What is the best way to use Quicken to track activities and contributions on a Donor Advised Fund at

Unknown

My Schwab donor advised fund has many transactions including the buying and selling of exchange traded funds and donations I asked them to make to charities.  What is the best way to track this in Quicken so I can generate a report to see what charities I have given to this year and how much?

NotACPA

Well, as I understand DAF's, your charitable contribution is realized when you contribute to the DAF ... NOT when the DAF makes a payment to a charity.

SO, I'd be inclined to treat that/those fundings as EXPENSES, and create a separate Q data file for the DAF itself.

Since you don't own the DAF (it's not part of your Net Worth), it belongs in it's own file.

Then, you can run reports, such as you mention, against the DAF.

Unknown

I would still keep the DAF in the same Quicken data file. You'll be making direct deposits to it in the future I presume, and use of linked accounts to track your deposits into it is much easier, accurate, and better record keeping if that's the case. You can always eliminate the account itself in any Q reports if you care to exclude it to see your net worth and such.

Unknown

I would still keep the DAF in the same Quicken data file. You'll be making direct deposits to it in the future I presume, and use of linked accounts to track your deposits into it is much easier, accurate, and better record keeping if that's the case. You can always eliminate the account itself in any Q reports if you care to exclude it to see your net worth and such.

NotACPA

I would still keep the DAF in the same Quicken data file. You'll be making direct deposits to it in the future I presume, and use of linked accounts to track your deposits into it is much easier, accurate, and better record keeping if that's the case. You can always eliminate the account itself in any Q reports if you care to exclude it to see your net worth and such.

BUT,  the DAF has different ownership than the OP ... and it's ill-advised to keep property owned by more than 1 legal entity in the same file.

Repeating, the initial funding of the DAF is a Taxable Event ... NOT a transfer to another account.  It should be recorded as an EXPENSE, to a Charitable expense category.

Unknown

I would still keep the DAF in the same Quicken data file. You'll be making direct deposits to it in the future I presume, and use of linked accounts to track your deposits into it is much easier, accurate, and better record keeping if that's the case. You can always eliminate the account itself in any Q reports if you care to exclude it to see your net worth and such.

So first things first, what one does in Q relating to taxes is *strictly* informational for that user, and has no bearing on any 'official' IRS-related activities.  The IRS would give no hoot to where the records within Q are kept, or all.  There's no 'right way and wrong way' (endlessly we debate whether one should split a credit card payment into the pieces upon payment of the card balance, or created a separate credit card account and do that upon the actual charge date in real time and simply transfer the payment at the time you pay the bill.)

While I agree that generally having a separate QDF account is generally preferable in such matters (for example, in sole proprietorship when you don't want to co-mingle your personal money with your business money), in this case I still maintain for your own purposes it is easier and more accurate to do so and a single transaction takes the money out of one account and automatically puts it into the other.

As far as the tax issue about an 'expense' or a transfer, one can set up the receiving DAF account (within the same Quicken data file) and mark the account as tax-related (within the ACCOUNTS/GENERAL panel).  You set your "transfers in" with a specific tax schedule (I would assume "Schedule A:Cash Charity Contributions").  I believe (I don't export Q to any tax software so in this regard I am not 100% of this, but I would put money on it in a bet with even odds) that this accomplishes the same thing as recording the category as a tax-related expense and maintaining a seperate account as you suggest.  Any reports or exporting (perhaps into TurboTax) of your single file for tax-related activities would pick up the contribution for tax purposes in this regard.  Same for running any tax schedule reports.

But again, whatever way one wishes to use Q is strictly for the user's benefit. I can agree to disagree.

Jim_Harman

I tend to agree with NotACPA that the "best" i.e. cleanest way to handle the DAF would be to keep it in a separate Quicken file.

However if you want the convenience of having the DAF in the same Quicken file as the rest of your finances, you could make it a "Separate" account. That would make it show up on the Account Bar but not be included by default in Quicken's budget, tax calculations, net worth, asset allocation, etc. If you record contributions to the DAF account as withdrawals with a category of Charity and deposits of the same amount rather than transfers, I think your tax reporting will be correct.

You would have to experiment to see if you can suitably customize any reports where you want to include the separate account. For example, if you made charitable contributions from both your own accounts and the DAF, it may be difficult to make a report that shows your combined contributions. In any event this report would be wrong for tax purposes. 

Note that this is pretty much a one-time decision. There is no good way to split or combine Quicken files if you change your mind later on.

Unknown

I Have a DAF fund with Fidelity Charitable for donating appreciated stock primarily. I set up Fidelity Charitable as an Asset, a special one that I direct but do not own. While I have funds in it, it should show on my net worth. When I donate stock, I use the remove option on the stock account so that it just disappears. Then I make a transaction on the asset for the contribution using the value I get from Fidelity on the contribution. When I make DAF grants, I make a grant transaction reducing the value of the asset by the grant amount. So I can select Contribution and grant transactions separately. Also, since these funds are invested with Fidelity Charitable I can make a balance adjustment any day on the current value of the fund showing the earnings and the losses. Contributions use a category code of FidelityCharitable within my Charitable contributions, Grants use another category that is not used for tax but used just for informational purposes, Earnings or losses come from the balance adjustment of the asset.