# Understanding Top-Level Income/Expense Categories

**URL:** <https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/t/understanding-top-level-income-expense-categories/120>\
**Category:** Cashculator\
**Created:** [November 9, 2021, 1:39am UTC](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/t/understanding-top-level-income-expense-categories/120 "2021-11-09T01:39:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![beaufrazer](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/user_avatar/discourse.apparentsoft.com/beaufrazer/32/87_2.png) [@beaufrazer](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/u/beaufrazer)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2021, 1:39am UTC](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/t/understanding-top-level-income-expense-categories/120/1 "2021-11-09T01:39:42Z")

</div>

Just wondering what Top-Level Income/Expense Categories are for?

It appears that I can create them and they appear to align with Income/Expense Groups, at least from a UI Layout perspective just without Bold text.

I can assign an expense value to a Top-Level Category, so I’m assuming that they are not for grouping. I can select to Add Category Inside but that doesn’t seems to work right now. So just curious

 ![image](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/uploads/default/original/1X/e443038f95817eb0d44046a53d5da551f846f4ca.png)  
 ![image](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/uploads/default/original/1X/fde18cc6d6dcd356a0b8e4262ea501e845ef0c7e.png)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jacob](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/user_avatar/discourse.apparentsoft.com/jacob/32/13_2.png) [@Jacob](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/u/Jacob)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2021, 4:13am UTC](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/t/understanding-top-level-income-expense-categories/120/2 "2021-11-09T04:13:16Z")

</div>

Top-level categories are categories that do not belong to a group, nor can they have their own group. They are like categories in Cashculator 1 - standalone categories. You can create a table without grouping at all, just using top-level categories. Or if you thought that you needed a category but it only appears to have one sub-category, then there’s no need to create a group for that.

Does it answer your question?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![beaufrazer](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/user_avatar/discourse.apparentsoft.com/beaufrazer/32/87_2.png) [@beaufrazer](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/u/beaufrazer)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2021, 7:40pm UTC](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/t/understanding-top-level-income-expense-categories/120/3 "2021-11-09T19:40:32Z")

</div>

Your explanation makes sense.

Maybe you had a typo?

> [@Jacob](#):
>
> Top-level categories are categories that belong to a group

I wonder if it wouldn’t be cleaner/clearer to just call it a Category and allow Categories to be promoted to outside a group, or dragged and dropped to outside a group there by allowing them to be either be included in a grouped summary, or stand alone at the top level so to speak. I’m only saying this as the name in the menu is not intuitive, and there is a right click menu item that allows the user to Add Category Inside

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jacob](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/user_avatar/discourse.apparentsoft.com/jacob/32/13_2.png) [@Jacob](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/u/Jacob)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2021, 7:53pm UTC](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/t/understanding-top-level-income-expense-categories/120/4 "2021-11-09T19:53:40Z")

</div>

This is certainly a typo. Looks like it misses a “do not”. Somehow I often forget to type the negations 🙂 I’ll correct this.

Maybe the menu can be simplified. We’ll take another look at this. Thank you.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![beaufrazer](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/user_avatar/discourse.apparentsoft.com/beaufrazer/32/87_2.png) [@beaufrazer](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/u/beaufrazer)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2021, 10:07pm UTC](https://discourse.apparentsoft.com/t/understanding-top-level-income-expense-categories/120/5 "2021-11-09T22:07:51Z")

</div>

I had a few minutes to have a play around and I just realised that you can drag and drop categories to the top level. I now understand this feature a bit more. I think what threw me was the Add Category Inside menu item for existing top level categories.

Thanks for the quick replies @Jacob