Quicken 2009 H&B Report Problems

Q2009 did change the rules for creating a P&L report: only "business" categories, or transactions whose category is assigned a "business tag" will appear in that report.

You create a business category by assigning it a Schedule C Tax Line Item.

You create a business tag by going to

Business > Manage Business Information and creating a business tag. A transaction whose category has that tag will be a business transaction ... even if the category is a personal category.

If you can't or won't adhere to the new requirements for the P&L report, there is a very workable alternative. With one - I believe, infrequently used - exception, the Income and Expense reports will duplicate the Profit & Loss report ... and the Income and Expense reports can use any category, business or personal.

John:

I can see right away that I need to buy the manual for Quicken 2009 H&B. I don't really know what I am doing when I follow your instructions to add a business tag. I'm sure that once I read the manual, things will be clear.

Following your instructions, I found that not only can I create a business category, but by assigning a Schedule C Tax Line Item, I can convert personal categories to business categories. For me, this may be the best long term solution.

I did find that the reports: Banking->Cash Flow and Banking->Banking Summary provided exactly the same info in exactly the same format as the P/L reports from previous Quicken versions. Cash Flow did have different labels (Inflow vs Income & Outflow vs Expenses), but that is minor.

However, it is close to April 15. I have a deadline of March 26 to get my info to my cpa if I want my taxes done on time. I'll probably save the category conversion from personal to business for next year. I think using Banking Summary Reports for CY2008 will be quickest in the short term.

I keep separate Quicken data files for personal and for business. I guess thats why business vs personal categories have never been considered.

Quicken's Help is pretty good. Use Help > Search Quicken Help; key "business tag" in the search field and click "Ask".

To see the "Cash Flow" report "labels" as income/expense instead of inflow/outflow, Customize the report and select "Income & Expense" in the drop down "Organization" field on the "Display" tab.

John:

Thanks for your help. The Business Summary Report turned out to be exactly what I needed. Your help was invaluable. I want you to know I really appreciate it.

I do want to ask one more question. In my reports, the rows are organized be category and sub-category. In the cases where a category contains more than 1 transaction (frequent occurance), the report displays just a total for that category. I know I can click on the category total to display a new sub-report and end up expanding the entire category if I choose. I would like to know if I can go back to my original Banking Summary Report and have every category expanded completely at the same time?

David

I'm not clear on your desire.

Based on my understanding of your problem: I can not re-create it.

Both the Cash Flow report and the Banking Summary report default to showing all sub-categories.

But neither report will display individual transactions (nor, I believe, ever has) ... if that is what you are looking for.

If you are using "Saved" reports from a previous version of Quicken, I suspect it's possible that their customizations did not survive the conversion.

If you are talking about a Saved report (especially one converted from a previous Quicken version): To test my theory (and possibly fix your problem); try creating a new report, customizing it just as the old report, saving it, exiting Quicken, restarting Quicken, and displaying the newly saved report.

I don't know if my saved reports survived the transformation from a previous quicken, so all have been regenerated.

My Banking Summary Report does default to displaying all sub-categories as you stated. What I was trying to say was that a sub-category may contain many individual transactions. I would like to expand the sub-categories to reveal this info. I know how to create a new report from an individual sub-category containing all the transactions within that sub-category.

What I want to do is to have a single Business Summary Report, defaulted to displaying all sub-categories (this much I have), but with all sub-categories fully expanded to display all contained transactions. The resultant report would display EVERY transaction in every contained account over the designated time period (calendar year in my report). This wold likely be a very long report.

I think you can use either the Banking > Transaction report (subtotalled by category) or the Spending > Itemized Category report.

Both can show individual transactions, and that characteristic is retained when the report is saved so when you run the Saved report, all transactions will be displayed. [In the case of the Itemized Category report, you need to "Expand All" before you Save it.]