Home Inventory

SRC1954

Since about 2010 in Quicken, I created a manual Asset Account I call Possessions. Whenever I acquire a new item, I record the transaction normally using Home:Durables as my category. I then make a manual entry as a transfer in Possessions. I tag each item according to type of asset: Jewelry, Furniture, Appliances, Electronics, Art, Curios, Utensils, Tools, Clothing.

Of course, one could just do a direct transfer, but this doesn't work well for several reasons. First there may be other attendant costs involved such as sales taxes and shipping that are expenses. Second, as items depreciate, it is easier just to update the price in Possessions rather than trying to deal with updating an old transaction and adding a depreciation cost. After all, we want to keep things as simple as possible. An example would be a recent purchase of a new mattress. A lot of the price was sales tax and delivery/removal charges. Only the actual mattress is an access. I record that cost as a Durable expense and then make a transfer entry into Possessions for the actual price of the mattress. After the 120 day trial period, I will go in and depreciate it to a used mattress.

My main purpose in having a Possessions File is for insurance and to keep my net worth tally as accurate as possible. My entries go back to 1972. My oldest possession is my Stamp Collection, which I collected as a boy. My next oldest transaction is a small refrigerator I acquired in 1973 and is still used by my wife at work. My current value for that is $25 (LOL).

In our throw-away society, many things are not meant to be durable. I usually just record things like sheets, towels, apparel as an expense and expect them not to last but a couple of years. Only clothing such as coats, suits do I count as possessions. Take a fry pan, you get one and use it regularly and replace it every year or two. All of these shortlived items are recorded as Home:Supplies or Basics:Apparel No sense recording that as a possession. I struggle over Air Fryers. I do expense them as Home:Durables and then do a transfer in Posseions but when I replace it, I delete it.

Typical entries looks like this:

Date/Payee/Category/Tag/Notes/Amount

May 21, 2015/Keurig/Transfer/Appliances/Keurig 250 Brewer/+50.00*
April 2, 2018/Amazon/Transfer/Electronics/Brother HL2350 Printer/+75.00

*Note that this is my travel Keurig that I use infrequently. The one in the kitchen might last 3 years and would have been depreciated down to nothing or deleted altogether by now.

There's a lot of guestimation that goes into this as I "depreciate" the prices. I might start out with the retail price but then it goes down with time. I look for used prices on the Internet mostly. A capital good in business would last 5 years, but in consumer world it lasts as long as it has utility (until you throw it away). Obviously if you keep the value too high, you are inflating your networth. Got to keep it real. Jewelry and Art hold their value better. Furniture and Appliances wear out.

Note, that I could keep the Retail price and do a split and add a Depreciation cost, but I just go in periodically and adjust the amount. As transfers, these don't show up on Spending Plan or Reports. The purchase transaction already does with each of these items marked as Home:Durables. But the Asset Account does add the bottom line to your Net Worth.

After 5/10 years depending on the good, I pretty much depreciate it down. But if it is still giving me utility, I don't zero it out entirely.

Finally, I know there was a home inventory add on from the old Quicken for a while, and I always assumed they would add it to Quicken itself sooner or later, but they never did.

jl747

There is a Home Inventory that is module of your Quicken.

It may or may not work on Windwos 10 or 11. If it does not open or install find the QuickenHomeInventory.exe and make it compatable

with Windows 7.

See this for intallation instructions.

https://www.quicken.com/support/installing-quicken-home-inventory-and-emergency-records-organizer

Note that there was a stand alone version but Intuit discontinued it long ago.

I also use a program called Attic Manager. (just in case QHI stops working.)

Jim_Harman

One advantage of having an asset account for general posessions is that you can use it to track donations.

You can set up a Category called Charity-non Cash or whatever with a tax line item of Schedule A: Non cash charity contributions. Then when you donate something you can use that category for a decrease in the asset account to keep track of the value and it will show up on the Tax reports. This is helpful if you are one of the lucky few who can still benefit from itemizing deductions.

SRC1954

Thanks @Jim_Harman and @jl747 . I apologize for the typo of access instead of asset (I think spellcheck must have done that to me). I use the Quicken on the Mac.

I've also tagged the rooms the items where the items were located, and may do it again, but have stayed with the type of item though you can tag your transactions with multiple tags.

Snowman

Home Inventory like attachments are best done with a seperate program. All you will have to do is transfer the total of your home inventory into a Quicken asset account.