Early Deposits

Question

My wife's company pension has been coming on the first of the month so there has been no problem keeping track of.  However,now the pension will be deposited at the end of the previous month; September 26 instead of October 1st. This means Jan 2022 deposit will come in December 2021. How can this be corrected so the cumulative amount  can be seen in the correct month and year without messing up the balance? Is there a way? Quicken for MAC Deluxe V 6.3.2

volvogirl · Accepted Answer

My  husband's pension is dated on the first so the 12 months taxable are Jan 1 to Dec 1.   But the deposit is usually a couple days before.   But I still date the deposit on the 1st to be counted in the right month and year.

jacobs · Accepted Answer

@lou_garfinkle Are you entering the pension deposit manually, or is it being downloaded in your bank account?

In either case, the only potential problem is bank reconciliation: you need the deposit in late December to be in December so you can reconcile your your checking account including this deposit; if you were to move it to January, then you wouldn't be able to reconcile because the money is in the bank. (If your bank statement cycle isn't the end of the month, this may not be a problem at all; you can just shift the data of the deposit several days into the next month._

What you could do is create a temporary Asset (or Liability) account. (I have an account I call "Exchange" for situations where I have money in transit which must be time-shifted to another period.) When the bank deposit comes in, record it as a Transfer to the Asset account on the day it actually arrives. This has no category, so it is not income yet. This gets the correct balance in your checking account for the month-end, so your bank reconciliation will work. The Asset account reflects a negative balance for the amount of the deposit.

Then, on the first day of the next month, enter a transaction for XYZ Pension with the positive amount of the pension payment and assigning the appropriate income category (such as Personal Income:Other Pension, or whatever category you use) for the pension income; this will zero out the asset account balance, and create the income in the new moth/year. You can make this a scheduled transaction on the first of every month, so you actually have nothing you need to enter each month.