_IntInc for a bank account is not showing up in any return calcs for Investing Performance

Scrappydoo

I want to track performance online bank accounts with deposit bank tranaction with interest. I set these as "investment" in account display options. I record interest income using default category of _IntInc. However, I am unable to find any column in the customized view of the investing performance dashboard that shows me the $ or % return of this investment. They are all showing 0. I have tried various customize view categories: Gain/Loss, Income, Return, ROI, ROI%, Yield, etc. and none of them capture this interest return. How can one show income / investment return of online bank accounts including interest return alongside other asset investments in this performance view?

q_lurker

Scrappydoo said:

Investment Performance views columns (Names of columns are as stated before) Gain/Loss, Income, Return, Avg Annual Return, ROI, ROI%, Yield, etc. show 0 or N/A. They are not reflecting _IntInc in the account. ... 

FWIW:
Not to discount your issues, but all this is because a "Savings account" created as such in Quicken remains that regardless of where it is displayed.  Some time ago in response to requests from the user base, Quicken changed to allow some accounts to be displayed under headings different than their original purpose.  They allowed you to move the account from Savings to Investments.  That was not part of the original program architecture.  The change may have been satisfactory for 'Planners' (Tax, Lifetime, etc.) but it does not appear the goal was to make a savings account an investment account.  That is the first source of this set of problems.

Most of the parameters you have cited are only applicable to securities.  For interest income to be seen as part of the return, the interest must be associated with a security.  Without a security identified, you have no Amount Invested, Return, Income, Yield (depends on an Estimated Income assignment).  Then you also lack ROI, Return%, etc.  That is true whether the interest income transaction appears in a brokerage account or in a savings account moved under the Investment umbrella. 

Average Annual Return at the account level is the exception.  That value can be computed based solely upon cash.  In a very limited test, I do see AAR computed for a savings account under the Investing umbrella, but it is questionable at this time whether the transactions in and out of that account are being properly considered (it is very doubtful that they are).

Bottom line at this time - Moving cash-type accounts under the Investing umbrella may be OK for net worth information and tax and lifetime planners, but are likely to throw off portfolio performance calculations.  I would not consider workarounds to that aspect attractive.

Jim_Harman

If you want to include a banking account among your investing accounts, setting the Account Intent to Investing in the accounts Display Option is the correct first step.

To include the account in an Investing > Portfolio view, you must customize the view and check the account. If you group the view by Accounts, you should see the bank account with its cost basis, Avg Annual Return, etc.

You can also see the account in the Investment Performance Report if you subtotal it by account. It will also be included in the Investing Activity report. You can select just the banking account to see it by itself.

Scrappydoo

Thanks for the response, unfortunately, getting them to view is not the problem as I am already able to view the accounts in dashboards, etc. The problem is that when viewing the account dashboards or reports I can't find any of the performance metrics giving correct answers for _IntInc transactions either on dashboards or in reports. As I mention these include; They are all showing 0 or some are showing N/A. I have tried various customize view categories: Gain/Loss, Income, Return, ROI, ROI%, Yield, etc.

Jim_Harman

It would be helpful if you used actual Quicken terminology. When you say dashboards, are you talking about Investing Performance views, and if so, what are the exact names of the columns that seem to be incorrect?

Exactly which reports seem to be giving problems?

I gave some specific examples above. Did you try them? exactly what was the result?

Scrappydoo

Investment Performance views columns (Names of columns are as stated before) Gain/Loss, Income, Return, Avg Annual Return, ROI, ROI%, Yield, etc. show 0 or N/A. They are not reflecting _IntInc in the account.

I want easily to see return information on the Investing --> Portfolio & Investing Performance screens.

Also, in regards to not seeing it on the reports. When I run the Investment Performance Report _IntInc is NOT being shown with the accounts.

However, if I run a cash flow report it shows _IntInc with the account.

Jim_Harman

OK, thanks for clarifying.

Let's take this step by step.

1) Are you running the current subscription version of Quicken? Older versions worked differently.

2) Has the account been open all year, and have you received interest? If not, the Avg Annual return may be 0 or some other weird value. 

2) In the Account bar, normally on the left side of your screen, is the banking account grouped with your other investing accounts? If not, open the account's register, click on the gear at the top right, select Edit Account details, click on the Display Options tab, and under Account intent, select Investment.

3) Let's start with the Investment Performance report. Open the report and click the gear at the top right to customize. Under accounts, select just the banking account. This will avoid the report being cluttered with data from your other accounts. Click OK to close the customization window.

4) At the top of the report, set the date range to Year to date. You should see the starting and ending balances of the account and line items for any deposits or withdrawals. You should not see the interest transactions, because they are internal to the account. The interest received will be reflected in the ending market value and thus will correctly contribute to the Avg Annual Return. 

In my case, the Avg Annual Return as of 5/29 is a paltry 0.08%. If I customize the date range to 1/1/21 to 4/30/21, the closing date of my last statement, Quicken shows an Avg annual return of 0.1%, which matches the "APY" shown on the statement exactly. Note that the Avg Annual Return is annualized, so it assumes the YTD return will continue at the same rate for the rest of the year. This is a good assumption for bank accounts, but not so much for most investing accounts.

Are you with me so far? If so, we can go on to the data in the Investing Portfolio view.

Jim_Harman

Update:

On further investigation, there appears to be an issue in the Investment Performance Report when there are deposits or withdrawals in this type of account. It is OK when the only transactions are interest payments, as in my example above.

Jim_Harman

Further update, confirming what @Scrappydoo reports:

As might be expected, the same Avg Annual Return issues that are in the IPR are also in the Avg Annual Return columns in the Investing Portfolio views.

And in the Portfolio views the Income column is zero when you would expect it to reflect the account's interest income.

q_lurker

Scrappydoo said:

Investment Performance views columns (Names of columns are as stated before) Gain/Loss, Income, Return, Avg Annual Return, ROI, ROI%, Yield, etc. show 0 or N/A. They are not reflecting _IntInc in the account. ... 

FWIW:
Not to discount your issues, but all this is because a "Savings account" created as such in Quicken remains that regardless of where it is displayed.  Some time ago in response to requests from the user base, Quicken changed to allow some accounts to be displayed under headings different than their original purpose.  They allowed you to move the account from Savings to Investments.  That was not part of the original program architecture.  The change may have been satisfactory for 'Planners' (Tax, Lifetime, etc.) but it does not appear the goal was to make a savings account an investment account.  That is the first source of this set of problems.

Most of the parameters you have cited are only applicable to securities.  For interest income to be seen as part of the return, the interest must be associated with a security.  Without a security identified, you have no Amount Invested, Return, Income, Yield (depends on an Estimated Income assignment).  Then you also lack ROI, Return%, etc.  That is true whether the interest income transaction appears in a brokerage account or in a savings account moved under the Investment umbrella. 

Average Annual Return at the account level is the exception.  That value can be computed based solely upon cash.  In a very limited test, I do see AAR computed for a savings account under the Investing umbrella, but it is questionable at this time whether the transactions in and out of that account are being properly considered (it is very doubtful that they are).

Bottom line at this time - Moving cash-type accounts under the Investing umbrella may be OK for net worth information and tax and lifetime planners, but are likely to throw off portfolio performance calculations.  I would not consider workarounds to that aspect attractive.

Jim_Harman

Another thought/work-around for this problem:

If you don't care about downloading transactions from the bank account, then rather than changing the intent of the bank account, you can set up a manual investing account and transfer the cash that is in the bank account to this account.

Also set up a manual security called "Bank Account" or whatever. You don't need to hold any shares, but you can Buy . 001 share at $1.00 if you want it to be displayed in the portfolio views.

Then when the bank account pays interest, enter an IntInc transaction with "Bank Account" as the security. 

I believe now the account level performance will be reported correctly. The fake Bank Account security will show a very large AAR but the account level performance should be correct.

Scrappydoo

Thanks for everyone's help and information. This is unfortunate consistent with what my testing as well. seeing. I believe Quicken to at least show a Return on a savings account alongside investment performance in the dashboard. I will submit a feature request and hopefully the community upvotes it.

{Edit to add link to idea:  https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7894558/include-calculations-for-returns-returns-on-savings-accounts-shown-with-portfolio-investments#latest}