Investment income reporting

Joe Wasik

I have been using Quicken Premier for probably 20+ years for banking and credit cards. Yet in all that time, I never figured out how to get it to cough up investment income information. It's time to ask. (There is a report called Investment Income, but no matter what I do with it, I see no useful information. ) Here's the thing: my financial management account has a dozen different securities. How awesome would it be to have a report showing the income produced by each individual security in any date-range I choose. To be clear, I am only interested in income. Not value, not asset class, not allocation, etc. Just % or dollar income per security. Can Quicken even do it?

Sherlock

I think the Investment Income report does provide the information you say you're looking for when we subtotal by security:  open the Investment Income report and select Security in the Subtotal by: pull-down menu.

Boatnmaniac

The Investment Income report does exactly what you want it to do.  I use it frequently, myself, to track various types of income, like, Dividends, Interest, Cap Gains Distributions and Realized Gains/Loss.  It is a very flexible report that can be filtered and sorted in a wide variety of ways for any date range for which you have data.  Here is one way that shows the income by security for the last 12 months:

The far right column shows the investment income by security.

If you cannot see this kind of investment income information, click on the upper right gear icon to bring up the customization dialog.  Carefully go through each tab to make sure all the options you want are selected and the options you don't want are deselected.

Joe Wasik

Thanks for taking the time to write your reply. I have meticulously played with every option in the Invest Income report settings. I cannot get it to do what you did. Even my heading does not show securities like yours. I have attached a screen shot.

Sherlock

Joe Wasik said:

Thanks for taking the time to write your reply. I have meticulously played with every option in the Invest Income report settings. I cannot get it to do what you did. Even my heading does not show securities like yours. I have attached a screen shot.

Are you saying that you cannot select Security in the Subtotal by: pull-down menu?

 

q_lurker

In spite of @Boatnmaniac 's Sherlock 's title on his report, I believe that to be an Investment Transactions Report rather than an Investment Income Report.  See if that report customized, subtotaled, and sorted works better. 

Joe Wasik

Indeed, such a transaction report does show me income -- just not in a way that is all that useful. The transactions don't mean much, only the subtotals do. If it could report percentage of either the the cost or the value, then that would be very useful. Maybe I can use the report to do some manual calculations.
Thanks.

Boatnmaniac

q_lurker said:

In spite of @Boatnmaniac 's Sherlock 's title on his report, I believe that to be an Investment Transactions Report rather than an Investment Income Report.  See if that report customized, subtotaled, and sorted works better. 

Good catch @q_lurker .  I had forgotten that I had originally modified the Investment Transactions report (years ago) and then saved it as my Investment Income report because that is what I use it for.  IMO, it is a much better Investment Income report than is the Quicken default Investment Income report.  But to be sure I don't forget this, again, in the future I've renamed my saved report as "Inv Transactions: Income".

Joe Wasik said:

Thanks for taking the time to write your reply. I have meticulously played with every option in the Invest Income report settings. I cannot get it to do what you did. Even my heading does not show securities like yours. I have attached a screen shot.

Sorry for the confusion about how I named my saved report.  I keep some reports in my toolbar for quick access so when I saw your post above I simply opened the "Investment Income" report I had saved in the toolbar instead of opening the Quicken default Investment Income report.  My bad.  I should have remembered.  Hopefully you will be able to customize the Investment Transactions report to provide you with the information you are looking for.

Sherlock

Joe Wasik said:

Indeed, such a transaction report does show me income -- just not in a way that is all that useful. The transactions don't mean much, only the subtotals do. If it could report percentage of either the the cost or the value, then that would be very useful. Maybe I can use the report to do some manual calculations.
Thanks.

Again, the Investment Income report does provide the information you say you're looking for when we subtotal by security:  open the Investment Income report and select Security in the Subtotal by: pull-down menu.

Joe Wasik

I also noticed that the report Investment Income breaks down the securities into columns instead of rows (Yes, securities are in the dropdown). Very deceptive. It means some income information was there, but it was off-screen. Report needs a pivot. Meanwhile, I'll start looking into the report called Investment Performance.

Sherlock

Joe Wasik said:

I also noticed that the report Investment Income breaks down the securities into columns instead of rows (Yes, securities are in the dropdown). Very deceptive. It means some income information was there, but it was off-screen. Report needs a pivot. Meanwhile, I'll start looking into the report called Investment Performance.

The Investment Performance report uses value not just income.

To pivot a report, export the report into a spreadsheet program: press Alt + E

q_lurker

@Joe Wasik  I will point out the the Portfolio view options include an Income and Income% columns that can be added to any view.   

Those columns are subject to dates defined by:  Ending "As of" date on the view headings, and Beginning as specified in the Options / Portfolio Preferences / Show return calc from selection.

"Income" does NOT include Realized gains/losses
"Income %" is the income that is determined dived by the current cost basis.  So if you have traded in and out of a security, you might have accumulated significant "income" over time, but your current small holding with a small basis may skew the %-value. 

I did not dig deeply into how "Income" is defined.  It appears to include Dividends, Cap Gain Distributions, and (I presume) Interest.  As noted above, Realized gains/losses are not added in as "Income".  Did not poke at RtrnCap, MiscInc, or other possibilities. 

All in all, the column(s) may help, be what you want and be sufficient, but be aware of the limitations and shortcomings.  

Joe Wasik

Thanks @q_lurker. The portfolio view is a strange beast (even ran into a weird glitch). I'm going to have to spend time with custom views in order to figure out what all the columns actually are. I don't think any single tool is perfect (comparing performance using custom date ranges), but maybe I'll settle for good enough. Thanks again.