Wage reductions apprearing as fire department income

Harry Tallacksen

I recently set up an [Insurance Premium Deductions] "liability" line item/category into which I collect wage reduction insurance premiums from fire dept members. That seems to work as expected with the fire dept liability accumulating there. But paying the insurance invoice from that liability category caused a "FROM Insurance Premium Deductions" line to appear in the Income section of my Income/Expense by Category report as if the collected premiums are being reported as fire dept income for that month period. Am I doing something incorrectly or was that to be expected?

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @Harry Tallacksen

Thank you for the response and the additional details. As long as these transactions are being tracked in what Quicken considers to be a transfer, these will be displayed as transfer transactions.  Quicken is a personal finance software (PFM) and is not accounting software, so you will see inconsistencies such as this.

You may instead consider assigning a category to these transactions instead. You may name the category anything you will. You can then report on the category and see the totals. These would then also reflect as an expense/deduction if that is what they need to reflect.

I hope this helps to clarify.

-Quicken Tyka

NotACPA

In that payment transaction,  what appears in the Category field.  It should be an expense category of some sort.

Harry Tallacksen

NotACPA: As an example, the unexpected "income" line from the collected premium wage reductions appeared in the month of July. The payment of the collected premiums to the insurance company the following month (Aug) does indeed report as "TO Insurance Premium Deductions" in the expense part of the Income/Expense report and in the same amount as what had been collected.

Harry Tallacksen

I guess I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the collected [Insurance Premium Deductions] being reported as "income" when it was the fire dept's money to begin with that simply was not paid out to the dept members. And that's why I'm wondering if I've posted things in the right way.

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @Harry Tallacksen

Thank you for the response and the additional details.

Can you please provide a screenshot of what you have posted using the Windows Snipping Tool?

You can then drag the image to the comment box to share it with the Community.

The more information you can provide regarding this issue will help the Community to better understand and assist.

Thank you,
-Quicken Tyka

Harry Tallacksen

In response to Quicken_Tyka's wonderful suggestion, I've attached a PDF page that I hope does a better job of asking my question than my previous words alone have done.

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @Harry Tallacksen

Thank you for the screenshot and the response. If you haven't done so already, have taken a look at excluding transfers from the report?

This is located under "Customize" and "Advanced" there is an option to exclude.



It does seem confusing as these transactions are neither income nor expense as it is a transfer. There are settings and options to account for transfers, in this instance, the best option will most likely be to leave them out of the report.

I hope this helps!
-Quicken Tyka

Harry Tallacksen

Thank you, Quicken Tyka, for your helpful response.
Yes, I can make the lines go away as you suggested. But should I? What is Quicken trying to "say" by creating and showing those "transfer" lines in the report? To my way of thinking, I did not transfer anything. I simply temporarily deposited wage-reduction collected money into a [liability account] so the board could see the accumulated liability, and spent from that same account which reduced the liability. I'm having a hard time understanding the principle behind what's going on here. I want my reporting to the Board of Trustees to be accurate, truthful and complete, but these Quicken-created transfer lines puzzle me. Am I going about the tracking of such collected money in the wrong way? I expect the same thing to happen when I work on cleaning up our withholding of income taxes into a [liability account] and then pay the collected money to the government (my next clean-up project).

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @Harry Tallacksen

Thank you for the response and the additional details. As long as these transactions are being tracked in what Quicken considers to be a transfer, these will be displayed as transfer transactions.  Quicken is a personal finance software (PFM) and is not accounting software, so you will see inconsistencies such as this.

You may instead consider assigning a category to these transactions instead. You may name the category anything you will. You can then report on the category and see the totals. These would then also reflect as an expense/deduction if that is what they need to reflect.

I hope this helps to clarify.

-Quicken Tyka