How to Add an Asset Category in Quicken Classic for Mac

nada@

When I try to add a category, I don't see an option for adding an asset category—only expense and income categories are available. Is there a way to add an asset in Quicken for Mac?

I have Quicken Classic Personal and business for Mac version 7.9.1.

jacobs

Your questions mixes accounting terms, at least as it pertains to Quicken. Categories are always income or expenses. You can have assets and liabilities, but they are set up as accounts, not categories. You can create an asset account the same way you create a new checking account, except you'll click on creating an Offline Account because tracking your asset value will be done with manual transactions.

For instance, if you buy a car and want to track the value of the car in your net worth, you can create an asset account for the car. The value of the car asset will be partially offset by a loan (liability) account for the duration of the loan. In the asset account, you can create a transaction using the special category "Adjustment" to set the initial value of the car, and to adjust it's value downward over time; Adjustment transactions do not count as income or expenses, so in this example, you'd just be manually adjusting then asset account value however often you wish to.

Or for another example, let's say you have a small business, and you purchase a computer a printer and printer to use for the business. You want to track the initial value of the asset and take depreciation as an expense to reduce its value. So you can create an asset account called Fixed Assets or Equipment. In this case, your initial purchase in a checking or credit card account would be entered as a Transfer to the asset account. Then, in the asset account, you'd create a scheduled (recurring) transaction for the depreciation amount on a monthly quarterly or annual basis; this transaction would use an expense category of Depreciation. Each time that transaction is entered, it creates expense and reduces the value of the asset account.

If that's not clear, post back about what you're wanting to do, and we can suggest how you can do it.