How to combine Investment Income and Personal Income in Budgets

jcryanjr

Running R57.16 on Win11 Home

I saw this question in early 2021 from dreiter…. but no answer was provided.

I would like to have budgets and reports show a grand total for all income... both personal and investment income. However, Quicken default investment categories (eg "_divinc") can't be edited to make them subcategories of an "Investment" category. I can assign the default categories to a custom "Investment" group, but I cannot find a way to make that group a subgroup of total income. Unless I'm missing something, I either have to have two groups (one income and one investment income) which I have to manually add together for total income, or I have to have investment categories as separate line items under a total income category group. 

Any thoughts today?

Jim_Harman

Several issues are at play here.

Let's start with your Category List. Most of the special investing Categories such as _DivInc are hidden by default. These Categories are assigned automatically when you enter dividends or interest in an investing account. To avoid confusion, check the Show hidden categories box and un-hide any that you want to include in your budget.

The Category List is divided into sections, including Personal Income, Personal Expenses, Investment, and Transfers. Confusingly, these names overlap but are not the same as the default Category Groups. In addition to the default groups, you can set up your own custom groups. Category groups are used in Quicken's budget and can also be used to filter some reports. The investing Categories that start with underscores like _DivInc are in the Investing section of the Category List but by default they are in the Personal Income or Personal Expense Category group.

It appears that you have set up some custom Category Groups, including Investment Income, and you have added the _DivInc, _IntInc, _DivIncTaxFree, and _IntIncTaxFree Categories to that group. If you want those Categories to be included in the Personal Income section of your budget, click on Options at the bottom of the Category list and select Assign Category groups. Select Personal Income on the left and Investment Income on the right. Select each Category you want to move and click on Remove.

With those changes, you should see and be able to check the Categories you have moved in the Personal Income section of the Categories to Budget on the Planning > Budget page.

[added] To further confuse matters, there are two standard Quicken Categories, Div Income and Interest Inc, that are in the Personal Income group by default. These are different from the _DivInc and _IntInc Categories that Quicken normally uses for investment income. You may be using the Interest Inc Category for bank account interest, and you may want to include that in your budget.

Boatnmaniac

Can you provide more specific details or example(s) of where you are not seeing the roll-up to Total Income for all of these categories? I pulled the default Income & Expense report, the Itemized Categories report and generated a new Budget and all of the investment income categories (including _IntInc, _DivInc, _RlzdGain, _ST CapGnDist and the _LT CapGnDist) are available to be shown and rolled up into the total income along with other income categories.

Here are pictures of the Budget and the Income & Expense report that I pulled from a test file. As you can see (shaded in yellow), the investment income categories do roll up into the total Personal Income line in the Budget and the Total Income line of the Income & Expense report. Is this what you are looking for? If not, please clarify.:

From that same test file, here is what the Income & Expense report looks like:

Jim_Harman

Is the issue that you want a report that shows separate subtotals of investing and other income, which then roll up to your total income?

If so, I don't think that is possible with standard Quicken reports. You could probably produce the report you want by exporting the Current Budget report to Excel and manipulating the data there.

jcryanjr

The default report is exactly what I am trying to do. Currently Investment Income is its own category and I haven't found how to move it inside Personal Income:

I've tried selecting Investment income in Categories:

which does add the categories where I want them:

but my dividend and interest income doesn't show up:

I don't see an option to check _DivInc or _IntInc in the categories except in the Investment Income choice and that didn't help.

Do I need to add _DivInc and _IntInc somewhere else to have them as options in the Personal Income category?

Jim_Harman

Several issues are at play here.

Let's start with your Category List. Most of the special investing Categories such as _DivInc are hidden by default. These Categories are assigned automatically when you enter dividends or interest in an investing account. To avoid confusion, check the Show hidden categories box and un-hide any that you want to include in your budget.

The Category List is divided into sections, including Personal Income, Personal Expenses, Investment, and Transfers. Confusingly, these names overlap but are not the same as the default Category Groups. In addition to the default groups, you can set up your own custom groups. Category groups are used in Quicken's budget and can also be used to filter some reports. The investing Categories that start with underscores like _DivInc are in the Investing section of the Category List but by default they are in the Personal Income or Personal Expense Category group.

It appears that you have set up some custom Category Groups, including Investment Income, and you have added the _DivInc, _IntInc, _DivIncTaxFree, and _IntIncTaxFree Categories to that group. If you want those Categories to be included in the Personal Income section of your budget, click on Options at the bottom of the Category list and select Assign Category groups. Select Personal Income on the left and Investment Income on the right. Select each Category you want to move and click on Remove.

With those changes, you should see and be able to check the Categories you have moved in the Personal Income section of the Categories to Budget on the Planning > Budget page.

[added] To further confuse matters, there are two standard Quicken Categories, Div Income and Interest Inc, that are in the Personal Income group by default. These are different from the _DivInc and _IntInc Categories that Quicken normally uses for investment income. You may be using the Interest Inc Category for bank account interest, and you may want to include that in your budget.

jcryanjr

Perfect!

Thanks for the help.