Categorize & Transfer

Takrbacker

I use Quicken for Mac, my wife uses Quicken for Windows, she would like to better track transactions with categories, but when a credit card payment or mortgage payment is put into quicken for windows that is not possible unlike in quicken for Mac. This would be a good addition to the windows product having that additional column.

Chris_QPW

The "artifact" of Quicken Mac allowing a category on a transfer was caused by limitation of the original rewrite of Quicken Mac and even in Quicken Mac the developers have said that they are pushing to remove this "mistake".

Quicken Mac Essentials, which was the rewrite of Quicken Mac didn't have linked transfers. As such, all it had was "categories" with one "special built-in category Transfers". When it got linked transfers they decided on allowing both but quickly realized that this causes problems like double counting a transaction in some cases. I believe one of those areas is the budget.

Bottom line is that Quicken Windows developers are never going to implement this violation of good accounting practices. A transfer isn't an expense or income, and as such can't have a category.

Note that for the Quicken Windows Budget, and I do believe the same is true for Quicken Mac, there is a special To/From section for allowing for budgeting the transfer for use cases like the mortgage payment.

As of the credit card payment, that isn't what you should be budgeting, you should be budgeting the expense categories.

You might also look into the Projected Balance graph, which would be for "cash flow" or the Cash Flow report.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Takrbacker,

Thank you for coming to the Quicken Community to provide your feedback. There is an existing Idea post requesting this functionality.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7959130/add-a-spending-category-to-a-transfer

I recommend taking a look at the Idea post above, adding your vote if it's something you'd like to see, and adding a comment. Ideas that get enough votes may be implemented in the future!

Thank you!

Takrbacker

@Chris_QPW thanks for the history lesson, I've been using Quicken for Mac since 97', I know a few things. Windows in general is arcane and useless, but transfers are nothing and aren't good for anything including budgeting and reporting. Might as well go back to writing things down in a ledger if that's the case.