Quicken Deluxe (Mac) -Budget Formula Errors

Countingonfingers

I’m on version 8.0.1 and under Budgets>Edit Budget: if I change the dollar amount in a subcategory, the software’s formula does not recalculate the main category’s total and then the budget is wrong. In order to have the category recalculate properly, I have to replace all number values with “0” across all months, and then it will recalculate. I proved this with my adding machine. This is a long-standing problem and typical spreadsheets, such as Excel, automatically update the numbers. PLEASE create a fix for this.

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @Countingonfingers,

Thanks for sharing this issue! That definitely sounds frustrating, and we appreciate you taking the time to test it so thoroughly.

Just to clarify, is this happening with all categories and subcategories in your budget, or only with specific ones? When you see the totals not updating, is it only after editing an existing budget, or does the same problem occur when creating a brand-new budget as well?

Also, have you noticed if the recalculation issue happens regardless of whether you're in the "Annual View" or "Graph View," or does the display mode make any difference?

Any additional details you can provide will really help us document this behavior accurately. Thanks!

jacobs

Quicken Mac's budget offers some interesting twists which are powerful features, but can also prove very confusing!

You have the ability to enter values for sub-categories, and Quicken will sum them into a total for the main category. If you Select Categories to not include the main category, the main category will appear in your budget, with the sum the sub-categories.

But if you include the main category and sub-categories when you Select Categories, things get interesting. Now, you have the option of adding some values for sub-categories and entering a value for the main category. If you do this, the sub-categories won't add up to the main category amount, because you've manually entered the main category amount. More confusing, if you now edit a sub-category value to be, say, $100 higher, the main category budget value will increase by $100, even though it is not the sum of the sub-category amounts. I'm sure the goal of the developers was to give users great flexibility: enter the sub-category amounts you know or want to track, but you can also enter a value for the main category if you know there are other expenses you haven't broken out in the sub-category values — and if you edit any sub-category value along the way to increase or decrease that sub-category, it will increase or decrease the main category by the same amount, so your change is incorporated. But since you can't see the amount you originally entered for the main category anywhere, it can get confusing. (This is likely why the budget code is so complex and needs to be re-written to implement the additional budget features users have been asking for.)

An example might help. Let's say you have a main category for Auto, with sub-categories for Gas and for Service. Let's say you enter $50 for Gas and $100 for Service:

Auto

Gas $50

Service $100

Quicken will show the sum of the sub-categories for the main category:

Auto $150 ← sum of the two sub-categories, calculate by Quicken

Gas $50

Service $100

But now you realize there are some other auto-related costs, like registration, tolls, car washes, etc., and you don't want to create sub-categories, or budget for each of these sub-categories if you have them; you just want to add $75/month to Auto to cover all these other items.

Auto $225 ← you manually enter $225, the sum of the sub-categories plus and extra $75

Gas $50

Service $100

So this alone can look odd. You have a main category where the total is not the sum of the sub-categories. But it's intentional. Now, let's say you realize gas prices are increasing, so you want to change your gas budget from $50 to $70.

Auto $245 ← ?? where did $245 come from ??

Gas $70

Service $100

When you edit the Gas subcategory to increase by $20, from $50 to $70, Quicken adds that extra $20 to the main category total — increasing it from $225 to $245. Why? If it did not do this, then any changes to your sub-category budgets wouldn't budge the main category amount, and you'd have to manually increase or decrease the main category. So Quicken "helpfully" does it for you. And if you understand that's how it works and why, it's actually pretty cool. But if you come back to your budget three months later and see that $70 + $100 = $245, you could be completely puzzled by the math. (This is were it would really help if the budget allowed you to enter notes, so you could record a note that you increase the main Auto budget by $75 for various miscellaneous auto-related costs. But there's no such notes feature.)

So if you see a budget main category which is not the sum of the sub-categories, the first thing I'd do is enter a zero in the main category. This will wipe out any of the adjusted amount you previously entered, and "reset" the main category amount to be the sum of the sub-category amounts

Auto $170 ←- sum of the two sub-categories, calculate by Quicken

Gas $70

Service $100

Now you can leave it that way, or again override the main category total if you want to add in other costs not included in the sub-categories you've budgeted.

So again, if you grasp how it works and why, you can appreciate why it's powerful that Quicken gives you the ability to enter subcategory amounts but override the main category amount. Hopefully, ig they retain this in the new version of the budget, they will add a way to show any manually-entered amounts a user has entered, to make this all more transparent.

If it's not clear yet from reading this, I suggest playing around with simple numbers like this in a category which has two or more subcategories, you you can see the main category auto-summing the sub-categories initially, allowing you to override the main category amount, and watch it increase or decrease your manually-entered main category amount if you raise or lower any of the sub-category amounts.

By the way, if you want to prevent any overrides to the main category amounts, go to Edit > Select Categories, and un-select the main category. Then, the budget's value for the main category will contain strictly the sum of the sub-categories.

Make sense?

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @Countingonfingers,

Just checking in, are you still needing assistance?

Let me know!

newcastlelinda

@jacobs said “Quicken Mac's budget offers some interesting twists which are powerful features, but can also prove very confusing!…”

Great post @jacobs ! Although I’ve known for a long time how mysteriously the Budget category totals works, you have explained it very very well.. Thank you.