I'm wondering if I'm missing something. I'm a Money convert and trying to categorize income correctly. In the case of simple interest income, CDs, savings accounts, whatever, the program does not appear to come with a visible category for that with the correct tax category.
The only one I can find is _IntInc. That has the right tax category but is marked as hidden, keeping it hidden when categorizing new register entries. But it does have the correct tax status.
So why does the only interest income category have an underscore and why is it by default hidden?
Quicken categories that start with an underscore are categories that Quicken requires in order to automatically categorize certain transactions. [And interest income is no where near the "only" such category.]
I'm not aware that the _IntInc category is "hidden" by default in Quicken ... whenever that category is required by Quicken. If Quicken doesn't need that category, it is not hidden (please look at the "hide" option for categories) ... it is non-existant.
In other words: if you have no "investment" accounts in your Quicken file, Quicken doesn't need its "_IntInc" category - and that category does not exist. On the other hand, once you create an investment account in Quicken ... Quicken needs the "_IntInc" category ... to say nothing of several other "_..." investment categories.
_IntInc is the only one I can find that says "Investment Interest Income" in the entire catagory list. It is also the only one that has the proper tax assignment as "interest income" with tax catagory "Schedule B Interest Income" assigned.
It IS hidden. When you display the catagory List, the 4th column is a check box that says "Hide", and all underscore catagories have "Hide" checked.
As a result of this Hide setting, when you are entering new tranactions and use the popup Catagory selection, _IntInc is nowhere to be found. Of course I can uncheck the Hide, but my question is WHY would it be marked Hide straight from Quicken (I'm a new 2010 convert from Money).
I have multiple invesement accounts and so recording interest income is critical. So back to my question, what would the only Interest Income catagory have an unscore and why is is hidden by default?
Since it makes no sense, I assume I'm missing someething.
Ok, I have created one for Interest with the correct tax catagory. But that makes reports harder to read because some of the interest is reported under _IntInc and some under the newly created Interest.
It looks like when you enter an transaction in an investment account, Quicken allows you to enter all types of income on a single dialog, Interest, Short Term Capital Gains, etc, etc. On that dialog you are not allowed to enter the catagory as each box has that meaning hard coded, and those use the underscore catagories. That means I can't globally replace all occurances of _IntInc with my created Interest, because those underscore catagories are hard wired in that dialog.
So to keep the reports listing ALL interest income as a single total, I'm sorta forced to use _IntInc for other non-investment transactions, like savings account interests. However, Quicken has _IntInc marked as Hidden (Hide), so I gotta believe there is some reason the Quicken programmers don't want me to use those or why hide them?
Anyway, I have created an Interest catagory as you suggested and will just have to put up with having 2 catagories that means the exact same thing in reports.
Sorry, you're right. Been a long time since I looked at a New Quicken file's categories.
"_IntInc" is not the only interest income category that comes with Quicken. See "Interest Inc". And while I can't read Intuit's mind, it may be hidden because you're not required to use it. Quicken will use it, when it is required to do so. Quicken may actually want to discourage you from using the underscore categories.
I don't think you're missing anything significant. Unhide the underscore categories, if you like.
Quicken uses the underscore categories for transactions where it automatically categorizes the transaction ... where you usually have no option to choose the category. Quicken has to be able to count on those categories being present; so you can't delete them and you can't change their names.
Other than the categories whose names begin with an underscore, Quicken's categories are merely suggestions, you can use whatever category name you like. A person that has never had any Quicken investment accounts will not have the "_IntInc" category ... but they may still need to categorize interest income. They can use "Interest Inc" or create on, or more, categories of their own choosing (I have several).
I don't recall ever having the need to select the "_IntInc" category for any Quicken transaction.
Thanks Tom for sheding some light on how Quicken uses the "hidden" invesment catagories. Yes, I just discovered that Quicken does come with a Interest Catagory that you can add it using Add Catagory and selecting the Interest one.
I think I'll stay away from using _IntInt as it still worries me why Quicken would hide them for unknown reasons. So I'll let it use _IntInc in investment accounts and I'll use the newly added Interest catagory in other account types.
Ok, thanks much for the help John. I've created my own interest catagory and will use that when I'm entering interest in a non-investment account.
When I'm learning new software, my tendancy is to try and get inside the heads of the programmers so I can use the program the way they intended, rather than me going my own way and doing it ways they never intended. I seem to run in to far fewer bugs with that approach.
I have been using _IntInc and the corresponding DivInc category for 15 years without any problem. I didn't like having two categories.
Oilcan
-----Original Message----- From: Bruce. [mailto: snipped-for-privacy@example.net] Posted At: Thursday, February 11, 2010 8:01 AM Posted To: alt.comp.software.financial.quicken Conversation: _IntInc Subject: Re: _IntInc
Ok, I have created one for Interest with the correct tax catagory. But that makes reports harder to read because some of the interest is reported under _IntInc and some under the newly created Interest.
It looks like when you enter an transaction in an investment account, Quicken allows you to enter all types of income on a single dialog, Interest, Short Term Capital Gains, etc, etc. On that dialog you are not allowed to enter the catagory as each box has that meaning hard coded, and those use the underscore catagories. That means I can't globally replace all occurances of _IntInc with my created Interest, because those underscore catagories are hard wired in that dialog.
So to keep the reports listing ALL interest income as a single total, I'm sorta forced to use _IntInc for other non-investment transactions, like savings account interests. However, Quicken has _IntInc marked as Hidden (Hide), so I gotta believe there is some reason the Quicken programmers don't want me to use those or why hide them?
Anyway, I have created an Interest catagory as you suggested and will just have to put up with having 2 catagories that means the exact same thing in reports.
Perhaps. But the way I record transactions it states who the payee is, plus I can tell by the account so I don't have a use of subcategories on this category.
Oilcan
-----Orig> I have been using _IntInc and the corresponding DivInc category for 15
The only problem with using the underscore categories is that you can't attach sub-categories to them, or at least I can't in QD2007. The use of sub-categories adds a useful functionality to Quicken and I would be loath to abandon them.
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