Re-Invested dividends--Income/Expense by Category Reports

Gary R

I tried your suggestions and numbers just not making any sense.  I'm done with this !  No further action or recommendations needed.  No clue where Quicken is getting these ridiculous numbers, but your explanation is just way to confusing and over my head.  Maybe I'll just delete this post if I can figure out how to do this.

Jim_Harman

Please don't try to delete anything, this has led to some interesting discussion that may be helpful to others.

If you are still interested in tracking your investment performance in Quicken, I encourage you to set up a test file with some simple investing transactions and experiment with the Investment Performance Report.  It may not be the analysis you are looking for, but if your data is correct, its calculations are valid.

It is most useful for analyzing periods of one year or more, but the trick of setting the date range to a full year gives meaningful YTD results.

Gary R

I'm just going to mention one more thing.  As I already said, all my accounts, banks and brokerage are shown under "Investing".  However, the Performance Report actually separates the Banks under Investment and Brokerage accounts under Retirement. Jim suggested that all accounts be included in the performance report.  I showed the reports and losses and % returns made absolutely no sense and completely useless.

However, I ran the performance reports again just checking off the brokerage accounts (No banks), set the date range to Year to Date, and the losses agreed with my portfolio register for year to date losses and the Avg Annual % shown in the performance report was very close to the % numbers reported by my brokerage on line performance reports.  (Only off by less than 2%)
 

Jim_Harman

Ok that's good.

For your banking accounts, are they actually bank accounts but you have set the Account Intent on the account details Display tab to Investing?

The Investment Performance Report does not handle those correctly.

Gary R

Bank accounts are all bank accounts like TD, Synchrony, Ally, Citizens, etc.  
Not sure what you mean by set the Account intent on the details display tab to investing?
All I know is that when I just check off the brokerage accounts, the amount look ok.  

Jim_Harman

You said earlier, "all my accounts, banks and brokerage are shown under 'Investing'". I am trying to understand what you mean by that.  

Are your banking accounts grouped with your investing accounts in the Accounts bar?

If you click on the gear at the top right of one of the bank accounts and select Edit Account details then click on the Display Options tab, is the Account Intent set to Investment?

Gary R

Yes to all----
I'm shutting down my pc for the night----Won't check any messages until tomorrow morning.

Jim_Harman

Ok in that case you have found what I think is a bug in Quicken. What I have observed is:

-- For banking accounts where the Account Intent is set to Investing, there are some weird issues with these accounts in the Investment performance Report.

-- The starting and ending balances in the report for these accounts do not always match the balances in the account's register 

-- There is a blank line in the report for each transaction in the account during the report period. This includes interest transactions, which, like reinvested dividends, should not have lines in the report because they are internal to the account. 

-- The reported performance appears to be based on the incorrect starting and ending balances and does not take deposits and withdrawals into account as Investments or Returns.

Please post back if you see the same.

Gary R

I'm not seeing the same--
My Beginning and ending balances on the performance reports agree with the portfolio registers and also my brokerage statements.  
No blank lines.
You did help with my initial question concerning dividend-reinvestments-----I have a couple options how to handle them based on the way I report my year to date % returns.

Gary R

Just for fun, I went to the performance tab on the portfolio register and just checked off the brolerage accounts (No bank accounts) and all securities.  The beginning and ending balances agreed with the performance report previously mentioned.  It shows growth of $10,000 --so it starts with $10,000 on 1/1/2022 and ends with $10,066.  How is that possible when I know that my investment portfolio is down over 15%  year to date.?  I also changed the date to 12/31/2021 and it gave me the same numbers.

Jim_Harman

Sorry, but if you ask a technical question like this, all I can do is give you a technical answer. Please see this discussion, which I have already sent you and you have responded to.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7905946/improve-growth-of-10-000-calculation-so-it-does-not-overstate-returns-with-purchases-or-sales

Forum Moderators sometimes review issues discussed here and refer them to Development, but if you want Quicken to work on a problem, I recommend you contact Support via phone.  Be sure the support agent understands the problem and gives you a ticket number for future reference.

They will probably not be able to deal with a complex set of data like yours but if you give them a simple example that demonstrates the issue, maybe they will get the point.

You should also use the Help > Report a Problem menu in Quicken to submit the issue online. In your submission, be as clear and thorough as possible. Reference the ticket number and provide a link to this discussion. Provide step by step instructions to reproduce the problem. You will not get a response to an electronic submission, but they say they review and prioritize the submissions. 

Gary R

In the previous discussion I had checked off all accounts and that included bank accounts as well.  I was simply showing you that this time I just checked on the brokerage accounts and the results made no sense to me.  Let's just leave it there.  From my example, I think you can see that these reports are useless and make no sense.

Dr John

I've decided not to use the "reinvest dividend" action and use the two transactions approach, one for the nature of the monies received (div, long term, etc.) and the second for the purchase itself. My budget report is more accurate for my needs, tax implications are nil since income flows to either taxable or non-taxable accounts. Good discussions!