Sorting budget reports by category group

Bill Black

I use Quicken for Windows and would like to sort my budget expense reports by category group as follows:

1 - Fixed

2 - Variable

3 - Discretionary

4 - Non Budgeted

Is there any way to make this happen? I added the numbers to try to force it, but it still places Variable last and just seems to sort randomly. On what basis does it sort budget groups in reports? Not a huge issue, but pretty frustrating. Seems like it should be easy.

Thank you.

Bill Black

Thank you! While it isn't the answer I hoped for, it will save me time in trying to figure out how to do it. So, it did help. I really appreciate your taking the time to answer so fulsomely. Thank you again.

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @Bill Black,

Thanks so much for reaching out — I can definitely see how being able to custom-sort your budget report categories (like Fixed, Variable, Discretionary, and Non-Budgeted) would make budgeting clearer and more tailored to your needs.

At this time, Quicken for Windows doesn't offer a way to fully control the sort order of category groups within budget reports, even with number prefixes. The system typically follows its own internal structure, which can feel a bit random when trying to organize things your way — I hear you on that.

Some users try renaming category groups using numbered prefixes (like 1 Fixed, 2 Variable, etc.), and while that may help slightly in the Budget Planning view or the Category Summary Report, it doesn’t always affect the sorting in detailed budget reports. Unfortunately, there’s no native setting to manually define the report sort order.

If this is a feature you'd like to see in the future, I recommend creating an Idea Post to share your suggestion with our Product and Development teams. Other users can also vote on it if they'd like to see the same functionality added.

You can learn how to submit an idea post here.

I hope this helps!

Bill Black

Thank you! While it isn't the answer I hoped for, it will save me time in trying to figure out how to do it. So, it did help. I really appreciate your taking the time to answer so fulsomely. Thank you again.

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @Bill Black,

You are very welcome!

Please do not hesitate to reach out with any further questions or concerns!