Return by Account should include both the Investment Account AND the Linked Cash Account

David Giebink

Calculation of Return by Account for an investment account is NOT CORRECT if it does not include the linked cash account. Why does Quicken not do this? Is there a way to include the linked cash account in the calculation? It makes no sense!

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @David Giebink

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to report this issue, although I apologize that you have not received a response.

May I ask that you navigate to Help > About Quicken and provide the release that you are currently running.

It would also be helpful to capture and include screenshots of this discrepancy that you are seeing.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7867159/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-from-windows

Thank you,

-Quicken Tyka

q_lurker

In a good clean file, one should be able to toggle the Linked cash account option as yes and no under the brokerage account details.  Doing so for my test file shows an Average Annual Return YTD of 17.98 with the cash in the brokerage account and 13.81 with the cash in the linked account.  (Via portfolio view or Investment Performance Report).  So I am confirming the OPs point that the linked cash information is not included in the Average Annual Return figures.  I have not checked other 'return' figures (other periods, other parameters).  

To the OP (@David Giebink)

Is there a way to include the linked cash account in the calculation? 

I would suggest you should be able to toggle the linked option to No, get your results, and then toggle it back.  (Backup first just in case).  That is not a very attractive workaround, in my opinion.  I agree that the linked cash account should be included directly.

Boatnmaniac

Yes, I confirm it, too, with the Investment Performance report.

Report with no separate checking account for the investment account...includes the cash balance in the value of the account.:

Same report with the cash held in a separate checking account...note that the cash balance is now not included in the account value but it really should be.:

I was thinking maybe this is because checking accounts are Spending accounts, not Investment accounts.  So I tried to change the intent of the linked checking account to Investment but Quicken would not let me do that.  A linked separate checking account for an investment account should be included in the value of the investment account when it comes to investment reports.

Jim_Harman

I think the larger problem here is that Quicken does not allow you to include spending accounts in the Investment Performance Report. So if you have bank CDs, for example, which you consider as part of your investing portfolio, there is no way to include them in the IPR.

Chris_QPW

Jim_Harman said:

I think the larger problem here is that Quicken does not allow you to include spending accounts in the Investment Performance Report. So if you have bank CDs, for example, which you consider as part of your investing portfolio, there is no way to include them in the IPR.

Actually you can.  For checking/savings account you can just the Display intent to Investment and they will show up in the "Investing" account selection (in account bar Investing section).



But when you try to do that for a linked cash account you get this message.

Boatnmaniac

This is possibly a much broader issue than this linked checking account question.  It also appears to perhaps be related to not being able to have bank money market accounts (and bank CDs?) included in Dashboard and who knows where else.  It all seems to go back to not being able to assign a spending account as being part of an investment portfolio...at least not consistently because in Portfolio view these spending accounts can be included.

BTW, the Dashboard issue is an "under consideration" product improvement suggestion (https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7880555/add-ability-to-include-bank-held-money-market-investments-to-dashboard-view#latest).

fun1000000

I feel your pain....I've been dealing with this issue for years
I went to the above link and voted for it

q_lurker

Jim_Harman said:

I think the larger problem here is that Quicken does not allow you to include spending accounts in the Investment Performance Report. So if you have bank CDs, for example, which you consider as part of your investing portfolio, there is no way to include them in the IPR.

Seems to me if they allow use of (general, non-linked) spending accounts in the Report, they would also need to include those in the Portfolio views that also present Average Annual return.  That would seem to open a whole new can of worms.

Boatnmaniac said:

...It all seems to go back to not being able to assign a spending account as being part of an investment portfolio...at least not consistently because in Portfolio view these spending accounts can be included.

...

Did you mean to say "cannot be included" which is what I see?  

Given that when working properly linked cash accounts can be toggled in and out of existence, I would favor always treating them as part of the investment portfolio and related return calculations.  

Other 'spending accounts' would only be included if their assigned "intent" was set to Investments rather than spending.  That would cover the Bank CDs or MM accounts.  

While I recognize that some users make their investment account operate as a regular checking account (the broad purpose of a linked cash account from the beginning), it seems to me to be a poor (risky) practice to grab any checking account (or credit card account?) and drop it in for investment return purposes.  Just seems to me all that extra inflow and outflow could distort related performance calculations. 

When you receive a paycheck on the 1st and then pay a mortgage on the 10th, is that a type of 'positive' return?  When you buy groceries on the 5th with a credit card and pay off the card on the 25th, is that an investment return?  In my view, those types of spending accounts should be kept out of investment considerations.   

Boatnmaniac

q_lurker said:

Boatnmaniac said:

...It all seems to go back to not being able to assign a spending account as being part of an investment portfolio...at least not consistently because in Portfolio view these spending accounts can be included.

...

Did you mean to say "cannot be included" which is what I see?  

Given that when working properly linked cash accounts can be toggled in and out of existence, I would favor always treating them as part of the investment portfolio and related return calculations.  

Other 'spending accounts' would only be included if their assigned "intent" was set to Investments rather than spending.  That would cover the Bank CDs or MM accounts.  

While I recognize that some users make their investment account operate as a regular checking account (the broad purpose of a linked cash account from the beginning), it seems to me to be a poor (risky) practice to grab any checking account (or credit card account?) and drop it in for investment return purposes.  Just seems to me all that extra inflow and outflow could distort related performance calculations. 

When you receive a paycheck on the 1st and then pay a mortgage on the 10th, is that a type of 'positive' return?  When you buy groceries on the 5th with a credit card and pay off the card on the 25th, is that an investment return?  In my view, those types of spending accounts should be kept out of investment considerations.   

Perhaps your "cannot be included" is a better way of saying it but I believe we are essentially saying the same thing.

And I agree, I think a separate checking account linked to an investment account should always be included in the investment portfolio.  Separating the cash into a checking account in Quicken is not a substantive change to the investment account...it's nothing more than a different way of viewing the cash.

Your last 2 paragraphs are not really a Quicken discussion but it is a good discussion regarding the most appropriate and practical use of investment accounts.  I've got mixed feelings about it for myself but my mother had check writing privileges with her brokerage account and she was happy about that.  I'm not sure, though, if I'd head down that path myself.

SWLye

There appears to be some logical and code errors related to inclusion of simple, un-linked Bank accounts into the "Return by Account" report on the Home page.

The Bank accounts which I include in my Investments view (as fixed income investments) can be chosen in customization of this report (as shown in the attached screenshot), but the results are unpredictable.

I believe that it used to work properly for beginning and ending balances, but did not properly include deposits or withdrawls in computation of IRR.

In the current version (R30.14), it attempts to report only one Bank account, regardless of number of Bank accounts selected. That report will be totally miscalculated, showing only a negative beginning and ending balance!