How would I remove a no longer used category so that it stops showing up on my monthly budget page but I do not lose the historical data associated with it?
E.g. We tracked category “A” in 2019 and 2020 but starting in 2021 we will no longer track category “A”. Can we somehow make it so category “A” doesn’t show up when looking at the 2021 budget but I can still see the spending on it when looking at 2019 and 2020? Right now I just have it set as a budget of $0 but was wondering if there was a better way to hide it all together.
@richl is right on hiding it for 2021 budgeting purposes. If you then later need to review 2019 and 2020 data just unhide it temporarily as most of the other dashboards from Labs and in the Foundation template won’t show categories marked as Hide.
But what if I want to hide a category in the middle of the year? I still want it to show up in Jan-July budgets. But I don’t want to see it in Aug-Dec budgets.
Right now there isn’t a way to hide it partially for the year. It’s hide or don’t hide
You could just zero out the budget amount for any months where you don’t need it in the Categories sheet though. It will still show up on the Monthly and Yearly Budget dashboards but have a $0 for the budget.
It might be fun to write a formula into the Categories sheet where the Hide field is set to “Hide” or “” (blank) depending on which month is selected in the Monthly Budget. Maybe give that a try, @robert.adam.johns…
I second this formula, although have no clue on how to something of the such. I have several categories that are currently dormant, but would most likely forget to unhide them in the months that they were used if I were to look back at the budget if needed
Another thought for this type of thing would be like the recurring, but only once or twice a year type expenses that they would only show up in the budget month that they are expected, otherwise be hidden?
I think a feature that allows you to hide an income or expense budget from certain months of the year, or at least keep it active until X date would be very helpful! For example, I had a side-job which I no longer work, so I have income recorded Jan-March 2024, and would really like to remove this line from my budget tracker sheet without having to toggle it between hide or unhide, AND still be able to see that income reflected in previous months. Seems like a simple fix? Anyway, just letting you know I think it would be a very helpful feature!
Fwiw, the Savings Budget sheet has this functionality. If a category has a blank budget for a month (not $0.00, but blank), it won’t appear on the Savings Budget sheet for that month. And you can bring it back later if you give that category a budget during a future month.
I know this is old, but I had a similar request to hide categories. What I did was add two columns to the Categories sheet. One checked if there were transactions, and one checked if it was marked as hidden. Then the third already there column checked if"hide"was in any of those two columns. This would then shrink your budget view until you have a transaction or budget item
