Investment Income not appearing in Profit & Loss Comparison Report

Ray Jones

My business primarily generates real estate rental income. Last year I added a brokerage account in order to park excess cash in a money market mutual fund paying interest higher than I can get at the bank. This has generated dividend income (_DivInc). 

 THE PROBLEM: I cannot get the dividend income to appear in the Profit & Loss Comparison report I have long used, comparing last year to the prior year period. In customization I made sure all accounts and categories were selected, specifically the brokerage account and _DivInc. 

 I CAN get the dividend income to appear in the Income/Expense Comparison by Category report, but the business is on accrual basis and that report is cash basis only, so the rental income doesn't appear properly. 

 Finally, I can get the dividend income AND rental income to appear on the Income/Expense by Category report, but then I lose the comparison to the prior year. It seems I can't have it all - investment income, rental income, and comparison to the prior year - on one report. 

 Any ideas? Many thanks.

Tom Young

Your business is in the business of generating rental income.  The fact that you've "mentally" characterized the brokerage account interest (dividends) as "business" related doesn't mean that the IRS takes the same approach.  Dividends and interest are reported on Schedule B as your dividends and interest, not the business'.   I don't use the Home & Business version of Quicken but my understanding is that in order to see and income or expense on Schedules C and E you must link the Category to a specific line item on one or the other of these Schedules.  There really is no line item on Schedule E to put interest income.

Ray Jones

Thank you for your suggestion, Tom. I should have said that the business is an LLC with its own Quicken file. I know the brokerage account interest will pass through on my K-1 to my personal Schedule B, and the rental income will go to my personal Schedule E. I'm just wondering whether I can get the interest to show up on the Profit & Loss Comparison report I give to the preparer of the LLC's tax returns. Apparently not. If Intuit would give the Income/Expense Comparison report an accrual basis option, then I could use that report instead.

Jim_Harman

Why does the tax preparer need the P&L comparison? I would expect that that report could be produced by the tax preparer's software.

Also Quicken has been an independent company for several years now. It is no longer owned by Intuit.

Tom Young

As I understand it, the Profit and Loss report does need an association of a Category to a line item on one or the other of Schedule C or E.  So it does seem like you're stymied there. 

I can see that the regular Income & Expense would pick up that _DivInc Category but didn't know that it ignores accruals.

The only course I can think of to make this work is to create a couple of Accounts that the Income & Expense reports would "look" at for information and in those Accounts make year-end entries (that you'd immediately delete after running the report) to pick up the "missing" accrual amounts - presumably one accrual to recognize rental income that hasn't been received in cash and another accrual for expenses that haven't yet been paid in cash.