Reclassify expenses using single entry

Frankvet

Hello,

I simply want to reclassify 50 or so expenses from one category to another (using just one transaction for the total amount, for e.g., changing $100 from a "supplies" expense to a "maintenance" expense.

In quickbooks I used the "general ledger" but have no idea how to do this in Quicken.

Any ideas?

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @Frankvet,

To clarify, do you want to mass-recategorize multiple transactions at once? If so, do all these transactions have the same payee name?

Let me know!

Jon

If you just want to change the category on a group of expenses, you can simply select all those transactions, right click on them and select "Edit Transaction" (or select "Edit Transaction" from the Transactions menu) and then enter a new category in the Category field of the Transaction Info window that comes up. This doesn't work on split transactions - if a transaction has multiple categories assigned you have to edit each transaction individually.

You can use the All Transactions register (at the top of the Account sidebar) to help with that if the transactions are spread across multiple accounts, since this register will show all transactions in all accounts. You can also use the search window in the upper left to filter the displayed transactions - for example if you are looking for transactions categorized as "Supplies" you can enter "Supplies" in the Search window.

But it sounds like maybe you want to not just change the category but also combine the transactions into one? I don't think that Quicken Mac will automatically do that for you; you'd have to add them up yourself & create a new transaction for the combined amount, then delete all the old transactions. Quicken will help you with that a little bit - when you select multiple transactions it will tell you the combined amount of all the transactions in the upper right corner of the register:

Frankvet

Yes…. toyed with it and found out this answer already. Never knew Quicken allowed you to change categories on multiple transactions at once. No need for the "general ledger entry" (found in Quickbooks) option in that case.

Cheers

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @Frankvet,

I'm happy to hear that you were able to figure it out. Thanks for coming back to let us know!

jacobs

Sorry, I started to reply and got interrupted before I posted. In case it's still of use, here's how to do the "general ledger"-type approach, in which you would debit one account and credit another. In Quicken, expenses are categories, not accounts, but the principal is the same. The trick here is to create a $0 transaction where the first split line would reduce one expense category and the second split line would increase the other expense category. So in your example:

Here's the result of that transaction in a report:

Note that since expenses are negatives in Quicken, the expense category you want to increase — in this case Maintenance — is negative, and the one you want to decrease is positive.