A recent update of my Quicken Subscription software has changed my budget reporting categories
Found at:
For starters, the evidence offered doesn't conclusively prove that the Quicken patch is the cause of the problem.
And there is no such thing as "monthly actual vs budget reports": that may be how the original poster thinks of them, but that description is not helpful to others trying to understand the situation.
There are a few ways to get reports that compare budgeted amounts to actual amounts: a.) Reports > Spending > Current Budget b.) Reports > Spending > Historical Budget c.) Planning > Budgets > CTRL+p > Print
If the original poster is using one of the two Spending > Budget reports, there is no indication as to whether it is a Quicken "saved" report (as opposed to being created from the Reports menu from scratch). Saved reports can get broken over time, or when the program is patched.
Given the spotty problem description, I am mostly guessing here, but it appears that there has been a change in the user's Quicken report preferences, compounded by a possible Quicken bug (*).
The change in Preferences would be at: Edit > Preferences > Reports Only. That preferences dialog offers the user the ability to modify how Account names and Category names appear at certain places in certain Quicken reports. You can tell Quicken to always use the Account or Category "Name", always use the Account or Category "Description", or to always use both the Name and Description.
If my guess is right, the user should be able to get back to "normal" by changing the Reports Only Preference for "Category display" to "Name".
The problem might be somewhat more obvious, if Quicken was displaying the Category Description correctly for the categories appearing in the Budget reports. But when the text in the Category column is a sub-category, instead of using the Category Description for that sub-category, Quicken appears to be using the Category Description for the Parent category, suffixed by the word "Other", followed again by the Category Description for the Parent category (*).
For example: if there is a Parent category named "Auto" which has a "Description" of "Auto Expenses", and "Auto" has a sub-category of "Gas" with a description of "Gas & Oil"; when the Reports Only Preference for Category Display is set to "Description"; the parent category "Auto" will appear as "Auto Expenses" in the report (which is correct), but the sub-category "Gas" will appear as "Auto Expenses:Other Auto Expenses". [See the Spending by Category report for an example of how I believe Quicken should be treating the Reports Only Category display Preference of "Description".]
[To see what actual category/sub-category is involved in the budget category, the user can click on the (blue) Actual amount in the Budget report which will cause Quicken to display a Banking > Transaction report for the transactions making up that budget category/sub-category.] [ (*) This may not be a bug. I suppose it is possible Quicken has decided that since the Category column in the report can not be sized, that when the contents of the Category column are other than just the category name ("Description" or "Both" name and description), Quicken will use some arbitrary mix of name and/or description plus "Other" to identify the "category" - in an attempt to best fit the text to the column width. Personally, I'd prefer to see the budget reports' Category column be sizable and have Quicken display the Category column as indicated by the Reports Only Preference.]