one budget column not adding correctly (Q Mac)

msgchef

Hi

Odd issue, budget column, one section called travel has several categories with budget and real numbers. Budget numbers are not adding, thus showing a great variance from actual. Here's a screenshot. since I've got an edited the budget, actual vs budget should be the same. The missing addition is the 5K in lodging but it is a sub of Travel. Just like the column to the right. any help appreciated. thanks Paul

Quicken Kristina

Hello @msgchef,

Thank you for coming to the Community to let us know about this issue. To help troubleshoot, please provide more information. When did you first notice this issue? Have you restarted your Quicken program and/or your computer since you noticed this issue? Was there anything that happened just before the problem started, such as a computer/program update or an unexpected computer/program shut down? Do you keep your Quicken file directly on your local hard drive? Is the file synced with any cloud services, such as iCloud, OneDrive, or DropBox?

To see your Quicken file location, navigate to File>Show "file name" in Finder.

Once the Finder window come up, you can hold down the option key to see the file path (usually displayed at the bottom of the Finder window, while you are holding the option key).

I look forward to your reply!

jacobs

Since your "Lodging, Hotel, Rental" subcategory has subcategories under it which aren't shown, I would look to see if one of those sub-sub-categories isn't included in your budget.

tim.rohrer1

I too am seeing weird budget calculations, and errors.

The far right column is February, and next to that is January. The calculations for January are correct while the budget calculations for February are not. The budgeted amount for electric is not rolled up to Utilities like it is for January.

tim.rohrer1

As an experiment, I went into edit mode for the budget and entered $150 for Electric in January and clicked on Forward to fill in the rest of the number. This is what happened:

I clicked on save, then filled the Utilities line with zeros, and now:

The February roll up appears correct, as does the March budget calculation, but the next five months are wrong, then it is correct again.

tim.rohrer1

@msgchef and @Quicken Kristina, I found out by exploring the online webapp that every category (including Utilities in my case) includes an Everything Else sub-category. This line reflected a negative amount equal to the other sub category lines. I was able to zero it in the online webapp, and sync that back to my Mac, and it appears to correct the issue for now.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for the follow-up @tim.rohrer1,

I'm glad to hear you found a resolution!

If you need assistance, or if the issue returns, please feel free to reach out!

tim.rohrer1

@Quicken Kristina, please share with us why the online and mobile versions of Quicken Classic include an Everything Else field in the budgeting tool while the Mac desktop version does not? I suspect the devs’ thinking was to make the desktop version simpler, but it is clear the algorithm is not without problems. And personally, I finding thinking about Everything Else is a budget category makes sense.

Having two approaches based on the platform being used doesn’t seem ideal to me. I suggest picking one or the other, and standardizing the tool.

jacobs

@tim.rohrer1 I think the term "everything else" is used in two ways when talking about budgeting, so just for clarity, I think it would be useful to describe each of them. One is a "global everything else" dealing with the overall budget, where the user selects certain categories to include in the budget, and the software has an "everything else" line for all the categories not included in the budget. This allows the budget to show a bottom line without the user having to enter budget values for every category. This functionality does NOT exist in Quicken Mac at this time, but a request for this functionality has been marked as "Planned" by the developers in their forthcoming revamp of the Quicken Mac budget.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7877641/mac-budget-to-include-an-optional-everything-else-area-for-categories-used-that-are-not-budgeted

The other "everything else" takes place at the category level, to represent the difference between budgeted sub-categories and main category. In Quicken Mac, users can specify budget amounts for some or all sub-categories of a main category, with the main category populated with the sum of those sub-category values. So if I have an Auto category with Gas and Service sub-categories, I could budget Gas=$50 and Service=$100, and Quicken would show the main category Auto=$150.

But Quicken Mac also allows the user to enter a value for the main category which is larger than the sum of the sub-categories, to account for other things not included in the budgeted sub-categories, and that difference can be described as "everything else". So in my example, I realize there are some other auto-related costs, like registration, tolls, car washes, etc., and I don't want to create sub-categories, or budget for each of these sub-categories if I have them; I just want to add $75/month to Auto to cover all these other items. So I budget Gas=$50 and Service=$100, and for the main category I budget Auto=$225. The difference between the explicitly budgeted sub-categories ($50 + $100 = $150) and the amount I budgeted for the main category ($225) means there is an "everything else" value of $75. If I subsequently realize gas prices are increasing and change my budgeted value for Gas from $50 to $70, Quicken will show the total Auto budget is now $245 — because it maintains the $75 "everything else" value. This is a helpful feature, but it's not always intuitive because… the category-level "everything else" is not shown anywhere!

So back to @tim.rohrer1's issue, I think the Quicken Mac budget user interface has had a number of shortcomings since it was created back in 2016 in the early days of the re-written Quicken Mac. There have been lots of user requests for changes and additional features which have not been addressed, as the previous product manager explained the code was extremely complex and would need to be re-written to implement the requested features. From the little bits and pieces the developers have shared, it appears such a re-write of the Quicken Mac budget section of the program is currently underway, and we'll hopefully see it emerge later this year.

I don't use Quicken Cloud (the mobile app or web interface), but from what is described in the posts above, they are showing the "everything else" which isn't (yet) visible in Quicken Mac. But it's not clear to me if that "everything else" is just a single value for the sum of all the category "everything else" values. I see there is a recent thread on the Quicken Windows side about "everything else" now showing up in budget reports and causing lots of confusion, so there may be changes being made to incorporate a standard "everything else" between Quicken Windows and Quicken Cloud and Quicken Mac (since Quicken Mac shares Quicken Cloud with Quicken Windows).

tim.rohrer1

@jacobs Good summary, although tbh I already understood all of that. Still, it might help someone else, so thank you for taking the time to write it up.

That the Quicken Mac budget UI is able to add up sub-categories and see when a user adds an amount in the higher-level category feels more complex that the addition of an automatically generated Everything Else field. Not being able to study the code, I could obviously be mistaken.

Regardless, my bigger concern is that Quicken (including @Quicken Kristina) doesn't seem to have acknowledged the bug discussed in this thread. Admittedly, if they're rewriting the entire code block they may not want to spend too much time on it, but exploring a hot fix would be reasonable.