Unrealized Gains In Budget Report (Again)

John@113

I have seen numerous questions asked about my issue but have not seen any solutions.

On the subscription Quicken - R20.15.

I prefer to see actual unrealized gains in my results vs budget reports. The Unrealized Gain category has been selected and the unrealized gain box is checked on the advanced tab.

The reported total income figure includes unrealized gains but the actual unrealized gain figure on the report is always zero. If I drill down on the "zero", it shows me alot of pluses/minuses (the daily mark-to-market calculations) which show a non-zero total at the bottom of the drill-down.

To illustrate. attached are the financials for my small church (I cannot figure out how to imbed the report in the post).

The total actual income shows as $44,402. $26,269 comes from offerings, etc. Another $1,083 comes from dividends and $4 from interest. Those total $27,356. Yet total income is $44,402. The report is missing a line item for $17,046.

If I drill down on the "zero actual" for unrealized gains...all of the daily +/- add up to ...$17,046.

So, Quicken knows that the unrealized gains are $17,046 as it includes that figure in the total income. It just won't show the $17,046 unless you drill down on the "zero actual".

This same thing happens on my personal dataset. This has been going on for a couple of years. Now with the subscription service (which I like so far), I am hoping that this can be fixed?

Tom Young

If you run your report using Reports > Spending > Income and Expense by Category does the Unrealized Gain show up correctly?  If it does, maybe re-creating the budget report from scratch might shake things loose. 

I haven't used Quicken's budgeting process or run a budget report for a few years now - I thought the changes Quicken made to the budgeting process back in 2012(?) were junk - but just for grins I called up my old (saved) budget report and modified it to make sure unrealized gain was selected both under the "Advanced" tab as well as under the "Categories" tab and the report clearly included unrealized gain in the total income but there was no line for unrealized gain within the report itself.

John@113

> @Tom Young said:
> If you run your report using Reports > Spending > Income and Expense by Category does the Unrealized Gain show up correctly? 
>

Yes, the Unrealized Gain appears with "non-zero" numbers. I do a fresh budget annually so I'm not sure that re-creating will help?

> ...but just for grins I called up my old (saved) budget report and modified it to make sure unrealized gain was selected both under the "Advanced" tab as well as under the "Categories" tab and the report clearly included unrealized gain in the total income but there was no line for unrealized gain within the report itself.
>

Effectively, you are seeing the same thing that I am seeing except I DO have an Unrealized gain line...but it reads zero. My report clearly includes unrealized gains in the total income figure.

My work-around is dumping the information into Excel and "back calculating" the unrealized gain (total income minus the other income lines). While this works, it is still a work-around for a bug in the system IMHO.

Thank you for your feedback.

Tom Young

"I do a fresh budget annually so I'm not sure that re-creating will help?"

I'm talking about recreating the report itself from scratch, not changing budget numbers.  It's been observed that updating sometimes creates problems with saved reports.

John@113

> @Tom Young said:

> I'm talking about recreating the report itself from scratch, not changing budget numbers.  It's been observed that updating sometimes creates problems with saved reports.

Ah - I misunderstood. I will try that and report back.

Edit: No go, same result as the original report. unrealized gains show as zero.

ckalinich

I have this same exact issue and have tried to have quicken resolve it for at least 10 years now. Today I reached out to their support team again after letting the matter go dormant for several years. The agent finally gave up and disconnected the chat without my authorization.

To try and solve this problem on my own, I've deleted old budgets, created new ones and the unrealized gains just do not show. Unfortunately, since the gains are included in the totals, the report doesn't add up correctly (in the accounting industry this is called "not footing."). If I run an income/spending report by category the unrealized gains will show up there. Or another way is to see them in the investment income report. But the budget report will not show them. I'm going to continue pressing Quicken to resolve this matter.

John@113

Every time I see an upgrade, I scan to see if they have addressed the issue. Alas, no luck.

I have created a "work-around" using Excel. The total income number is correct so if you copy the report into Excel, you can "force" the unrealized gains figure. Unrealized Gains are simply is the total income minus every other income figure. Not optimal but it works.

I've pretty much given up on this ever being resolved.

Quicken Sarah

Hello @John@113

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue to the Community, although I apologize for any frustration or inconvenience experienced.

I did some digging on this issue with the unrealized gain in budget reports and was able to confirm with our Product Teams that the budget report is working as designed and is not intended to include the unrealized gains, even though the option to include them is available under the Advanced section of the report customization options.

We have an open request with the Product Team asking they add a feature to the budgets that will include unrealized gains, however I do not have an ETA on when this feature might be available, I apologize.

I hope this information is helpful and please let us know if there are any further questions/concerns the Community may assist with.

Thank you again,

Sarah

(QWIN-3064)

John@113

Hello Sarah,

Thank you for your reply.

As much as I appreciate the information, I (along with other posters in this thread) do not agree that the report is functioning properly. The budget report IS calculating the unrealized gains...they are in the total income figure. The report simply shows zero for that line item. When you drill down on the "zero" figure, you are able to see the actual number.

It is like having a salary of $10k and $5k of unrealized gains. When you run the report, it shows salaries of $10k, unrealized gains of zero and a total income of $15k. When you drill down on the zero, you see the details that add up to the $5k.

I get around it by simply taking the total income ($15k in my example) and subtracting the known income items ($10k in my example). The difference - $5k - is the unrealized gains.

This is exactly what is happening. With all due respect, there is no way that the report is functioning properly.

ckalinich

Thanks @John@113 for this follow up. Excellent explanation of this issue. I received a very similar reply on my thread as well.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20065798#Comment_20065798

Tom Young

@Quicken Sarah

"Working as designed" and "the report you're looking at is correct" are two different things.  Clearly, the report isn't correct because unrealized gains are included in the income/loss totals without the number actually being present on the screen, though a line item titled unrealized gains is present, with an amount of $0.   Having invisible numbers included in a report prepared by an accounting program is about as wrong as it's possible to be.

Apparently my Current Budget report isn't working as designed.  If I run a Current Budget report that includes unrealized gain, that unrealized gain is included in the report totals but no line item for unrealized gains is present.  (I did note, though, that my unrealized gain is entirely included in the "Income" total on this report, as opposed the being split up between the Income and Expenses area of an "Income and Expense by Category" report.)

While I personally would never think to include unrealized gains and losses on any report that includes the word "budget" - my investing skills and trading instincts aren't so refined that I'd even pretend to manage that - if the developers don't want unrealized gains included in budget reports, they should do the appropriate coding.