In newest updates Q Mac stops us from using negative numbers for interest,dividends (5 merged votes)

Stephen Fisher

I ned to enter negative numbers at tax time.  Please restore that. 

Stephen Fisher

Or solve this problem by allowing us to add our own custom income categories that permit a negative number if your internal ones can't be changed for technical reasons.

mshiggins

There is no such thing as a negative dividend. 

NotACPA

"There is no such thing as a negative dividend."

I suspect, and I so replied in his other thread, that he was paid a dividend at sometime in the year that was re-characterized at year-end to be partially a Return-of-Capital (or some such).

For that situation, the proper process would be to edit that prior dividend and split it so that it's now accurate.

Stephen Fisher

There would be 100s of monthly distributions to change so editing is not a desirable option.  The real issue, whether or not there is "no such thing as a negative dividend" is that Q has allowed me to do this from 1984 thru 2018 and there is no logical reason for them to have changed this now. Or for me to have taken steps to avoid this problem.

Moreover it is standard practice for accountants to enter a negative number for accrued interest (for example), usually on January first to balance the cash thrown off by entering accrued interest on bonds at year end. So expecting to be able to enter a negative income amount is by no means unreasonable. 

smayer97

BTW, there is such as thing as negative interest. Leave it to the wisdom of governments to come up with that one in recent years. See Switzerland, Japan, Denmark, Sweden as examples.

smayer97

... interest rates, that is

MikeChicagoIL

Allowing Negative Dividend Entries

Unlike Quicken 2007, Quicken Premier Mac 2019 only allows positive Dividend entries.  While this is normally the case, there are times when it is useful to allow negative dividend entries.

An example, is an investment that pays monthly dividends, but at the end of the year you receive a 1099 tax reporting form or other notification that some of the monthly distributions that were initially classified as Dividends are actually non-dividend distributions (Return of Capital) or Capital Gain Distributions, etc. 

I normally adjust my Quicken entries (in Quicken 2007) to tie to the 1099 tax reports so my financial records in Quicken are consistent with my income tax filings.  Rather than go into each of the 12 monthly transactions and reduce each of the dividend amounts and create a new transaction for the the Return of Capital, etc., I would simply make a single negative Dividend entry on 12/31 (labeled “to tie to 1099”) with a single Return of Capital transaction (or whatever the correct classification of the dollars are transaction is) to offset the dividend so that cash balance is unchanged.

Perhaps you can allow negative Dividends with a pop up alert asking “Are you sure you want a negative dividend entry?”

Finally, the same applies to any other investment actions that might not now allow negative entries.

Thank you.

Mike

J_Mike

Here is a very recent thread on this same topic:

how-do-i-enter-a-negative-amount-for-a-dividend-the-minus-sign-doesnt-work-anymore

I too use the procedure you have outlined and I posted my work-around for this issue. The work-around is far from ideal but does record the desired results for tax purposes.

FWIW, QWin allowed negative dividend entries up until a change sometime in the past 2-3 years. One now has to devise a similar work-around in QWin.

MikeChicagoIL

Thanks J_Mike.  I went to your workaround post and it is helpful, but clearly not as good as allowing negative Dividends within the investment transactions.  While the workaround will keep the Quicken Schedule B total as it should be, it will not link the reclassification of the dividend to the particular security where it should be.  So you lose the ability to compare dividends for that security in the Quicken Tax Schedule with the supplemental 1099 information on dividends by security, in order to find the source of any discrepancies in the total dividends reported.  Mike

JayDC

Each month a couple of securities post two dividends to my ML account. One is a positive amount, like $150.00 and the other is a negative amount, like ($2.50). When entering this transaction under Brokerage Account, the Type selected is Dividend Income, however, if you enter a negative amount, it changes it to a positive. I am assuming one work-around would be to do the math yourself and enter the difference between the two. Old Quicken 2007 would allow negative sums. Any thoughts on this??

NotACPA

Look into that negative transaction.  It actually sounds like a fee, of some sort, from either ML or the company.

With more info about this, including the name of the company,we can help you further.

J_Mike

I have not found a satisfactory work-around for entering negative dividends in QMac.
The solution is do the math yourself and enter the net amount.

QWin allows negative dividends and I have used it in situations such as you are encountering - but not in the current QMac.

JayDC

Aha....thought that might be the case. The problem with entering it under another category to make it work is that it won't keep track of the Dividends accurately. Would seem like an easy fix for Quicken.

[Deleted User]

When I receive US dividends, there is an amount which I enter as Dividend
then I have "Tax withheld"
I enter this later as Misc. expense, with the Category "Tax withheld" with the Stock name under Security
Works fine for me

NotACPA

@jaydc, again, what companies?  Are they, perhaps,foreign companies and the "negative dividend" is some sort of foreign tax?

Chris_QPW

Even though Quicken Windows allows this I would say that in fact a "negative dividend" is an incorrectly categorized transaction.

The definition of a dividend:

• A sum of money paid regularly (typically quarterly) by a company to its shareholders out of its profits (or reserves).

A negative amount implies that you are paying the company, which is impossible, shareholders don't pay the company.

NotACPA

@Chris_QPW that's why I keep asking for the name of the specific security.

The $2.50 could be a FI management fee, a foreign tax, a currency conversion  fee or any number of things.

BUT, a "negative dividend" is an oxymoron.

JayDC

It does appear to be a "agency processing fee" or
"Frgn W/[email protected]". Interestingly enough when I imported Q2007 to Q2020, it imported the negatives that I had entered as negatives. As folks have pointed out, there is no such thing as a negative dividend. There are negatives, but they are fees or foreign taxes, etc. As such, there should be an expense account under your Tax Expense Category as a Subcategory: Foreign Taxes or perhaps a subcategory under Investment Expenses: Fees to property record this. Seems to happen with Canadian Securities, or in one case GlaxoSmithKline, which in that case was a processing fee. If I want to be a nerd about this, I should go back and change the negatives to reflect the expenses that they are.

NotACPA

That "Frgn W/H" looks like a foreign tax withholding, in the country that's home to the company.

I'd record it as a tax ...not as an Investment fee.  It MIGHT be reportable on your Tax return.

micha8st

In investing I've got some weird situations. DRIPs where the brokerage charges a fee. foreign investments where taxes are withheld. ADR ( fees from a brokerage.

In the case of DRIPs with a fee, the "Reinvest Dividends" transaction type allows entry of a fee.

In the case of ADRs and Taxes, I end up entering separate transactions of type "Miscellaneous Expense". Then in the Description / Category column, I assign to Taxes:Foreign for the tax case, and investment expense for the ADR case.

ADR stands for American Depositary Receipt, and (reading just now at schwab.com) you don't actually hold the foreign stock, but you hold the equivalent through a bank or brokerage. This is apparently how you hold foreign stocks when an American.

Redriverman

I'm presently wrestling with this situation. The actual events are triggered by the need to reclassify (prior year) dividends once the issuer has reported the proportion that was Return Of Capital [ROC]. In QMac 2007, in order to balance account cash, once the ROC transaction is recorded an offsetting negative dividend amount transaction is required. This has been a long established and recommended approach for QMac 2007 users on this forum. The companion transactions should rightfully be recorded in the tax year of reporting but many issuers don't report the allocations (breakdown) until Q1. It does help to accurately distinguish dividends received from ROC for beneficial tax treatment. What approach would be appropriate for users of QMac 2020?

J_Mike

Redriverman said:

I'm presently wrestling with this situation. The actual events are triggered by the need to reclassify (prior year) dividends once the issuer has reported the proportion that was Return Of Capital [ROC]. In QMac 2007, in order to balance account cash, once the ROC transaction is recorded an offsetting negative dividend amount transaction is required. This has been a long established and recommended approach for QMac 2007 users on this forum. The companion transactions should rightfully be recorded in the tax year of reporting but many issuers don't report the allocations (breakdown) until Q1. It does help to accurately distinguish dividends received from ROC for beneficial tax treatment. What approach would be appropriate for users of QMac 2020?

In the current QMac, I have reorted to going back in the register and editing the Dividend transactions - reducing the dividend amount and adding the ROC (same date) to offset.
I start with the most recent dividend and work backwards.
I do want to see the register running balance in sync with my FI's running balance.
This gets a bit complicated when one has to change several dividends to get to the right totals - a golden opportunity to shot ones self in the foot with math errors.
I also make a note in the Memo field for these affected transactions - like "Adj To 1099R".
It's a pain but gets the desired results - the negative dividend was so much easier.

CL

FYI. I have a negative dividend when converting from Investor to Admiral class shares (Vanguard).

Allen Sessler

Please please correct Quicken to allow negative entries when splitting up dividend reinvesting transactions for things like ADR fees and foreign tax withholding in order to correctly categorize these items. This has been an ongoing issue that's silly. The workaround is to edit as needed, let Quicken change the number to positive, hit "enter," then go back and correct again with the negative sign without changing anything else. It will then be accepted, but why must we waste time doing this?

jacobs

@Allen Sessler I'd note that this Idea post has received only 8 votes over nearly three years. In order to make this a priority for the developers, more people need to add their vote for this idea. And yes, it seems silly that something like this should need to be an "enhancement request" here, but the reality is that there are hundreds of feature implementations and improvements the developers have been asked to do, and they can only get to a small number of them at a time -- so voting for Ideas here on the forum is one of the main ways users can try to get the developers' attention to get something moved up their priority list.

For anyone who want to see this functionality changed, you must add your vote: go to the first post in this thread, and click on the black arrow under the vote counter in the yellow box. More votes matter!

Stephen Fisher

@jacobs I went to do that and saw that I had already done it a few years ago.  But for me it only showed 3 votes total - not 8.

BTW, I did the workaround, creating a new expense category entitled "reversing dividends".  My accountant was unable to grasp what I was doing.

jacobs

Stephen Fisher said:

@jacobs I went to do that and saw that I had already done it a few years ago.  But for me it only showed 3 votes total - not 8.

It has three in the little counter, but also has in the title "5 merged votes". The "merged votes" is what the moderators do when they merge other threads requesting the same thing, because they can't manually update the vote counter on the forum. So 3 + 5 = 8.

Stephen Fisher

@jacobs BTW, how do you feel about the so lame "Security types" and "Asset Class" that they force QMAC users to squeeze their securities into? QWIN users can set up their classifications any way they like. I find this one of the weakest features of QMAC.  Does it anger you as much as it does me ?

jacobs

@Stephen Fisher I used to think the limited Asset Classes were a huge problem; now I think it's a problem, but not as huge. I now realize the asset classes Quicken Mac uses are the ones their third-party data provider (Morningstar?) uses. So there's a double-edged sword if they allow users to add their own asset classes: some users would find it helpful, but it would break compatibility with downloading the limited asset classes used by their data supplier. With an appropriate warning, I think Quicken should allow user-created asset classes, and since Quicken Windows allows this, I would guess this will come in time, now that they have been building out the asset allocation features. 

But there are more facets to this problem. Some of the "asset classes" users might want are typically defined in other ways. For instance, sector allocation — Financial, Tech, Energy, Real Estate, etc. — is useful for seeing how diversified your holdings are, but these are not asset classes. It would be great to have a different table for sector allocation, and for Quicken to download the sector allocation of each security, so it could present a comprehensive picture of each user's specific holdings, but I don't think they're likely to add that.

And how do you break down value/blend/growth stocks, or short/intermediate/long term bonds? Should those all be asset classes? Should Quicken create sub-group classes of stocks and bonds? Should there be 20+ asset classes? I'm not sure of the best answers to these questions, largely because I think different users would want different things. 

There are a lot of enhancements needed in the investment aspects of Quicken Mac. I hope we'll continue to see attention focused on this area. You might make asset classes the top need. I'd probably make robust saved investment reports the top need. Or, no, transactions for mergers and acquisitions. Others might make stock options the top need. Or support for crypocurrencies. Or printable graphs. Or security watch lists, or showing indexes in performance reports. Or an IRA RMD feature. Or averages cost basis for mutual funds. Or... well, you get the idea — there's a lot that needs to be done to make Quicken more robust in helping investors. And this will all take time. So I try not to get too angry over any particular missing feature, or I'd go into a mad rage and break my computer.

Stephen Fisher

Thank you for taking the time for the detailed response.
Well for me it's just awful and even worse for Canadians. are you aware Canadians buy the "Canadian" version of Q?  Our stocks are described as "International", even though of course they are domestic. In Canada we cannot use the Capital Gains function (!) because our cost base is calculated by the avg purchase price. In US apparently it is first in first out. If it feels unfair to make Mac users pay the same as WIN users for clearly less functionality, then imagine Canadians where there is less function AND actual errors in the way it works.

Anyway here's a workaround I'm using, in addition to having a tag for every type of security I want to track. For "types" and "class" I am forced to use their entries but really it means this: Large Cap=REIT; SmallCap=Preferred;US Savings Bond=Debenture; CD=GIC; Cash=HighInterestSavingsAccount;Int'l Bond=Foreign Bond etc. Those are things to track that interest me much more than the canned categories because they represent a big piece of the portfolio. 


And btw, like you I've had Quicken for a long time, since the 1980s DOS version. I managed to keep the DOS running until 2017 in the DOS Box. Now I have the Mac and I can't get it to work. I loved DOS best it was very fast and to the point.  I could run any report I wanted so easily.  That was not possible in the QMAC until early this year. And all that data is now lost because those entries going back so many years could not be converted when I moved to QWIN in 2013 and the application no longer runs.

I enjoyed your response. 

S