1. Home
  2. Quicken Personal Finance
  3. QH&B: Splitting personal from business

QH&B: Splitting personal from business

I've been running Quicken for a long time. I've run with personal accounts separate from business and I've run them together, so I know the pros/cons of each.

I've been running them together for a couple years and would like to go back to separate files. I'm looking for an easy way to do this. If I just dump each, transfers will be broken and I think balances and such will be affected. Do I need to wait until all transfers have cleared, then start two new files?

It's the end of the week. I can't think. Looking for some instruction for others who have been down this road.

Thanks!

Reply to
Scott Smith
Loading thread data ...

Make two copies of your current Quicken file; planning on one becoming your personal file, the other your business file. Delete business accounts from the personal file and personal accounts from the business file. Check the results. I think Quicken will create artifical "categories" for the missing transfer categories [account-categories], you can work from there to recategorize those ex-transfers if you don't like what you see. You can check this out and decide for yourself if you like the results ... you can't lose anything, just revert to your current file.

You can also attempt the change by exporting/importing QIF files; I suspect it would be a lot more work, for no gain.

This will have no useful effect.

I have not been down this road.

Reply to
John Pollard

I went thru deleting one account from my file a while back - earlier version of QW??

Seem to recall that the resulting category field for affected transfers was blank - 'uncategorized'.

Do not recall any balances of remaining accounts being affected.

Reply to
JM

You may well be right; I can not remember when I last actually tested this, so I make no guarantee. But I think it is still something that can be handled, even if it takes a bit of effort.

When opening each new file, plan to recategorize ex-transfers to specific accounts to some new category (whether it is literally an account, a pseudo-account, or simply a new pure category) ... the user will have to decide how to handle the new situation.

I never intended to suggest the process would be trivial ... hope no one thought it would be a piece of cake based on my post. But I think most of the "effort" can be limited to "mental" effort ... effort largely expended before attempting the "conversion". I think careful consideration before the fact will make the process reasonably easy.

Reply to
John Pollard

I forgot to add that, I too, do not remember balances of involved accounts being affected. I think that Quicken takes care of this for the user ... and I think my remembrance of that may have played a part in my apparent trivialization of the process in my original post.

Reply to
John Pollard

BeanSmart website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.