Realized G/L Report

traversom1

Why does Realized G/L Report only reflect gains? Losses are not listed

jacobs

@traversom1  Just to clarify: are you using Quicken Mac? There's no report specifically for realized gains and losses, so I just wanted to make sure we're on the same page. Are you referring to a section of the Tax Schedule report? Or a Realized Gain setting in the investment Portfolio view?

traversom1

I am using Quicken Mac; I created a new report specifying accounts and "Realized Gain/Loss" category.

jacobs

What if you select Investing in the left sidebar, go to Portfolio view, and set the first filter to Realized Gain and the others as desired. You can print from here, if you can get what you want from here. There are no true Investment reports (other than Tax Schedule) except what you can get from the Portfolio.

traversom1

Thanks I learned something there but get the same result - doesn't pickup losses.

jacobs

@traversom1  I (happily ) did not have any Realized Losses to readily test, so I created a simple new Quicken file to test this. I'm not getting the result you're reporting; it works as I'd expect.

Here are the transactions I created in my test brokerage account:


For $500, I purchased 10 shares in 2018. In 2020, I sold my 10 shares for $400. My loss is $100. And that's exactly what Quicken is showing in the Portfolio view…



… and in the Tax Schedule report…



… and in a Category Summary Report by year:



My conclusion is that Quicken appears to be working correctly with this simple example.

So turning back to your data, I guess my first question is whether you're certain you have an actual realized loss. If you sold for less than you paid, like in my example above, you have a loss, but there could be other factors. Did you acquire shares at different times and prices? If so, does your Cost Basis setup in your brokerage account match what your actual brokerage does? For instance, my mutual funds with Vanguard are set up as Average Cost Basis, but unfortunately Quicken doesn't support Average Cost Basis (a glaring omission, in my opinion), so setting my Quicken account to FIFO or LIFO guarantees Quicken will calculate a different -- and wrong in the real world -- gain/loss when I sell shares. Were there any other transactions over the life of your investment in the security you're looking at which could have changed your cost basis? 

traversom1

Most def have losses that should be reported, thanks for your help

jacobs

Well, then there needs to be more digging to figure out why it isn't showing your losses, since the sample test I ran above showed that it is both capable of showing losses and correctly does so with those controlled transactions.

Can you perhaps zero in on one brokerage account and one security which you're saying should have a loss, and perhaps one with the simplest history. I don't know if you could or would want to post a screenshot of the transactions for such a security here for others to try to help; it's hard to guess at possible causes without more data to go on.

One thing to check it to make sure all the transactions which added shares of the security in Quicken have a cost basis. If Quicken has any placeholder transaction because it doesn't know the basis, then that would also likely account for it not being able to calculate the loss. Since you say your gains are correct, this doesn't seem likely, but it's worth double-checking.   

traversom1

Thanks again for your help, I'll have more time next week to delve deeper.