Proportionate expense allocations for rentals & taxes

Swampy

I'm considering getting Quicken B&P to help manage rental properties. One such property is on the same lot as my house. So, some expenses have to be allocated according to certain proportionate factors that an IRS auditor instructed us to use.

For example, 50% of landscaping expenses are considered rental upkeep and therefore deductible. OTOH, 10.2% of expenses related to the 2 structures are allocated to the rental. For example, if we hire a painting company to paint the 2 structures, then 10.2% of the total cost is a rental expense (based on the two structures' relative size). There are other proportionate allocation factors for single expenses addressing both outdoor expenses & structures (e.g., 32% for the parking area) and a backup generator that serves both buildings (15%).

Does Quicken Business & Personal have any easy way of automating such allocations? (E.g. automatically classifying 50% of landscaping payments as rental maintenance?)

Jon

Quicken Mac does not; I don't know about Quicken Windows.

NotACPA

Q Windows doesn't have that feature either.

I'd suggest using a spreadsheet to calculate the amounts, and then using a Split transaction to input them into QMac. A VLOOKUP table could be built so that you'd only have to input the percentages once for each recurring expense type … and then have the VLOOKUP pull in the percentage and formulas to pro-rate it.

mshiggins

QWin does have percent allocation for splits with Memorized Payees. So the Memorized Payee for landscaping would have a two line split, line one main house 50%, line two rental 50%.

CaliQkn

@Swampy to expand on @mshiggins comment, you can also use percentages for any split transaction in Quicken Classic for Windows. If I am entering a transaction with a total of 200.00, and wanted to split the total into 3 categories by percent, all I need to do is enter a percentage instead of a dollar amount in the Amount column. Quicken will then calculate the appropriate dollar amount.

Swampy

Thanks to all of you for your helpful information. Now my one followup is does Quicken for Mac have the same ability to split transactions by percentages?

Jon

It does not.