How do I keep an asset adjustment from showing up as income in reports?

Tony

I just adjusted the value of my home which is listed as an asset account. The adjustment shows up as income in reports and on Quicken mobile. How do I adjust the value of this asset account without the adjustment showing up as income?

Tom Young

I assume the "income" is labeled "FROM {Home Account Name}."

One way of doing this would be to customize the report to exclude all transfers.  You probably, in any case, exclude that Home Account from feeding information to the report by unchecking the Account under the "Accounts" tab of customization. 

UKR

Change the Category of this transaction to the name of the account register, surrounded by [square brackets].

For example, the account register is called "House", use Category = [House] for the transaction.

That's the same method as used when creating an Opening Balance transaction in a new account register.  This process is called a "transfer back into the same account" and is OK to use here. Quicken uses this method to establish the Opening Balance without making it appear as an Income or Expense in any views or reports ... and that's what you want here, too, isn't it?

Tony

Works perfectly, thank you!

jacobs

The answers above are for Quicken Windows, but since this was asked in a Quicken Mac category, let me chime in with a few Mac-specific suggestions.

@UKR's suggestion to do a transfer to the same asset account won't work in Quicken Mac. (I think the the transfer is a single transaction which exists in both accounts involved in the transfer, and there's no way for the single transfer transaction in the asset account to have money in and out and the same time.) I will show "Invalid Transfer" if you try this.

The simplest solution in Quicken Mac is to use a special Category in Quicken Mac called "Adjustment". It's special because Quicken doesn't treat it as income or expense, so it won't show up in any reports. (I'm not certain how this works with Quicken mobile.)

Tony

Hi, Thanks for the response. I originally used the method you suggested but the items categorized as "adjustments" still showed up as income on the Mac desktop and mobile reports. @UKR's suggestion works great - I cleaned up so old adjustments with that method too and my reports seem to make sense now. I am going to try the same methodology with my depreciating assets and see if UKR's suggestion works with decreased values too

jacobs

@Tony  Glad you're making press. But I'm puzzled… are you using Quicken Mac or Quicken Windows? I've never seen a Quicken Mac transaction categorized as Adjustment on any category-based report. It's the same category Quicken uses for opening account balances; it's not income or expense. And the transfer to the same account mentioned by @UKR doesn't work because only one side of the transaction affects your account balance. If you're on windows, it makes sense that those things work as you say, but if you're on Quicken Mac, something seems off.

UKR

> special Category in Quicken Mac called "Adjustment"

> the items categorized as "adjustments"

Could this be a matter of spelling the category name correctly, the way Quicken wants it?

Tony

Hi: I use Quicken Deluxe 6.2.0 for mac. My transaction, when created as an adjustment, showed up as income on the reports and on Quicken mobile.

jacobs

@Tony And you're using the Quicken-provided category of "Adjustment"? (In other words, not a category you created.) I've tested this a bunch, and I use it for some of my transactions, and I cannot get it to show as income. In fact, when you go to Edit > Categories, the Adjustment category is not present for you to choose to include or exclude in a report. 

So I'd love to understand how it is showing up for you. On a transaction or summary report by category, you're seeing the "Adjustment" category in the list of income categories? That should be impossible.

As for the transfer transaction to the account you're in, I'm assuming you did this in the Category column? The Transfer column, if you make it visible, doesn't even show you the current account in its pop-up list of accounts you can transfer to. And if you force it by doing it in the category column, with "Transfer:[this account name]", you'll note the red arrow in the Transfer field. If you click on the red arrow, it will pop up a warning message:

I've never experimented more deeply with invalid transfers like this; maybe it will work okay for your purposes. I'm only trying to alert you that there may be unintended consequences down the road of doing something Quicken isn't expecting. Especially since there is an alternative which should work better. But I won't keep harping on it if you're satisfied with the way you're doing it.

Tony

HI, I just reverted it back to Adjustment (yes, it is the Quicken-provided Adjustment). Strangely, it doesn't show up on the desktop version but it shows up on the net income summary on the mobile app. It looks like the mobile app reads it as income on the monthly summary but the mobile app does not read it as income on the Net Income by Month section. Weird.

jacobs

Sounds like a bug with the mobile app, then. (Sorry, I don't use the mobile app.) You should report this. The mobile app is developed by a separate team than Quicken Mac, an works with both Mac and Windows data files, so there is apparently some compatibility issue. 

MattB21

Any advice? Were you ever able to resolve this? Same issue? Thank you.

MattB21

Please disregard my comment - @UKR suggestion worked!