I have seen various answers on this general topic. I dont think any of them exactly work
according to me, you have an investment account, and the manager takes an advisory fee. this fee downloads as a withdrawal and thus as a return to you. However, you never see the money. Therefore, this is an expense and should go against your return. In other words, your return should be reduced because you are paying these fees.
so, i tried setting reentering the transaction as a misc expense. Comes across as a return (this seems wrong to me)
Therefore, I tried reentering the transaction as a misc expense this time with a fake security (called quarterly fee). the expense does disappear from the return column (that seems correct). However, when i run the report and select all securities except the fake security, the fake security transaction now comes out in the investments column. this has the effect of actually adding to your return (this seems wrong)!!!
my opinion is that advisory fees should not come across in the quicken download as withdrawals, rather as expenses. Quicken calls these expenses part of your return, but I do not know why an expense is then counted in the return column. it seems the correction would be to not include expenses in the return column