Managing Your Business Categories
Applies to: Quicken Business & Personal
Overview
Business categories organize your business income and expenses into meaningful groups so your reports, budgets, and tax tracking stay accurate.
In Quicken Business & Personal, every transaction is assigned a category. Categories help you:
understand where business money comes from and where it goes
keep business and personal activity separated
generate clearer business reports and summaries
Business categories are used for business transactions. Personal categories are used for household finances.
Important: Avoid mixing business and personal categories. Keeping them separate improves reporting accuracy and makes year-end review easier.
Why Business Categories Matter
A clear category structure turns raw transactions into useful financial insight. Proper business categories help you:
Track performance with cleaner profit-and-loss and spending summaries
Support tax tracking by organizing deductible expenses throughout the year
Control costs by spotting trends and high-expense areas
Stay consistent as your business grows and spending changes
Example:
Marcus noticed his Professional Services spending was higher than expected. After splitting it into subcategories—Accounting, Legal, and IT Support—he quickly identified where costs were increasing.
Setting up Your Business Categories
Start with built-in categories
Quicken Business & Personal includes common business categories that work well for many businesses, such as:
Office expenses
Travel and meals
Professional services
Insurance
Utilities
Marketing and advertising
Tip: Start simple. Broad categories are easier to use consistently, and you can add detail later with subcategories.
Add custom categories when you need more detail
Create custom categories when built-in categories are too broad or don’t match how you run your business.
Examples:
Software Subscriptions (instead of grouping everything under Office Expenses)
Client Gifts (instead of general Marketing)
Marketplace Fees (for Etsy, Amazon, or platform charges)
Contractor Payments (for outsourced labor)
Example:
A consultant adds Software Subscriptions to track tools like Adobe and Zoom separately from other office costs.
Organize your Category Structure
Use subcategories for clarity (without clutter)
Subcategories help you track detail while keeping your category list organized.
Example structure:
Travel
Airfare
Hotels
Meals
Tip: Use subcategories when you want to analyze a group of expenses, not for one-off purchases.
Keep naming consistent
Good naming improves reporting and reduces duplicates.
Best practices:
Use clear, specific names (example: Software Subscriptions)
Avoid vague categories (example: Misc for everything)
Use a consistent format (example: “Travel – Hotels” or subcategories under “Travel”)
Manage Business Categories Over Time
As your business changes, you may want to refine categories to keep reports meaningful.
You can manage categories by:
creating new categories
editing names or structure
adding subcategories
hiding or deleting unused categories
Tip: If a category has historical transactions, consider hiding it instead of deleting it to preserve reporting consistency.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Creating too many categories early (leads to inconsistent use)
Duplicating similar categories (example: Office Supplies and Office Expenses)
Mixing business and personal categories
Ignoring recurring transactions that could be automated with rules
To Create, Edit, or Delete business categories
To manage categories:
Go to Settings > Categories & tags
Select + Category to create a new category
Use Edit to update a category name or settings
Use Delete to remove a category (you may be prompted to reassign transactions)