Please add: Accrual Accounting in Quicken Mac

pplprsn

For those that may not know, accrual accounting is contrasted with cash accounting (the method used by Quicken). Cash accounting is fine for many users, but accrual accounting can add a lot of valuable insights by expensing things over longer periods of time.

For example, if you pay your entire yearly car insurance bill in advance in say January, your expense reports will show a ballooned payment in January, but nothing in the other months. In reality, the amount you paid in January is a expense for the January portion, but a "prepaid asset" for the rest of the months. The same would apply to income received in advance which would be a liability until you actually perform the service and convert it to income.

I would love a feature in Quicken that allows a user to designate a transaction to be accrued over an amount of time on a transaction level or a split level. Perhaps a check button to make a whole transaction or individual split line items that opens up date parameters when you can set the start and end date of an insurance policy, for example, and then an option for how to divide and allocate the amount (day/week/month) with automatic proration for months with partial allocations.

I don't know if this feature exists in the new home business upgrade, but it would be a reason for me to upgrade.

NotACPA

Not likely to happen. That's a function in QuickBooks, which is sounds like you need.

Chris_QPW

Note the Quicken Windows Home & Business has "accrual accounting", but it isn't like described above, and most likely when Quicken Mac gets more of the business features it will work like Quicken Windows does, not like QuickBooks.

As of now Quicken Mac Home & Business doesn't have it in any form.

jacobs

At the risk of repeating, you can definitely do accrual-style accounting in Quicken Mac currently with just a little manual intervention.

• Create an asset account for Prepaid Expenses
• Record the annual payment in the Prepaid Expenses account
• Create a scheduled transaction to apportion the actual expense over 12 months.

While there're no one-click button to do this, it's quite simple:

• Go to Transactions > New Scheduled Transaction
• The total transaction amount should be zero
• Create two splits: one to increase the appropriate expense category, one to decrease the asset account. What amount? In the Amount field for the first split, enter the annual cost ÷ 12 (e.g. "1200/12="); in the other split, enter the same amount with a negative number.
• Set the schedule to be monthly on the first day or the last day of the month, with an End Date after 12 months.

Then each month, just click the Paid button to post the monthly expense. Setting up the scheduled transaction will take you a minute; posting the monthly transaction will take 5 seconds.