Show HSA transactions in spending report

Unknown

Hello,

I have a health savings account (HSA) with a pre-tax deduction from my paycheck.  Quicken appears to force me to model this as an "asset" type account.  Even though I can change the account intent to "Savings" and change its position in the account bar, I can't create a manual "Savings" account and use it for my HSA -- Quicken won't allow me to select any manual checking, savings, credit card, etc. accounts in the pre-tax deduction section of my paycheck transaction.

So far, so good. The "asset" HSA account is fine for recording transactions and viewing the balance and I'm not having any trouble there.  For what it's worth, I prefer manual entry and am not using online services for this account.

My problem is that none of the transactions from the HSA account show up in the Spending reports.  Either "Spending" or "Spending without Taxes".  I would like to know how much money I spent in the year, especially compared to my income, and the HSA expenses are a significant part of that.

Am I doing something wrong?  Is there a better way to set up an HSA account?  I've experimented with modeling it differently, mainly by trying to use a manual checking account, but Quicken definitely steers HSAs down a particular path and I don't want to fight against the current too much.  I just want to see my doctor bills treated the same way as my phone bill in the spending reports.

Thanks for any help and advice.

--
Quicken Premier 2019 R16.14 on Windows 7

Jim_Harman

I think the issue is that asset accounts are not included by default in spending reports.

However using the Paycheck Wizard, I don't see anything that requires an HSA contribution to go to an asset account.

I set up a regular checking account called "HSA checking" Then I edited the paycheck to add a pre-tax deduction called HSA Contribution (not using the built-in Flex Spending option) with the category [HSA checking]. 

Expenses paid from the HSA checking account are included by default in spending reports.

Note however that for tax tracking purposes you probably do not want to include expenses paid from this account, because they are not deductible. You can exclude it from tax reporting by going to the Account Details and selecting Tax deferred.

Jim_Harman

Note that the Flex Spending pre-tax deduction option in the Paycheck Wizard creates an Asset type account. (I have never understood why Quicken thinks an FSA account should be an Asset rather than a Checking account.)

If you go to the Spending tab and select All accounts, payments from this account are not included even if you have set the Intent of the account to Spending.

If you then select Custom... you can see that Asset type accounts are not checked. Selecting the Flex Spending account forces it to be included

It is certainly confusing that All Accounts includes checking, savings, and investing accounts but not asset accounts whose Intent has been set to Spending. 

Unknown

Thank you!  When I tried a normal checking account, I still used the built-in Flex Spending pre-tax deduction and didn't consider using a generic deduction.  I can see how that would work, although without whatever intelligence Quicken has to offer concerning HSAs.  I don't use Quicken for taxes, so I'm not overly concerned with precise accounting in that regard.

But the Custom account list in the Spending tab is exactly what I was looking for; I hadn't noticed that.  With that, I can continue using my accounts and paycheck reminders as-is.  Very much appreciated!

Kevin in Boise

Andrew Edge said:

Thank you!  When I tried a normal checking account, I still used the built-in Flex Spending pre-tax deduction and didn't consider using a generic deduction.  I can see how that would work, although without whatever intelligence Quicken has to offer concerning HSAs.  I don't use Quicken for taxes, so I'm not overly concerned with precise accounting in that regard.

But the Custom account list in the Spending tab is exactly what I was looking for; I hadn't noticed that.  With that, I can continue using my accounts and paycheck reminders as-is.  Very much appreciated!

Thanks Jim, I was also frustrated that expenses from my HSA weren't showing up on the Spending tab, your hint about Custom solved the problem. I was also able to use Custom on the Home tab to get the HSA expenses to show up there as well.