Do Category Groups Work Properly - I am seeing Duplicates in Budget
Hello - I haven't really used Category Groups before, but I've tried to implement them so I can organize my transfers a little better in the budget (transfers to retirement accounts Vs spending account etc.). What I've found is that any custom group I set up, shows in the budget twice, regardless of what categories or "to' accounts are in there. I see them correctly assigned in the Assign Categories screen, but when I look at the category list, they're not tagged corrected.
Is this expected behavior or a bug? Screen Shots hopefully help. This seems like a great feature to summarize on the annual budget view, so it'd be a shame if it's not working.
This does not affect groups created by Quicken (Personal Spending, Detailed Loan Payments).
Quicken Windows R53.32 (Dec) on Windows 11 Latest Build.
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The general rule with category groups to avoid problems is don't mix income, expense, and transfers categories in the same group. In fact, I don't know about transfers at all. It is probably a very bad idea to put a transfer in a category group at all. The reason I think that (but have not done any checking on it) is for the very reason that Quicken is already messed up on how it handles transfers/categories and as such it seems that the only thing that can happen is it gets worse.
Transfers live in a "no man's land". In some spots they are treated as categories, in others as transfers that have their own section like on a report or in the budgets.
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@Chris_QPW Hi, thanks for the reply and engagement, I appreciate it.
Transfers are already in a group, called Transfers (at least in the Assign Category Groups Screen). What I am trying to do is separate out the kinds of transfers. I take your point though, this seems like a shaky part of the app so probably best left alone, but if it did work, it'd be quite useful. Some transfers are great to budget.
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I should have said not mixing them "in custom category groups".
As for using the Transfers Out/Transfer In, in the budget those are "supposed to work". Personally, I haven't used them (only slightly in testing) so I can't really give a lot of feedback on them. I will say that they are "late to game", they weren't in the original budget rewrites of Quicken 2012/2013.
But one of the main reasons I never liked them is basically the same reason I'm not fond of the tax line assignments for transfers in and out of investment accounts. There is this basic assumption that all such transfers are the same, when it is entirely possible that they aren't. You basically have to make sure that you have dedicated a given account to one purpose.
In the case of the budget the big danger is double counting the same transaction.
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@Chris_QPW I've found transfers reasonably easy to budget, as long as they're simple and you don't need to include transactions in the account you're transfering to - so simply exlude the 'TO' account from budget and you can budget from the 'FROM' account's perspective easily. When I start withdrawing from investment accounts in retirement, we'll see how well that all holds up! I am sure people have experience with that, and who know how Quicken might change before then. I have 4 or 5 more years.
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I have had no problem budgeting RMD transfers as income for many, many years, I.e. "From [Ira account]". The key has been to NOT create custom category groups, relying instead on the default category groups of personal income and expenses.
Quicken Business & Personal Subscription, Windows 11 Home
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Good to know.
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