Rental Properties

gchalfant

entering income and expenses in rental property tab has changed for me. before i would post income and expenses to a clearing account the transfer to my ck account and delete my entries in my ck acct. that seemed a dumb way to do it but it worked. Now (being after aug 10th my last time to enter) i enter as done before and my clearing acct does not increase just records entry with a blue line under my knew rent income entries. Did something change going to Quicken Classic I'm running R52.28

Quicken Kristina

Hello @gchalfant,

To be able to better assist you, could you please provide a screenshot of what is happening? If needed, please refer to this Community FAQ for instructions on how to attach a screenshot. Alternatively, you can also drag and drop screenshots to your response if you are not given the option to add attachments.

Thank you.

mshiggins

I find the problem description difficult to follow, and agree that one or more screen shots could help clarify; but I'll take a stab at this anyway.


For background:

To effectively use the Quicken Rent Center: rent income should be recorded in a single transaction with a date on, or after, the start date of the rent period; and on, or before, the end date of the rent period. 

With that in mind, there are a couple of good reasons for using an intermediate ("clearing") account for recording tenant rent income:
- There may be multiple tenants in one rental "unit", each paying their share of the rent, creating multiple real-world rent payments for the same rental property/rent period
- Rent is sometimes paid prior to the start of the rent period, and sometimes paid later than the end of the rent period. If those transactions were the only rent payment transactions for a given property/period and were given their actual date in Quicken, Quicken would apply them to the wrong rental period.

Using an intermediate account allows a Quicken user to process the real-world rent income transactions just as they occurred and in the Quicken account that corresponds to the real-world account where they were deposited; while insuring that only one rent income transaction, dated appropriately for the rent period, will be posted and used by the Quicken Rent Center. 

When entered properly, there should be no need to delete any of the rent transactions when an intermediate account is employed. The real-world rent transactions will have a category that is a Transfer TO the intermediate rent account. The rent transaction that records the "rent income" (for a given tenant/property) is posted in the intermediate account - reducing the balance of the intermediate account by the exact amount of the transfers into the intermediate account created by the real-world rent transactions.

As to the specific problem:

When a tenant in Quicken is first assigned to a rental property, Quicken automatically creates a Reminder for the rent income for that tenant/property. However, the rent income Reminder that Quicken creates is unlike any other Quicken Reminder: among other things, it's details are difficult to determine and impossible to modify. To add insult to injury, those Quicken-created rent income reminders can get out of sync and end up giving rent payments the wrong date, causing them to post to the wrong period ... and sometimes doing other strange things.

It's not necessary to use the Quicken-created rent income Reminder; I suggest not keeping that Quicken-created Reminder. It is easy for the user to delete the rent income Reminder Quicken creates (in Manage Bill & Income Reminders) and to create a rent Reminder of their own. Such a user-created rent income Reminder is easily viewed and modified by the user ... and much less likely to go awry.

A user-created rent income Reminder should have the following characteristics:
- Date/frequency that corresponds to the real-world rent period/frequency
- Payee name exactly equal to the Quicken "Tenant" name
- Category that is an Income category with a Schedule E rental income tax line item. The out-of-the-box Quicken category, "Rental Property Income:Rent Income" works fine, for example.
- Tag equal to the Quicken "Property Tag"
- Amount equal to the agreed-upon rent for the period


"i enter as done before and my clearing acct does not increase just records entry with a blue line under my knew rent income entries."

The blue line in a Quicken account register separates transactions whose dates are later than today from other transactions. 

If you're using a Quicken created rent Reminder, that Reminder may have had its "Next Due On" date (wrongly) advanced to a future period. See above. Check the date of the rent transaction below the blue line, then check the Rent Center to see if that rent payment shows up in the period appropriate for its transaction date (you may need to change the Rent Center period dropdown to something like "Current Year").

"Did something change going to Quicken Classic I'm running R52.28"

I did a brief test in R52.28 and did not see any noticeable change that would relate to your problem, as I understand it.
In fact, all the R52.28 release notes say is:
"We've updated our product name to Quicken Classic and have revised our logo and other aspects of the product to match the name and updated branding. You will see the updated logo after you Restart your computer."

-JP

gchalfant

Thank you for your time and effort. after reading and re-reading many times your response I feel like a dummy but it was a future date issue and reminder issue..Thanks again