I Want to Delete Some Spending Categories, Can I Do It?

Question: I Want to Delete Some Spending Categories, Can I Do It?

This information pertains to either categories or subcategories you have set up in your financial software.

Answer: Depending on your personal finance software, you may be able to delete subcategories and have expenses that automatically roll into the primary category the subcategory fell under. Or, your software may allow you to change the category or subcategory on a group of transactions all at once, but not all financial software has these features.

If your software doesn't have a feature for easily re-categorizing a category or subcategory, you can go into individual transactions and change the subcategory to the category you want to use. You can use a report that shows spending by category to help with this. This method is time consuming, but necessary to accurately compare spending from month-to-month or year-to-year.

Warning: If you delete a category or subcategory and do not assign it to a new category, the effected transactions will remain in your registers, but will show up as under 'uncategorized' in your spending and budget reports. While most financial software has an option for listing uncategorized transaction on reports, if yours does not you will have inaccurate reports.

All About Spending Categories in Financial Software