Remembering Categories from Previous Month

bseligson

I don't know if this idea ever came up, or possibly even exists. I have 4 cc and I categorize all charges — big job but helps me with budgeting. I have one credit card that I use exclusively for some repetitive pays: utility, medical premium, monthly subscription, etc. .Some of the amounts vary, some are variable, but the categories remain the same. I would like to take my September bill to be copied for the month of October. I would then have all the categories. All I would have to do is change the total amount and change some of the variable amounts to balance. So easy! Has this ever come up? Assuming not available. How do we get Quicken to offer this function?

jacobs

There's actually a lot to unpack here, if I understand your request correctly.

It sounds like you are entering one transaction for the monthly credit card bill, with splits for each of the individual charges. While that works, it's not optimal and sort of fights upstream against how Quicken is designed to work.

Typically, for each credit card, you would create a separate credit card account in Quicken. You can download the transactions from these financial institutions or you can enter them manually. And for recurring charges, you would set those transactions up as scheduled transactions occurring each month. So in your credit card account, these transactions would pop up automatically, and you would simply click the transaction and the "Paid" button to mark is as a transaction posted to your account; at that time, if the amount varied, you could edit the transaction to the correct amount. Then, when you pay the credit card bill, you'd enter that payment in your checking account with no splits, as a transfer to the credit card account. This way, you can reconcile your credit card account each month against your credit card statement, and all your charges show up on the date they were incurred, not the date of the credit card payment. It also makes it easier to split specific credit card charges (e.g. an Amazon charge which is part groceries and part clothing), since each charge is its own transaction.

If you decide to keep going the way you're currently doing things, and not switch to having a credit card account with the individual transactions, you could achieve what you want in either of two ways. One would be to click on last month's credit card payment, with all its splits, and select Transactions > Duplicate Transaction. Then open the duplicate, set the date to this month's date, and edit the amount and splits as needed. The other way is to create a QuickFill transaction when you enter/edit the credit card transaction. This way, the next time you enter the same Payee the entire transaction you saved will pop up, complete with all your splits.

If you need help understanding or implementing any of this, just post back.

volvogirl

When I read the question earlier today I didn't understand it. But if it is what jacobs explained I will post my standard answer in addition to his.

There is a MUCH better way to do it. You should not be splitting out the payment.

Just in case you are entering your credit card bills the wrong way…..
The proper way is to set up a credit card ACCOUNT and enter the charges into it when the purchase is made and assigning it to a category. Then when you pay the credit card bill you TRANSFER the payment from your checking account to the credit card account (not a category). Then if or when you download the payment from the bank you match it to the one you already entered.

When you enter the payment in your checking account you put the credit card account name in for the category using square brackets around the name to indicate it is a transfer...like this… [VISA] or newer Mac versions have a separate Transfer column.

I used to do it the wrong way for years! Then I wised up and now enter them properly. I would split my credit card payment into all the categories on one transaction in my checking account. And since I always pay more than the bill I would need to figure the difference and put it to another category. But then I needed to have them entered on the date the charges actually happened, especially at year end for taxes. So I finally set up a credit card account. It makes it much easier to enter and balance!

And if you split your credit card payment into the categories and some of the categories are Transfers to the same Account it will lump all them together and make 1 transaction in the Transfer Account.

Here's a list of some other reasons why you should do it this way…..
You don't have to wait to make the payment and split it out
You won't run out of split lines (In older versions there's only 30 lines)
You can use both the payee and memo fields for more description
You don't have to figure out the difference if you pay a different amount
Then your Credit Card Account will exactly match your statement
Charges get entered with the right date (better at year end for taxes)
You can enter all charges to date, not just what's on the bill - then you can see what you still owe
You won't forget what a charge was for if you enter it right away from the receipt

bseligson

Jacobs and Volvogirl - that you for you feedback. It does seem to have merits and think I could do this, but still unsure. I am 73 years old and have a start date in my Quicken account of Sept 2000. Obviously a loyal user and have managed with my old school method. Maybe I will start in 2025, but so happy with Jacobs easy solution of just duplicating the transaction!! Thank you again.

UKR

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7957608/remembering-categories-from-previous-month

Reading just your original question and skipping over all the helpful suggestions, I would like to suggest that you create and use Scheduled Reminder Transactions for all your recurring payments like your monthly subscriptions, utility payments, etc. This way you already have a correctly filled out transaction (payee name, category, memo, etc.) ready to go when the next month rolls around and you only need to update the amount, if it's variable.
This way there's no need to laboriously locate and copy / duplicate prior transactions.
Another benefit of scheduled reminders is that you can't easily miss a payment. Quicken will remind you of payments coming due.

jacobs

And to do what @UKR suggests, all you need to do is locate and select your most recent credit card payment transaction with all the categorized splits, and do Transactions > Schedule Selected Transaction. In the Schedule window which pops up, you can set it to recur monthly on the xth day of each month. then click on the Details tab of the schedule window, and you can set the amount to zero, click on the Category Splits button and set all the split amounts to zero (or for the ones which are constant, to their regular amount), and save the transaction. Now, each month, you'll see the transaction in your register, in gray, and you just click on it and mark it Paid, then edit it to enter the current months' amount and the various split amounts.