Categories vs. Tags: What's the Difference?
Categories and tags are powerful tools for organizing your business and personal finances. While they’re often used together, they serve different purposes—and using both strategically gives you deeper insight into your income, expenses, clients, projects, and more.
Categories organize your income and expenses for reports and taxes.
Tags add extra context—like clients, projects, or events—across multiple categories.
Think of it this way:
Categories = what the money was for
Tags = why, where, or for whom
📝 Real life examples
🍽️ Lunch with a Client on a Business Trip
You buy lunch for a client during a trip to Chicago.
How to track it:
Category:
Business:MealsTags:
Client A,Chicago Trip
Why it matters:
This setup lets you:
Track all business meals in your Profit & Loss report
Run reports or filter by Client A or Chicago Trip
🎤 Attending a Business Conference
You attend a marketing conference in San Diego and incur multiple expenses.
Categories:
Airfare → Business:TravelHotel → Business:LodgingMeals → Business:MealsConference Fee → Business:Education
Tags: San Diego Conference, 2025 Marketing
Why it matters:
Even though the expenses fall under different categories, the tags help you view your total cost for the event — ideal for budgeting, tax deductions, or planning future trips.
🔍 Categories - what the money was for
Categories classify the type of transaction. They are required for every entry and used in most standard reports.
Organized in a parent-child hierarchy, like
Business:TravelorIncome:ConsultingOnly one category can be assigned per transaction
Used for budgeting, tax prep, and key reports like Profit & Loss
Often auto-assigned by Quicken — or manually added and remembered for future transactions
💡 Tip: If a transaction isn’t categorized automatically, you can assign it manually — Quicken will remember your choice.
🏷️ Tags - add custom tracking
Tags provide extra context. Use them to track purpose, project, person, or event — across different categories.
Optional, user-defined, and flexible
You can apply multiple tags to the same transaction
Great for tracking clients, projects, trips, reimbursements, hobbies, or shared expenses
Easily searchable and filterable for custom insights
💡 Pro Tip: Use tags to run custom reports or group related expenses — without changing your core category setup.
📊 Quick reference categories vs. tags
Feature | 📂 Categories | 🏷️ Tags |
|---|---|---|
Purpose | Classify what the transaction is | Add extra info — why, where, or for whom |
Structure | Organized in a hierarchy | Flat list — use one or more per transaction |
Required? | ✅ Yes | Optional |
Example Use |
|
|
Helps With | Budgeting, tax prep, Profit & Loss | Filtering, project/event tracking |
Reports | Used in most reports | Available in custom reports and searches |
Best For | Understanding spending categories | Seeing trends across categories |
📌 Best practices
✅ Use categories to classify every income and expense transaction
🏷️ Use tags to track projects, events, people, or shared goals
🔁 Be consistent — avoid variations like
Client Avs.client a📊 Use reports by tag for deeper analysis (like reimbursements, client costs, or event budgeting)