Best way to handle Roommate Expenses

tommy1010

I want to utilize all of Quicken's features like seeing how much I spend on groceries, or even setting grocery budgets while still achieving the goal of offsetting my expenses where my roommate covers their share. For example, I pay for all of the groceries so there will be say 30 transactions totaling $1000 at month's end all categorized as groceries. My roommate will send $500 cash at the end of the month to pay for their share. What's the best way to show this in and out within Quicken without inflating my expenses?

EL1234

The easiest way would be for you to categorize the $500 transaction of cash from your roommate as Groceries. That amount will get subtracted from the Grocery expenses in the spending plan so that your net spend will be $500. (Note that this will work best if the reimbursement happens at the end of the month vs at the beginning of the next month, since spending plan amounts do not - yet - roll over to the next month. If the payment is at the beginning of the next month you could consider adjusting the date to the month the spending is for so that the spending plan doesn't get thrown off.)