the Business Group when using Schedule "C" items, but will not change to Business when using Schedule "F" for Farm Categories. What is the solution?

Chris_QPW

I only have Quicken Premier so I might be wrong about this, but I do remember some old discussions about a "Farm business" and basically the conclusion was that even though the tax lines are there and will appear in some areas like the tax reports and tax planner, Quicken was never "geared" for that kind of business, and as such has these kinds of gaps in it.

Chris_QPW

P.S. I if no one responds to the correct me, my suggestion would be to post an Idea of what should happen/be supported. Go to the Home page and select New Post → New Idea.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Ranchkid 24 and @Chris_QPW,

When I look into this, I can see that Schedule F has shown as a Personal category for years. Since it seems to me like Schedule F should reflect as a business category, I forwarded this to the proper channels for further investigation.

In the meantime, was there anything specific you were trying to accomplish, but are having trouble doing due to Schedule F not reflecting as a business category?

Thank you!

(CTP-9130)

Chris_QPW

@Quicken Kristina thanks for confirming that. For what it is worth, Rental, breaks out into a separate category group.

Ranchkid 24

I went through Quicken support and apparently there is no way to do this. The Business Group only recognizes Schedule C. I'm incredibly frustrated as I had asked this question prior to purchasing Quicken. It makes no sense to me why one would not be able to change the Grouping.

Chris_QPW

You could create your own custom group.

Chris_QPW

And the more I think of it this is basically how rental is handled, at least for the category groups, except more automatically. When you assign a Schedule C tax line to a transaction it automatically shows the Business category group and put it there. When you do the same for Schedule E (rental) it creates goes into the Rental category group, not the Business category group.

So, there should be little difference from you creating a Farm category group and moving your farm categories into it.

Ranchkid 24

From what support said, the only way to make it work is to create main categories with Schedule C tax lines and then subcategories with Schedule F

Chris_QPW

Well, that might work. The real question I can't answer, because I don't use the business edition, is what all the ramifications of being in business category group are. Clearly Rental which is a business works fine without those categories being in the business category group.

In the case of tax reports and such, they are going to be looking at the tax line, not the category group. When doing things like reports that are grouped by category group your custom ones are just as valid as the built in ones.

Jim_Harman

I took the bait and created a Category "Farm Feed" and assigned it the the Tax Line Item "Schedule F:Feed purchased".

I entered a transaction using that Category and it appears as expected in the Tax Schedule Report and in the Schedule F section of the Tax Planner.

Then I clicked on Options at the bottom of the Category List and created a custom Category Group "Farm Expenses". The new group does not appear in the list of groups at the left of the Category List. This is a bug IMO.

If I run the Banking > Cash Flow report, click on the gear to customize it, and set the Organization to Category Group, the Farm Expenses group is listed and the Farm Feed expense is shown as well.

Note that the Farm Feed expenses are not included in the Business > Cash Flow report, even if the expense is charged to a Business account. I would call that a bug also.

[adding]

My take on this is that the Business reports are for income and expenses that are filed on Schedule C and the Rental Property reports are for Schedule E items. There are no Schedule F-specific reports but if you set up Categories with the Schedule F tax line items and Category Groups for Farm income and expenses, you can customize the Banking reports to show just those items.

Perhaps someone who actually uses Quicken to track farming income and expenses can chime in here.

Chris_QPW

Then I clicked on Options at the bottom of the Category List and created a custom Category Group "Farm Expenses". The new group does not appear in the list of groups at the left of the Category List. This is a bug IMO.

Note that no custom group appears there, so this isn't surprising, and in itself isn't a bug. The real problem in my opinion is that "farm" is half in and half out. It should have been treated just like Schedule C/Business and Schedule E/Rental where it there are built-in category groups for them, and they show as soon as someone assigns a category to a Schedule F tax line. And certainly, if Rental is included in the Business → Cash Flow report then Schedule F/Farm should be doing the same.

EDIT: and there should be a Schedule F report too, but I think I would customize the Tax Schedule report instead of the bank transactions one.

but if you set up Categories with the Schedule F tax line items and Category Groups for Farm income and expenses, you can customize the Banking reports to show just those items.

Jim_Harman

I edited the title to better describe the issue.