Budgets - Including income/loss from Securities Sales

Ploooplooo

Hi All! Despite being a long time Quicken user, I never looked at the Budgets tab until just now when I saw @Quicken Janean's solicitation for a survey (I was too late). Out of curiosity I only now took a look at it and am intrigued. Being retired, all of my income is from interest, dividends and capital gains. The latter of those, capital gains, is very topical now since many people are rolling T-Bills which technically is interest income from a tax perspective, but is seen as a gain in accounting software. Anyway, I cannot figure out how to get net realized gains/losses to appear in the Budgets. Can someone guide me on this? Also, is there a way in Budgets to exclude categories that are all zeros from appearing in the display? Thanks!

Tom Young

"many people are rolling T-Bills which technically is interest income from a tax perspective, but is seen as a gain in accounting software."

"Windows" person here so the "Mac" aspect isn't in my wheelhouse bet since I am an accountant I feel like I should respond to this statement.

It seems like you're buying T-Bills at a discount and then, when the T-Bill matures you're using the maturity amount (original purchase + interest income) as the "proceeds" of a sale of the T-Bill at it's original basis. Ergo, "capital gain" results. I'm certain plenty of folks using Win Quicken do the same, either because of the way the maturity is downloaded or because it seems like the only obvious way to account for the situation.

When Win Quicken people ask about this problem (interest being recorded as capital gain) they typical answer is "split that maturity into two parts: "sell" the bond in the amount of the original purchase with no resulting gain or loss, and then separately enter an interest income transaction for the actual amount of interest earned." Typically that requires that you delete whatever "maturity" download you receive from the broker and then making your own two manual entries.

If you can do the same in the Mac version of Quicken (I'd expect that you could) then that kills two birds with one stone; your accounting in Quicken reflects the "real world" and that income will show up in your Budgets.

jacobs

I agree with what @Tom Young posted. I don't download transactions in the account that has T-bills, so it's pretty easy for me to enter the sale and the interest income separately. Here's the purchase of a 3-month T-bill:

and then the redemption, selling the shares for the same amount as the purchase price and the interest income in a separate transaction:

Doing it this way, as Tom wrote, there's no bogus capital gain reported in Quicken.

Ploooplooo

Thanks @Tom Young and @jacobs. I agree that splitting the transaction is an easy work-around to record T-Bill interest in Quicken and that using such a work-around gets the interest into the Budgets tab. I do also buy/sell stocks and futures creating income/losses that affect my budgeting.

So I'm led to believe that there is no way to have capital gains/losses flow through to the Budgets tab. Is this correct?

Thanks

Tom Young

Within Windows Quicken I have no problem budgeting for realized capital gains and seeing both "budget" and "actual" numbers side by side. I just make sure that Category (_RlzdGain) is selected for budgeting.

Also, by customizing the Current Budget report I can omit lines that show $0 budget and $0 actual.

@jacobs will have to give the answers for Mac Quicken.