Spending Tab Income Report

maxwelwp

Currently when the Spending tab is filtered for income, it does not include income from IRA distributions or the ability to include them whereas other tabs such as planning under personal income and the Income & Expense card on the Home tab does.

This creates and inconsistency in the reporting features.

Suggest adding all income types or the ability to choose which accounts to include as income on the spending tab.

Jim_Harman

Actually the Spending tab does not include ANY investing income Categories and there is no way to customize the Categories to include.

cdchris

I just discovered this issue in the Spending tab as well. No dividends from my brokerage account were included. The accounts had been selected. But, it appears _Div category is not included. However, if I have a credit union account that pays dividends, I put those dividends in "Div Inc" category. That gets pulled in. This really makes the Spending tab almost useless.

mshiggins

Transactions are not excluded from the Spending tab based on their account type or their category: transactions are excluded from the Spending tab primarily because of their transaction-type - namely: investment-type transactions (such as DivInc, IntInc, etc.)

And, I believe, those transactions are excluded because their format is incompatible with the Spending tab. Spending tab transactions are displayed in the format of non-investment account registers: that format has no way to display investment-type transactions.

Investment account Cash-type transactions (such as Deposit, Withdrawal, etc.) are displayed in the Spending tab.

[Transfer transactions (which is what RMD's typically are) are also excluded from the Spending tab because they are neither income nor expense.]

There are Quicken reports that can display income and expenses from any account without regard to the underlying transaction-type, and any of those reports can be Saved, then assigned to a Quicken Toolbar icon, making it possible to display them with a single click.

-JP

maxwelwp

@mshiggins

Unfortunately, the spending tab filtered for "income" do not include withdrawals from investment accounts, in particular withdrawals from an IRA or non-taxable account which ARE considered as income for all taxation purposes.

As a result, if I spend $5,000 in a particular month, which is reported on the spending tab, have earned income of $2,000 and deposits (income) of $3,000 from an IRA, the spending tab reports the $5,000 of expenses but only reports income of $2,000 which results in a deficit of $3,000 for the month.

Other reporting methods in QW however DO include the IRA withdrawals as income which as I mentioned in the "product ideas" results in an inconsistency in reporting between the different reports.

If interest, dividends etc are not withdrawn and simply reinvested or left in the investment non-taxable account, then they should not be reported as income.

mshiggins

"Unfortunately, the spending tab filtered for "income" do not include withdrawals from investment accounts ...."

Actually the Spending tab DOES include "withdrawals" from investment accounts ... it just does not include "transfers" from investment accounts. 

And NO "withdrawals" from any account type are income: they're either expenses, or transfers out of the account.

" ... in particular withdrawals from an IRA or non-taxable account which ARE considered as income for all taxation purposes."

That isn't right: no withdrawal from any account is "income" and only the,money removed from "tax-deferred" accounts (investment or otherwise) is taxable income. Funds removed from non-tax-deferred accounts are neither income, nor taxable.

As I noted before, the account type is not the deciding factor in your issue (nor is the tax status of the account): the deciding factors are: investment-type transactions (such as DivInc) cannot be displayed in the Spending tab format; and transfers from/to every account type are excluded from the Spending tab ... because transfers are never income and never expenses.

Your example of expenses exceeding income does not demonstrate your claim that the problem is Quicken not treating investment account withdrawals as income.. To see that, try the following (in a test Quicken file - you could just make a Windows copy of your regular Quicken file for testing ... delete the test file when finished).

Transfer funds from your taxable savings account to your taxable checking,account. Then spend some of the funds you transferred to your checking account - buy things using funds in the checking account. Then look at the Spending tab (making sure the appropriate accounts are selected).

You will not see the transfer of funds into the checking account, but you will see the withdrawals from the checking account.

The Spending tab is concerned with "spending", not with account balances ... not with whether you have enough funds to cover that spending. The Spending tab was not designed to be used to determine whether you have sufficient funds in an account to cover your spending.

For information about the impact of your spending on one, or more accounts, try the Projected Balances tab on the Bills & Income tab (or the Projected Balances widget on the Home tab).


Perhaps it will all be easier to understand after examining some keyterms/concepts in more detail.

The primary characteristic of "income" is that it increases your net worth (while "expenses" decrease your net worth).

So, for example, if someone pays you $500 cash for work you did for them, that's income because you're now worth $500 more than you were before you got that payment.

Say you put that $500 in your left front pants pocket.

Then you went out and purchased concert tickets for $500, taking the cash from your left front pocket to pay for the tickets. The payment for the concert tickets is an "expense".  You'd now be worth $500 less than you were before the ticket purchase.

But suppose instead of purchasing those concert tickets, you just took the $500 from your left front pocket and put it in your right front pocket. You just "transferred" the money from one of the pockets you own to another pocket you own. That transfer "transaction" is neither "income" nor "expense" because you're worth the same after the transfer as you were before the transfer.

Transferring money from a retirement account to a non-retirement account (transferring money from any account to any other account) is neither income nor expense; you're worth the same after the transfer as you were before the transfer.

The fact that you now have more money to spend in the TO account because money was transferred there does not mean that there was any "income" involved.

While it's true that transfers from "some" types of retirement accounts will create an "income tax liability" for the account owner, that does not make the transfer, "income" (because it does not increase the net worth of the owner). 

All that's happening is that the government is collecting the taxes not paid when the income was earned (back when contributions were made to the retirement account) - and determining the amount of income needed to be reported for tax purposes as the amount removed from the retirement account.


If the transfer of funds from a retirement account were treated as income, income would be overstated - the actual (the true) income was reported back when it was originally earned; you can't count the same income twice.

The Spending tab excludes ALL transfers, because as already noted: transfers are neither income nor spending (expenses).

-JP

maxwelwp

You probably misinterpret the intention in the original post. "This creates and inconsistency in the reporting features"

As one reviews the different reports, some consider the "transfer" as income and some do not.

Example - I transfer $25,000 to my treasurydirect account. The dashboard tile "Income & Expenses" reports this as an expense. I transfer the money back from my treasurydirect account, it is reported on that tile as income. I cannot remove or disregard those movements from that tile.

It is NOT included as such in the Spending tab when filtered for Spending or Income.

It is also considered as income or expense if I include the accounts in my budget planning tab. This allows the income and expense columns to balance. If I chose not to include these "transfers", my budget would never balance, and I would always spend more than I have available. I cannot write a check from my IRA or spend those funds until I move them to a spending "bank" account from an investment account.

Jim_Harman

The Spending tab and Home tab dashboard panels are designed for different purposes and have different preset customizations.

The best way to control exactly what is included is to use one of the reports from the Reports menu. These reports have options on their customization menu to control which accounts and Categories are included, and on the Advanced customization tab you can control which transfers are included.

maxwelwp

Thanks - I am aware of those reports.