Posting Unrealized Gains and Losses

stevebarr32

I do not track my personal individual investments on Quicken because Quicken does not recognize all of my brokered accounts.

I want to adjust my investments on the balance sheet monthly to market value. If I post the unrealized gains/losses as a revenue/expense, then my cash flow needs which I use the profit and loss statement for are misstated.

In accounting terms, my gain would be debit investments and credit unrealized gains but that messes up my cash flow.

I would like to post the gains/losses directly to equity but I don't think that is possible.

What suggestions do you have?

Mark1104

try crediting the same investment account you are debiting. That will increase the asset but there should be no impact on the income statement. does that work? 

stevebarr32

> @Mark1104 said:
> try crediting the same investment account you are debiting. That will increase the asset but there should be no impact on the income statement. does that work? 

If I do that, then the investment account is not recorded at market value because it is increased and decreased by the same amount.

Mark1104

what report are you using in Q to determine cash flow. Can't you just uncheck the unrealized gain / loss CATEGORY so that that line is eliminated from the report? 

q_lurker

I suggest you create a series of securities one for each account. You ‘add’ or otherwise acquire 1 or 100 or 1000 shares and then regularly price the shares to your total market value. No extra cash transactions involved. 

Tom Young

@stevebarr32

@Mark1104 is correct.  Making a debit entry to any asset Account but then entering in the Category box the name of the Account itself [Name of Account] has the effect of increasing your net worth.  It's a piece of Quicken trickery commonly used.  Essentially it's a debit to the asset with an offsetting credit to Net Worth.

Here's how I would do it.  Create a manual, non-connected Investment Account and do an Add action for one share of "company X."  Use the cost basis of all the "missing" securities represented by this one share as the per share cost.  That will increase your net worth by the amount of your cost basis.

Then, periodically, value this one share at such an amount that the market value of all the missing securities is properly calculated.  Each time you change the market value of this one share Unrealized Gain (or Loss) will be affected in an Income and Expense report.