Payee Question

Goldglove7

I give some charity through the Giving Basket at Charity Navigator. When the expenditure shows up in my credit card account, it just shows the money sent to the Giving Basket, rather than specifying the individual charities. Any way I can break that down so I know what I spent for each charity, without doing it through Charity Navigator? Anyway to have it automatically download the individual charity donation? Does anyone merge their individual charity giving with Charity Navigator? Seems like extra work if I have to merge all of the charities individually…

Thanks for your thoughts!

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20403961#Comment_20403961

A variation of using the split category that I use: Instead of using the Memo field for identifying which amount was paid to which charity, I have created new sub-categories under the "Charity" category for each of the specific charities where the name of subcategory is the name of the charity. If you do this you will want to also set the tax form attribute for each sub-category so that it gets picked up in Tax Summary, Tax Schedule and Tax Planner. The tax form attribute for each of the sub-categories would be the same as what is already set for the Charity category.

The advantage of doing it this way is that you can then easily see the transactions details and the rolled up summary for each charity individually in reports like Tax Summary, Income and Expense, etc., and in the Budget. For example, if you make a $50/month contribution to United Way, you can pull up these reports for the current year and you will see the individual $50 monthly transactions as well as the YTD summary total for your United Way contributions without needing to customize the report each time to show just the Memo field "United Way" contributions.

This works really well if you make repeat charitable contributions to a relatively small number of charities. It you make mostly 1-off contributions to a wide variety of charities this process might could become a bit unwieldly with minimal benefit. For the occasional 1-off charitable contributions I created another sub-category under "Charity" called "Misc", again making sure to attach the correct tax form attribute to it, and then I use the Memo field to document the name of the specific charity.

I use this same process for tracking gifts I make to individuals….family members get their own sub-categories and all others fall under a created "Misc" sub-category.

I also use it for other default categories that are lacking the level of detail that I like to see. For instance, "Utilities" is not detailed enough for my liking and budgeting so I created sub-categories for "Water", "Sewage", "Garbage" and "Electricity" underneath it. For "Television" I created sub-categories for "Netflix", "Hulu", "Cable", etc.. For "Phone" I created sub-categories for "Landline" and "Mobile".

Rocket J Squirrel

Alternatively, there is no rule that says you can't fudge your credit card register however you like.

You could replace the single Charity Navigator transaction with a set of transactions to the individual charities, if that serves your needs better. As long as the total stays the same, you're good. You'd probably want to add a note or memo so you can remember later what you did.

NotACPA

Use a Split transaction, with Charity Navigator as the name of the Payee on the transaction and then SPLIT the transaction and show each of the individual charities in the memo field of the splits

UKR

Alternatively, if you must have a record of the name of the individual charity you gave money to, try this:

• Create an offline Checking account, named something like "My Charitable Donations"
• In this account record each individual donation as a separate transaction and categorize to an appropriate Schedule A: Cash or Non-cash charity contributions. Use the charity name as the Payee Name
• In your Checking or Credit card account, as each Giving Basket transaction arrives in a downloaded transaction, record it as a transfer to the "My Charitable Donations" account.
• When all Giving Basket transactions have arrived in a download and have been recorded, the net account balance should be reduced to 0.00
• Make sure the individual transactions are included in the Tax Schedule or Tax Summary report. An import into tax software should give you a list of donations by charity name.

Goldglove7

Thanks for the suggestions! They definitely help!

Happy Holidays to all!

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20403961#Comment_20403961

A variation of using the split category that I use: Instead of using the Memo field for identifying which amount was paid to which charity, I have created new sub-categories under the "Charity" category for each of the specific charities where the name of subcategory is the name of the charity. If you do this you will want to also set the tax form attribute for each sub-category so that it gets picked up in Tax Summary, Tax Schedule and Tax Planner. The tax form attribute for each of the sub-categories would be the same as what is already set for the Charity category.

The advantage of doing it this way is that you can then easily see the transactions details and the rolled up summary for each charity individually in reports like Tax Summary, Income and Expense, etc., and in the Budget. For example, if you make a $50/month contribution to United Way, you can pull up these reports for the current year and you will see the individual $50 monthly transactions as well as the YTD summary total for your United Way contributions without needing to customize the report each time to show just the Memo field "United Way" contributions.

This works really well if you make repeat charitable contributions to a relatively small number of charities. It you make mostly 1-off contributions to a wide variety of charities this process might could become a bit unwieldly with minimal benefit. For the occasional 1-off charitable contributions I created another sub-category under "Charity" called "Misc", again making sure to attach the correct tax form attribute to it, and then I use the Memo field to document the name of the specific charity.

I use this same process for tracking gifts I make to individuals….family members get their own sub-categories and all others fall under a created "Misc" sub-category.

I also use it for other default categories that are lacking the level of detail that I like to see. For instance, "Utilities" is not detailed enough for my liking and budgeting so I created sub-categories for "Water", "Sewage", "Garbage" and "Electricity" underneath it. For "Television" I created sub-categories for "Netflix", "Hulu", "Cable", etc.. For "Phone" I created sub-categories for "Landline" and "Mobile".

Rocket J Squirrel

Alternatively, there is no rule that says you can't fudge your credit card register however you like.

You could replace the single Charity Navigator transaction with a set of transactions to the individual charities, if that serves your needs better. As long as the total stays the same, you're good. You'd probably want to add a note or memo so you can remember later what you did.

Goldglove7

Really appreciate the suggestions! What better than to enjoy a cold, rainy December Sunday trying to figure this out! :)

I'm going to try the idea of Boatnmaniac— really, a very helpful suggestion! Boat and Maniac? Very impressive!

Goldglove7

Boatnmaniac

I love to boat and my wife likes to call me a maniac about boating and other things (lovingly, I hope). Put the two together and that's how I got "Boatnmaniac."

Goldglove7

That’s great! And, Goldglove7 is in honor of Mickey Mantle, a childhood hero!