Home Dashboard Expense Totals Don't Match

mammoth-tempo-hiding

Does anyone know why I am getting 3 different totals for expenses here (see the red circled).

QuickenDashboardIssues.pdf

Here is what I have already checked…

• All 3 are using the same time period
• All 3 are using the same accounts
• I do not have any hidden payees
• I have closed and reopened the file
• I have closed the file, restarted my Mac, and reopened the file.

The most egregious is the "Top Spending Payees" tile.

Trying to understand what's going on here. Any ideas?

jacobs

I found what seemed like a bug involving the date math used for "Last 12 months", but as you'll see, it is likely intentional.

In my testing file, I looked at the Spending by Category card, set to "Last 12 Months". I took my largest category, which was Taxes, and clicked on it to open a drill-down report of "Spending by Category: Taxes". The total was, to use a fake round number, $75,000.

I then looked at my Income & Expenses card, also set to "Last 12 Months". I clicked on Total Expense in the card to open a drill-down report, "Income & Expense - Details". I clicked Edit on this report, and deselected all Categories except Taxes and its sub-categories. The total should be $75,000, but it's not; it's $80,000. How can that be?

I exported both reports to spreadsheets, and did a little clean-up so I could sort both by date. I noticed that the "Spending by Category: Taxes" export contained 150 rows of data, while the "Income & Expense - Details" export contained 155 rows of data. Sorting by date, it was easy to find what was different…

The Spending by Category export contained transactions from 3/20/24 to 2/15/25. (It's not relevant, but if you're wondering, this is a test file, so it doesn't have transactions up-to-date.)

But the Income & Expense export contained transactions for 3/13/24 to 2/15/25. There are 5 transactions dated 3/13/24, and they total $5,000 — accounting for the difference of 5 transactions and $5,000 in total between the exports from the two cards.

To verify this, I created a new test file, and created a manual transaction each day in March 2024 and March 2025. The Spending by Category card, set to "Last 12 Months", includes transactions from 3/17/24 through 3/16/25 — the past 52 weeks, or 365 days. But the Income & Expense card, set to "Last 12 months", includes transactions from 3/1/24 through 3/16/25 — which is the the full prior 12 months plus the current partial month.

So, for a reason only a programmer will be able to answer, "Last 12 Months" for the Spending by Category Card and "Last 12 Months" for the Income & Expense card encompass different date ranges. The Income & Expense card, because it uses a calendar month graph, actually includes 13 calendar months — defined as "the prior 12 calendar months, plus the current month" — not the past 52 weeks or 365 days.

My guess that they programmed it this way to avoid the oldest month in the Income & Expense chart showing only some of the days in that month, which wouldn't be apparent looking at the graph. And if so, this is actually "operating as designed" rather than a bug!

Jon

It looks to me like Top Payees is just looking at the overall transaction and not at the splits. So if you have a deposit that's a split transaction with some splits being payments, nothing from that transaction is included in Top Payees because the net transaction is not a payment. If you have a withdrawal that's a split transaction that includes some money being paid to you, the transaction is included in Top Payees because it is a net payment but the splits aren't broken out.

Here I have a paycheck that's a net deposit with some deductions, and nothing appears in Top Payees:

If I reduce the income so the transaction is a net payment instead of a deposit, then the transaction appears but just the net amount is included, not the individual splits:

MontanaKarl

the only one I can comment on is the top spending payees…. which is not all payees, but just the largest payees as shown in the tile. This should never match the other totals, and should always be less (unless of course you only have 10 or whatever total payees).

Jon

@MontanaKarl I don't think that's it. The first number is the total of the displayed payees & changes as the displayed payees change. The second number doesn't change when I resize the panel.

One thing that's not included in Top Spending Payees is payments that are part of split transactions that are net deposits. For example. one of my largest expenses last year was health insurance premiums but it doesn't show up in Top Spending Payees, and I believe that's because they are deducted from my pension payment rather than paid as a stand-alone expense. Further evidence is that taxes withheld from the pension payment are also missing from that panel but separate tax payments I made are listed.

I can't explain the difference between Spending by Category and Income & Expenses - when I set those to include all accounts for last year they match.

Jon

I created a test account and entered a single transaction - a paycheck that was a split transaction with deductions for insurance & taxes. The Income & Expense and Spending by Category panels showed the deductions as expenses, the Top Spending Payees panel said "no transactions found". Since it's a single transaction that's a net deposit, it doesn't count as a "spend". If I change the split transaction so that it's a net withdrawal rather than a deposit, then it appears.

mammoth-tempo-hiding

Thanks @Jon - appreciate you taking the time to test it out. I'm wondering if it's all splits. I have a split transaction that is entirely my tax withholding/deductions (so a net withdrawal, with no positive lines), and it's still not showing up in Top Spending Payees. Either way - it seems we need either more control over what's included/excluded, or better documentation from Quicken. Tried going through their online docs, and didn't see much that was super descriptive about the logic for the panels.

Out of curiosity (since you said your other 2 panels match) - do you track your Gross or Net Income? Here's what I'm doing - wondering if this is introducing some sort of variability into Income & Expense and Spending by Category that is causing them to not match by approx 7%…

Gross Paycheck -

Screen Shot 2025-03-16 at 10.24.12 AM.png

Retirement Contributions -

Screen Shot 2025-03-16 at 10.24.33 AM.png

Taxes/Deductions -

Screen Shot 2025-03-16 at 10.24.42 AM.png

XFER of Take Home Pay to Checking Account -

Screen Shot 2025-03-16 at 10.24.52 AM.png

I do this in 4 steps so that I have more nuanced control over the Payee (since the same Payee name applies to all lines on a split) as well as greater ability to finesse reports to view a variety of situations.

jacobs

I found what seemed like a bug involving the date math used for "Last 12 months", but as you'll see, it is likely intentional.

In my testing file, I looked at the Spending by Category card, set to "Last 12 Months". I took my largest category, which was Taxes, and clicked on it to open a drill-down report of "Spending by Category: Taxes". The total was, to use a fake round number, $75,000.

I then looked at my Income & Expenses card, also set to "Last 12 Months". I clicked on Total Expense in the card to open a drill-down report, "Income & Expense - Details". I clicked Edit on this report, and deselected all Categories except Taxes and its sub-categories. The total should be $75,000, but it's not; it's $80,000. How can that be?

I exported both reports to spreadsheets, and did a little clean-up so I could sort both by date. I noticed that the "Spending by Category: Taxes" export contained 150 rows of data, while the "Income & Expense - Details" export contained 155 rows of data. Sorting by date, it was easy to find what was different…

The Spending by Category export contained transactions from 3/20/24 to 2/15/25. (It's not relevant, but if you're wondering, this is a test file, so it doesn't have transactions up-to-date.)

But the Income & Expense export contained transactions for 3/13/24 to 2/15/25. There are 5 transactions dated 3/13/24, and they total $5,000 — accounting for the difference of 5 transactions and $5,000 in total between the exports from the two cards.

To verify this, I created a new test file, and created a manual transaction each day in March 2024 and March 2025. The Spending by Category card, set to "Last 12 Months", includes transactions from 3/17/24 through 3/16/25 — the past 52 weeks, or 365 days. But the Income & Expense card, set to "Last 12 months", includes transactions from 3/1/24 through 3/16/25 — which is the the full prior 12 months plus the current partial month.

So, for a reason only a programmer will be able to answer, "Last 12 Months" for the Spending by Category Card and "Last 12 Months" for the Income & Expense card encompass different date ranges. The Income & Expense card, because it uses a calendar month graph, actually includes 13 calendar months — defined as "the prior 12 calendar months, plus the current month" — not the past 52 weeks or 365 days.

My guess that they programmed it this way to avoid the oldest month in the Income & Expense chart showing only some of the days in that month, which wouldn't be apparent looking at the graph. And if so, this is actually "operating as designed" rather than a bug!

jacobs

As for the differences between Spending by Category and Top Spending Payees, I agree with what @Jon wrote above. Where it shows $xxx out of $yyy, the yyy value is the total spending of all payees for the time period. But it does not capture expenses which were not payments to any Payee.

If I just look at Last Month for both, my top Spending by Category category is Taxes, which comes solely from deductions from paychecks. But the Top Spending Payees doesn't include any of that Taxes expense, because there was no Payee involved. Also, there is a paycheck deduction for healthcare, so that shows up in the Spending by Category card as Medical expense, while there is nothing in the Top Spending Payees for that amount.

Another difference can come about if you have an uncategorized use of money. I had an ATM withdrawal of $80 last week which was uncategorized. It showed up in my Top Spending Payees for Last Month, but is not included in Spending by Category.

mammoth-tempo-hiding

@jacobs - wow! Thank you for taking the time to track this down and figure it out. I was able to test this out using my datafile, and it does in fact have to do with the 2 panels having different date ranges. I'd argue that using different logic for each but labeling them both Last 12 Months is very confusing, but nothing we can do about that. I would've assumed that Last 12 Months meant the last 12 completed months (or at the very last, the last rolling 365 days). Good to know that the math is mathing, but is just different math than I assumed - and not consistent between the 2 panels.

Although I will note that I believe there is still some sort of bug in the aggregation logic. When I select "Last Year" for both of those panels, the total is different. Granted, it's only off by about $500 - but still seems weird as "Last Year" seems pretty cut and dry from an interpretation standpoint.

In terms of the behavior of Top Spending Payees - my assumption would've been for a split transaction that the Payee defined at the top level would flow through to all lines on the split. Though, at the end of the day, the end result of this behavior is that Taxes doesn't get included as a Top Payee, which is probably desirable as that would almost certainly be 99% of people's top Payee.

I am confused though, because the logic for inclusion/exclusion for Top Payees doesn't seem consistent. For example - I have Costco that shows up as Top Payee. I almost always split my Costco transactions to properly categorize. The total shown for Costco within Top Payees is the total of all split lines.

So any idea why certain split expense transactions wouldn't be showing up, but others are? In my case, my taxes/deductions are their own transaction, and a net withdrawal, so seems weird that they wouldn't show up.

Again, not really upset that Taxes/Deductions isn't flowing through (because having it in the report wouldn't really be that useful). Mostly just trying to understand what the logic is for when a split transaction is included vs excluded from the report.

Jon

It looks to me like Top Payees is just looking at the overall transaction and not at the splits. So if you have a deposit that's a split transaction with some splits being payments, nothing from that transaction is included in Top Payees because the net transaction is not a payment. If you have a withdrawal that's a split transaction that includes some money being paid to you, the transaction is included in Top Payees because it is a net payment but the splits aren't broken out.

Here I have a paycheck that's a net deposit with some deductions, and nothing appears in Top Payees:

If I reduce the income so the transaction is a net payment instead of a deposit, then the transaction appears but just the net amount is included, not the individual splits:

Jon

As for net vs gross income, I track gross.