Why don't the budget income amounts total correctly

Maggiec100

I am looking at the 12 month budget page. My budgeted income amounts for Jan, Feb, March 2024 tally with the actual income amounts BUT the total for the budgeted is less than the actual amounts. The actual amounts total correctly.

John_in_NC

Howdy, Maggiec100:

The budget doesn't actually tally up the actual amounts for the year. It does tally up the Difference against what you did spend/receive compared to your set goal. Is that the number you are looking at?

Maggiec100

Thanks for trying John but not quite answering the issue. The thing is sometimes I put in a semi wild figure into the budget because I have no clue what the amount will be. Then when I have the actual amount I go in and edit the budget to reflect that real amount. I didn't notice this was a problem last year although I see the same problem did creep in. The very strange thing is that this year all 3 months from Jan-Mar show the same error difference ($2283) from what the actual transactions were and the budgeted amounts. Does this make sense? Maybe changing/editing the budgeted amounts before actually recording the transactions would not show this problem but that would be a real pain to deal with!? However I still have the nagging Q as to why the difference is $2283!! I assume it must be some kind of "carry forward" effect independent of my messing with the budget figures.

jacobs

If you enter a value for a main budget category which has sub-categories, Quicken adds the sub-categories and the (now-hidden) amount you entered for the main category budget. For instance, let's say you have a category of Auto with two sub-categories of Fuel and Tolls. You budget $100 each month for Fuel and 25 each month for tolls. But you'll also have some repair expenses, and you don't know how much or when, so you just slap $1,000 into the main Auto category budget for January. the budget will show your January total Auto budget as $1,125 — the sum of your mauanlly-enetered value plus the sub-categories. This is a good feature, but once you enter those manual values, you can't see them, and a year to two later, you might not be aware why the budget doesn't seem to add up. You can reset main categories to just be the sum of sub-categories by entering a zero into the main category cell; Quicken will then display the sum of the sub-categories.

I'd bet from your description that this is what's tripping you up, and the only thing you can do it go through your budget to look for categories which don't add up as expected so you can zero them out.

Maggiec100

I appreciate your input Jacobs. I have seen your response before to another user. Unfortunately I can't solve my issue. Every month this year my actual CORRECT income has been the same amount ~ 2000$! more than my total budgeted income, even though each individual budgeted income is correct. Which means the SUM of the budgeted incomes for the month is too low by 2000$. This is really weird. I have actually searched for the actual sum that is incorrect in every account to see if there is a clue somewhere to no avail.

jacobs

First, to make sure we're on the same page, when you say "Every month this year my actual CORRECT income has been the same amount ~ 2000$! more than my total budgeted income" — are you sating that your budgeted total income is $2,000 too high each month, or that your actual total income is $2,000 too high each month?

Assuming you're talking about the budget total for income, here's how I'd approach it… First, look at just one month initially; once you find where the discrepancy is, it will be easy to fix in the other months. So look at January to start. (And it's easy to copy any changes to the other 11 months with one keystroke.) Under Income, the first thing I'd check is to see if you have all your active income categories and subcategories selected in your budget in Edit Budget > Select Categories; the budget allows you to include a main category without some or any of its subcategories, but this can lead to some confusing results. So for troubleshooting purposes, I'd suggest including all your income categories and subcategories. Also check to make sure you have all accounts included, or at least any which have income.

While still on the Edit budget screen, go down your income categories looking for those which have sub-categories. For each category with sub-categories, click on the main category row, click in the January cell, type "0", and click "0 all months" (or Command=). What this does is wipe out any override amount you might have entered (or carried over from the prior year budget) for a main category; the value showing for the main category will now be exactly the sum of the budgeted amounts in its sub-categories. Do this for any income category which has sub-categories. (Fortunately, for most people, there aren't a huge number of income categories.) Now, the total of Income at the top of the screen should be exactly the sum of all the main categories under income.

If you've done this, or this doesn't address the problem you're still struggling with, could you post either a screenshot or, if you don't want to share personal data, a simplified example of what you're seeing. For instance, something like this:

   INCOME $xxx
   Salary Income $xxx
    Me $xxx
    Spouse $xxx
   Side hustle job $xxx