Budgeting - Quicken Mac [Edited]

Douglas E Clark

Is it true that when building a budget, Quicken does the following: Quicken auto‑adds categories when:

• They have a prior‑year budget history
• They have prior‑year actuals
• They were ever included in a budget
• They are marked “include in budget”
• They have a non‑zero value in the current year
• They are used in a transaction
  

Is there anyway to keep it from doing this? I just want to select categories I want in the budget and enter numbers for each category that will stay the same unless I change it. Something that keeps happening is I have numbers for each category that if I add up manually totals a certain number, but the Quicken total is different. I just want: Only the categories I want

• No legacy categories

• No auto‑added categories

• No categories with budget history

• No categories with prior‑year values

No categories Quicken can resurrect

I want:

• A budget that stays stable
• A budget that updates automatically
• A budget that doesn’t require re‑entry
• A budget that doesn’t mix actuals and budget
• A budget that doesn’t resurrect old categories
• A budget that reflects changes instantly
• A budget that you can trust

I want a budget I can create without fighting Quicken’s broken UI.

Seems like there should be a setting or something somewhere that allows me to tell Quicken to just use the categories I select and the numbers I enter. I don't want Quicken randomly throwing stuff into my budget willy-nilly.

So frustrated with the budgeting logic that I just want to throw the budget out the window and do my own outside of Quicken, but that just creates work I shouldn't have to do. I should be able to create a clean budget with Quicken.

[Edited Readability]

Quicken Laura

Hi @Douglas E Clark,

Thank you for reaching out. I’m sorry to hear about your frustrating experience with the budget feature. I’d be happy to help you set it up with your preferred categories and amounts.

Steps to Create a Budget

1. Select the Budgets menu at the top.
2. Click New Budget.
3. Enter a name and choose the starting date.
4. Click Create Budget.

If you already have an existing budget, you can skip these steps and simply modify it.

By default, Quicken will include a set of categories, so you’ll need to customize them to fit your needs:

1. Select Edit Budget in the upper left.
2. Click Select Categories at the bottom left.
3. In the “Select Categories to Budget” window, click None to clear all selections.
4. Choose the categories you want to include.
5. Click OK.
6. Enter the desired budget amounts for each category.
7. Save your changes.

You can also find more information in this article: https://info.quicken.com/mac/create-a-budget

I hope this helps!