What categories are

Quicken assigns categories to your transactions when it downloads them from your bank. These are Quicken’s best guess about why a transaction was made. For example, if you spend money at a supermarket, Quicken guesses that you are buying groceries.

How categories are used

Categories are used to power many of the key features of Quicken, including tracking your spending and creating budgets. When you create a budget, you identify the different categories you plan to spend money in, and Quicken tracks your spending in those categories.

Why you should review your categories

Quicken is good at identifying categories for transactions, but not perfect. Quicken will assume that you bought groceries at a supermarket, but you may have bought pots and pans, a magazine, or medicine.

By reviewing your transactions, you make sure you are accurately tracking your income and spending.

Finding the right category

You may see quite a few sections of categories depending on your version of Quicken. Personal Expenses is a good place to start. This section contains the transaction categories people use in day to day life, from shopping, to auto expenses, to mortgage and rent. You can also select to see more information about individual categories.

Editing uncategorized transactions

There are some transactions that Quicken does not know enough about to assume a category. In those cases, you will need to supply the category.

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The Category list appears in your register. In the example above, the user is selecting a new category for a register entry. Sometimes, when Quicken assigns a category, you will need change it to better reflect the nature of the transaction. You can also see a blank entry in the Category list. This occurs when Quicken is not familiar enough with a payee to add a suggested category.