Liabilities in the Net Worth Report should be Displayed in Red

DaveKStL

Presently in the current version of the Net Worth Report, Liabilities are displayed a Black font. All other reports display liabilities as a red number. The report does not even display it as a negative number which is what a liability is to Net Worth. When the report is printed or exported, the same happens, the liabilities font is black. Again, in all other Quicken reports, the font color is red. So if I distribute the report as is, the end user will not pick up on the fact that there are any negative assets. This report needs to be changed to show liabilities as a red font as in all other Quicken Reports. At least give me the ability to change the font color for this report to be consistent with the other Quicken reports.

Rocket J Squirrel

This seems like a trivial request, but I agree with it. Liabilities are properly shown as red negative numbers in other reports.

NotACPA

Curious, but in the "Account Balances" report the liabilities DO show in red.

mshiggins

I'm not sure this is such a good idea.

At first glance it may seem like a good idea, but it goes against normal treatment of financial reports.

The Net Worth report is basically Quicken's non-business Balance Sheet report. 

All Balance Sheet reports have a simple underlying rule: Assets - Liabilities = Equity.  In other words, it is assumed that Liabilities will be subtracted from Assets: displaying Liabilities as negative would not just be redundant, it would call for math that produced incorrect report results. If a negative number is subtracted from a negative number; the result is an addition.  As in: -10 minus -6 = -4 (said another way: the result of subtracting -4 from -10 is -6).

In the Quicken Net Worth report, red is used to denote a value that does not have its "normal" algebraic sign.  A negative asset or a positive liability are properly shown in red.

So, for example, a checking account normally has a positive balance, but if the checking account is overdrawn, it will have a negative balance. And that negative balance would be shown in red in Quicken balance sheet-type reports.

The converse example, is a liability account such as a credit card account. A credit card account normally has a negative balance and would displayed in black in balance-sheet-type reports; but if the credit card has been overpaid, it will have a positive balance, and will be displayed in red.

[The Quicken Account Balances report does show Liabilities in red, but it is only concerned with displaying the actual Quicken account balances, it has no conceptual relationship to any real world financial statement.]

The bottom line, I believe, is that making the Net Worth report look just like the Account Balances report (showing "normal" Liability account balances in red) would make the Net Worth report redundant (what would be the purpose of two differently named reports that produced the exact same results), and leave the non-business user with no Balance Sheet report equivalent in Quicken.

[For reference, it is fairly easy to go online and look at financial statements for corporations: Intuit's Balance Sheet is easily found - and all amounts in the Intuit Balance Sheet are in the same color. Non-normal amounts are surrounded by parenthesis, which I believe is fairly standard practice.]

[In the Quicken Business edition, there is a Business report: "Balance Sheet". It follows the rule noted above and shows "normal" Liability account balances in black.]

-JP

NotACPA

I just ran the Business "Balance Sheet" report that @mshiggins referenced.

Liability amounts show in black.