Rental Inc xfer from savings to checking How To?

timschaeffer

Hello,
I am using Quicken Home, Business & Rental.
I receive a Zelle payment from a tenant every month for their rent. It comes into my personal savings account, and usually a few days later I do a bank transfer to my business checking that handles my rentals.
What's the best practices for
logging the incoming $ into my personal savings (shows up when I sync my accounts)
logging the transfer from my personal savings to my business checking
logging the incoming $ in my business checking to post the monies to "Rents Received" with my property Tag

How should I log these in terms of Check No., Category, and Tag?
I am assuming just don't use the property tag on anything but the deposit into my business checking account?

Thanks for the advice!

Tom Young

timschaeffer said:

Zelle deposit (personal acct.) Category='Rents Received', Tag='Property 1' = $2,000 positive cash flow.
Transfer out (personal acct). Category='Rents Received', Tag='Property 1' = $2,000 negative cash flow.
Transfer in (Biz acct). Category='Rents Received', Tag='Property 1' = $2,000 positive cash flow.
I'm I missing anything here?

 IF the first entry above does the job of increasing the cash in your file and recognizing the income, THEN I'd say you only need to record the Transfer between personal and business Account, period.  That is, the Category box for the transfer out only reads [Name of Business Account].

Jim_Harman

There may be a more elegant way to handle this situation, but one thing you could do would be:

• Record the deposit in your personal account with the proper business Category, Tag, and memo
• Record the transfer between accounts. Use one transfer for each deposit; do not combine multiple deposits into one transfer.
• When both sides of the transfer have cleared, delete the transfer
• Select the deposit then go to Edit > Transaction > Cut Transaction(s) to remove the transaction from the personal account
• Go to the business account then Edit > Transaction > Paste Transactions(s) to put the original transaction in the business account.

If possible, you should set up a separate Zelle account that sends the deposits directly to your business account.

Tom Young

I don't have the Business version of Quicken so I don't know precisely how Quicken works when it comes to handling rent, and maybe that lack of knowledge is why @Jim_Harman has suggested his admittedly inelegant process.  As an accountant I can't abide by a process that includes deleting actual "real world" transactions in Accounts.

Conceptually, every financial transaction inside your Quicken file is "yours."  Yes, some of that activity you consider as "business" activity and some as "personal" activity but, absent some special "Quicken" restrictions or wizard requirements, I don't see why a deposit into your "personal" Account couldn't be handled exactly as you'd handle a deposit into your "business" Account.  That is, if the deposit into your business Account is coded as income or as a transfer to a receivable Account, then from a pure "accounting" standpoint you should be able to handle that same deposit into your personal Account in exactly the same way. 

Either way, the end result is the same: you have more cash and you've recognized some business income.

Now if Quicken somehow "insists" that rent money must be deposited into a completely separate business checking Account  - that's all kind of suggested to me by the convoluted work around - then the way I'd handle that would be to create a non-connected "bank" Account labeled "Clearing Account."  When the money comes into your personal Account the offset would be to this Clearing Account.  Then when you transfer the money to your business checking Account, you'd enter that transaction in the personal Account in reverse, i.e., a Payment (transfer) to the Clearing Account, (zeroing out that Account), and then you'd create the actual deposit into the Business Account, in the usual manner. 

This latter method is still somewhat unsatisfactory in that you should be able to recognize the income as soon as the deposit is made instead of some days later when you actually make the transfer from the personal to the business Account, but it does work around Quicken's assumed limitations and it mimics exactly in real time the real world transactions.

Jim_Harman

I don't use the Business version of Quicken either, but I think one issue may be that the Business reports default to only including accounts you have designated as Business accounts, thus you want all Business transactions to end up in a Business account.

One thing I noticed when trying my recommendation is that cutting the deposit and deleting the transfer did not remove the transactions from the register, it just zeroed out the amounts. That seems weird to me.

timschaeffer

Tom and Jim, thank you very much for the suggestions, I appreciate your time.
Jim,
Yes, you're correct, easiest thing would be to get a Zelle account for my business checking, however Bank of Texas simply doesn't Zelle for their business accounts yet, they are supposed to later this year (they said that last year too...)

Tom,
I tend to agree with you in that I hate to delete any 'actual' transactions.

I was looking for a clean way to list the income on my reports without seeing multiple transactions for the same payment and Jim's idea does fix that. However now I'm thinking I could just label each transaction as what they are e.g.
Zelle deposit (personal acct.) Category='Rents Received', Tag='Property 1' = $2,000 positive cash flow.
Transfer out (personal acct). Category='Rents Received', Tag='Property 1' = $2,000 negative cash flow.
Transfer in (Biz acct). Category='Rents Received', Tag='Property 1' = $2,000 positive cash flow.

The net result would be $2,000 positive cash flow into the "Rental Income" category and properly tagged. Messier than I'd like, but the accounts would balance. And I don't think that Quicken has any restrictions that wouldn't allow this to happen.

I'm I missing anything here?

Thanks again!

Tim

timschaeffer

Jim,
It does look like the reports do pull from the non-business accounts too.

Thanks,
Tim

Tom Young

timschaeffer said:

Zelle deposit (personal acct.) Category='Rents Received', Tag='Property 1' = $2,000 positive cash flow.
Transfer out (personal acct). Category='Rents Received', Tag='Property 1' = $2,000 negative cash flow.
Transfer in (Biz acct). Category='Rents Received', Tag='Property 1' = $2,000 positive cash flow.
I'm I missing anything here?

 IF the first entry above does the job of increasing the cash in your file and recognizing the income, THEN I'd say you only need to record the Transfer between personal and business Account, period.  That is, the Category box for the transfer out only reads [Name of Business Account].

UKR

How do you handle Rent Received transactions in Quicken? With an appropriate Scheduled Reminder? Or with an Entry in the Rent Center?

Either way, before you accept the downloaded Zelle transaction in your Savings account record a Rent Received transaction which deposits into your Savings account. When that's done, the downloaded transaction will match to the Rent Received transaction and can now be accepted.

Here's an example:

A few days later, when you transfer the money from your Savings to your Business Checking account, there's nothing special you have to do to make this transfer show up as Rental Income. The rent payment transaction has already been properly categorized and tagged as Rental Income.

Don't forget to Edit Rental Property Tenant to indicate the Savings account as the Account to use for this tenant for future payments.

timschaeffer

UKR,
Thanks! I don't use a reminder; I just code the Category and Tag for Rental Income and Property Name.
I had not used the Rent Center entries yet. Maybe I should read up on those.

Tim