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You are here: Experts > Shopping > Credit/Debt Management > Quicken & Other Budget/Accounting Software > Quicken 2008 - robust categories
Expert: Linda Saltz, CPA, QBalance.com
Date: 9/2/2008
Subject: Quicken 2008 - robust categories
Question
Hello Linda,
I am the new treasurer for a neighborhood non-profit swimming pool, and have inherited a Quicken 2008 file to use for tracking our accounts. I've worked with it for a year and can now see things I'd like changed, but not sure of a better way to do it.
Everything is set up with simple Expense and Income categories. It works reasonably well for clear-cut expenses or income like Dues, Life Guards, Pool Chemicals, Utilities, even monthly bank loan repayments but seems too simplistic for other situations. For instance, if we throw a Luau party, we sell tickets (income) but also have lots of expenses. Now there is an "2008 Luau Income" income category and a "2008 Luau Expense" category. On summary reports it is very hard to see profits and losses for these rolled up together since the summary reports have all Income at the top and all Expenses at the bottom (no profit/loss rollup.) I'd rather be able to set up a category like "2008 Luau" with an income subcategory and an expense subcategory or something to that effect. Similar problem with snack bar with multiple expenses and income and the desire to see the overall profit or loss.
Also, it gets confusing when something that is normally income needs a negative value. For instance, I deposit a check for dues in the bank (income) and then the check bounces. Right now the bounce is an expense "Return of bounced check" plus "bounced check bank fee". So on a report, the Dues are overstated because they weren't adjusted for the bounced check. It seems like there should be a roll-up for Dues & Return of Bounced Checks, and the bank fee for the bounce can remain a separate line item.
I guess I just need some good guidelines for setting up categories, or whatever other method is appropriate for these mixed instances.
Thank you,
Shari
Answer
Hi Shari,
Quicken does not do a great job of reporting. But you can assign classes (department) to each transaction by typing the category/class.
So for the food purchases for Luau you can post to the
"food expense/Luau"
When you use the forward slash and type a category, Quicken should ask you if you want to add this as a class. Classes for your entity might include,
Luau, Pool operations, Dues, consession bar, Overhead costs (office, rent,ect, office payroll)(loans should not be on the P&L, but Interest expense could be part of overhead)
You could then filter the Income/expense report for just one of these classes.
Alternatively, QuickBooks has P&L Reports by Class, showing
in each column like in an excel spreadsheet the class. Which would be much easier for your board to review than seeing each class on a separate page.
Quicken will auto convert to QuickBooks. But it is a bit messy to clean up. For years bookkeepers may have been posting what normally would be a balance sheet account to the expense account. The nice thing in QuickBooks is you can change the type of account from an expense account to a liability or asset account. You will need then to make journal entries to clean up these balance sheet balances for the beginning of the year.
Your easiest start date if you convert to QB is the first day of your fiscal year. For example if your fiscal year ends 10/31/08, Convert to QB and Get the balance sheet for 09/30/07 to tie out to the 990 balance sheet. Dont refer to prior years in QB, use the Quicken file. Cleaning up multiple years in QB after the conversion is a very time consuming process.
Hope this helps,
Linda Saltz, CPA
Advanced Certified QuickBooks Advisor
www.qbalance.com/quickbooks.htm
We sell QuickBooks software and supplies at a discount.
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