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Need advice about Category Lists

Mike_L

I am getting ready to redo my Category List.

I have accounts for house, miscellaneous / recurring expenses, and 2 personal accounts.

I currently use a category list tailored to each account by having a category, with multiple subcategories tailored to that account.

While this results in some categories having some redundant subcategories, it seems to more closely match my focus for that subcategory assigned to an account.

On the other hand, as I am trying to think through this, I could assign the category from a consolidated list to a transaction from the account display. Therefore, a transaction against the consolidated category made to the house account transaction would not appear when I am looking at the miscellaneous / recurring account even though I was using the same category in the miscellaneous account transactions.

I am kind of thinking that for the experienced user the consolidated list may work better, but, possibly, for the novice, like me, the account oriented catalog might work better.

Any advice?

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Comments

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @Mike_L,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

It sounds like you’re weighing the trade-offs between a more structured, account-specific category list and a consolidated category system. A few things to consider: Do you find it easier to track spending when categories are tied to specific accounts, or does the redundancy create confusion? Would a consolidated list make it easier to generate reports and compare expenses across accounts? Also, how often do you need to reclassify or adjust transactions—does your current setup make that process simpler or more complex? Ultimately, it depends on what makes tracking and analyzing your finances most intuitive for you. What aspects of your current setup do you like most, and what feels cumbersome?

Let me know!

mshiggins

Typically, you’ll want to model your accounts in Quicken to match your actual accounts - checking accounts, credit card accounts, investment accounts, etc. You can use whatever category structure that makes the most sense for you.

One way to handle duplicated lower level categories for different purposes is to instead use Tags. For example, if you want to track clothing expenses for your three children, you create a Tag for each child and use one Clothing category. Transactions would then have the following Category/Tag:

Clothing/Child 1
Clothing/Child 2
Clothing/Child 3

q_lurker

I agree with @mshiggins that Accounts in Quicken should match real world accounts. That makes your “miscellaneous / recurring expenses” account a strange entity that I would not have. I am not sure how you use that as an account.

I do maintain one “Cash” account that I use for sort of as a wallet. Cash withdrawals from the checking account or ATM go into that account. To the extent I choose, cash purchases of coffee, haircuts, etc. come out of that account. In reality, most of those cash transactions go unrecorded.

Your use of ‘account’ sub-categories is unique and I don’t see the value (meaning I wouldn’t do it). If I wanted to see grocery expenses on CC1 vs CC2, I don’t need categories Grocery:CC1 and Grocery:CC2 to get that distinction. More commonly, I’d simply want to know Grocery expenses.

Sidebar: I deem many of Quicken default categories and subcategories too detailed and generally opt for more simplicity. That is clearly a user preference situation. As an example, Quicken starts off with a Food & Dining category with 5 subcategories. I operate with one Dining and one Grocery category. I would advise any user to customize their categories to fit their real needs.

@mshiggins comment about using tags for individual kids could be applied as a substitute for your account subcategories, though I have not heard of anyone doing that and I still don’t see the value.

Mike_L

You folks have been Extremely helpful. I was really afraid that orienting my categories to specific accounts might be really bad.

I am not too good at budgeting, so I figured aliging categories with accounts and having accounts align with functionality, it will help me with specific tracking and managing the funds. I can use reports to track similar categories which appear in multiple categories if that becomes an issue for me.

What I expect to do is to use a category for each account and then use subcategories to track the expenses in the specific categories.

I actually have 5 checking accounts to keep up with. 2 are 'really' active with about 5-6 Transactions per day and 2 are 'moderately' active with 2-3 transactions per day.

Thanks again for your time

Mike_L

I should have mentioned:

I use the house checking account for all expenses related to what goes on inside or outside the house. that includes stuff like groceries, utilities, Computers. appliances, TV's, subscriptions used for inside the house, lawn stuff, phone, supplies, maintenance …

Miscellaneous checking account is used for whatever supports the both of us, that is not included with the house

I have an account for both my wife and I so we can "do what we want within reason'. (I suppose this is silly since we both have access to Quicken and kind of keep our personal accounts updated, within reason. It just gives us a feeling of independence.) 😀

We also have a charity checking account to make us be accountable to our goals in this area.

Additionally, we each have a cash account. Normally, we just budget that account and not individual expenditures