Budget creation - Categories vs Accounts (edit)

suecarternew

when you define a report, you select account and then the categories. That works fine. When I went to create a budget, it asked for categories first and then account. And when I ran the budget report, even though I had selected only one account it showed categories for the other account also. I think this is a programming error. Help !!

jacobs

When I went to create a budget, it asked for categories first and then account.

I'm not understanding why the order matters. The budget will be comprised of the accounts and the categories you select to include. You can add or remove both categories and accounts as you go along; the initial order doesn't matter.

And when I ran the budget report, even though I had selected only one account it showed categories for the other account also.

The budget will shows the categories you select for inclusion, irrespective of whether they are used, so this sounds correct.

If you wish, you can create separate budgets for account A and account B, with different categories in each.

suecarternew

When I try to create a budget for only account B, it still shows data from account A and categories that do not exist in account B

suecarternew

That will not help because I use many categories that are the same in the different accounts: Like "cash" I have a category call cash in Account A and also one in Account B. It is way to much trouble to create"different" category names in each account.

jacobs

When I try to create a budget for only account B, it still shows … categories that do not exist in account B

This is correct: the budget includes the categories which YOU select to include in the budget. So if you're creating a budget for just Account B, you can go to Edit Budget > Select Categories, and de-select all the categories which don't pertain to Account B. It's you, not Quicken, which is determining which categories appear in this budget.

When I try to create a budget for only account B, it still shows data from account A

I've done some tests, and I'm not seeing this. So let's see if we're on the same page. If you're creating a budget for just Account B, you'd go Edit Budget > Select Accounts > Selected Accounts and then Select: None, followed by checking the box for Account B.

This won't change any of your existing budget numbers, only your actual numbers.

To illustrate, I've created a simplified example with two Accounts and one Category. I've created two accounts, Account A and Account B. Each has one transaction, a purchase of Groceries in January: $1,000 in Account A and $500 in Account B.

Now I've created a budget with includes just these two Accounts selected…

and just the Groceries Category…

I've budgeted $600 per month for Groceries every month.

Here's what this simplified budget looks like:

Here you can see that my actual expense for January is $1,500: the $1,000 expense in Account A plus the $500 expense in Account B.

Now, I'll Edit the budget and de-select Account A, so the budget only includes Account B:

As expected, the Actual expense for January now shows only $500: the transaction in Account B. The $1,000 transaction in Account A is not included here.

Similarly, if I go to Edit Budget > Select Accounts and switch so the budget only includes Account A, the budget now shows just the $1,000 in expense in Account A:

So this shows that de-selecting an account in the budget setup does, indeed, remove the actual income/expenses from the de-selected account in the budget.