Cash Basis Reports (Q Mac)

Melnee

Reference: 4/23 Discussion Between @jbomz and @jacobs

CASH BASIS reporting is a age-old accounting method. Here, transactions are reported when the transaction is PAID rather than when the transaction occurred. Consider credit card transactions— here transactions occur about a month before payment (i.e.: transactions occuring in December are paid in January). Currently, a report produced with the parameters 1/1/26 to 1/31/26 would include credit card transactions occuring in January rather than those PAID in January. (Yes, of course, the bank account does reconcile because Quicken falaciously posts the amount paid to the credit card company for Decmber as a "Transfer".) Rather, all the transactions for December should be shown as a split transction when the credit card balance is paid in January As a work around, I actually create monthly Quicken reports for each of my credit cards summarizing the transactions comprising the actual amount paid in the month. Then, I manually create a split transaction in my check register while eliminating the "Transfer" designation. It's a lot of work particularly if you have multiple credit cards; but it's the only way to generate a CASH BASIS report. That's why, I'd encourage Quicken to add a "Paid Date" field in each credit card register that could be automatically and quickly populated by the user. Please let me hear from you soon if you need further clarification.

jacobs

Currently, a report produced with the parameters 1/1/26 to 1/31/26 would include credit card transactions occuring in January rather than those PAID in January.

The transactions occurred in 2025, and that's when you want the expense recognized. The payment occurred in 2026, so that's when the cash flow occurred. Right?

Or are you saying you want a report for January expenses to include the individual itemized credit card transactions made in December?

If you want a cash flow report showing just the credit card payment in January, you can do that (see below), but you can't get a report of the December transactions in a January report due to the card payment made in January. That just doesn't make sense to me.

Let's take a step back for a second to make sure we're on the same page… Do you have a separate account in Quicken for each credit card, where each credit card transaction is recorded (either downloaded or manually entered)? This is the correct way to do things in Quicken. I think you're saying you do this, but I wanted to make sure.

Because each transaction is entered in a credit card register on the day it occurs, the expense is properly registered on the date of the transaction. (Accounting-wise, when you make a credit card purchase, you are increasing an expense and increasing a liability.) The monthly payment of the credit card bill (reducing the liability) is entered as a simple transfer from the checking account to the credit card account. There are no splits involved. The expenses are in December where they belong; the payment in January is not an expense, but a transfer from the asset (checking) account to the liability (credit card) account. And when you do a reconciliation of the credit card account versus the credit card statement to insure that your Quicken transaction totals exactly match the credit card company's transactions.

If you want a report of cash flow rather than expenses, you can create such a report by using the Advanced tab in the report. You'd edit the report to include the checking account but not the credit card account(s), and set the Advanced tab to "Include selected transfers with accounts outside of report". "Outside of report" means accounts not included in the report, like the credit card accounts. You'll get a section in the report for Transfers > Credit Card payment which will list the payments, while the individual expenses won't be included because they are in the credit card account which is not included in the report.

I'd encourage Quicken to add a "Paid Date" field in each credit card register that could be automatically and quickly populated by the user.

Are you saying that you want a cash flow report in January which lists not the lump credit card payment made in January, but all the December-dated transactions being paid by the January payment? I'm not sure why you'd want that, and I don't envision Quicken changing to enable that.

I'm wondering if you're thinking about this for tax purposes, where personal income and expenses are generally accounted for on a cash basis rather than accrual basis? But when it comes to credit cards, the expenses are reported and deductible when the charge is made, not when the bill is paid. (This is because for tax purposes, using a credit card is considered like a loan, and the payment the following month is a loan payment.)

Your idea to add a Date Paud field for every transaction seems cumbersome and likely to be error-prone. This information couldn't come from a financial institution, since a credit card payment is not associated with specific credit card transactions. So a user would have to manually enter a Date Paid of, say, January 6 for all the credit card transactions in December. That's unnecessary extra work. And because there would be no way to reconcile that all the credit card payments with manually entered date paid of January 6 actually total to the amount of the January 6 payment, it's error-prone. And then there's the issue of what happens to everyone who makes a monthly payment on their credit card which is less than their full balance of transactions from the prior month. Each payment isn't "attached" to some transactions and not others. For instance, if I had a $1,000 credit card charge in December and I made of $500 payment in January and another $500 payment (plus interest) in February, that transaction would have multiple payment dates. Would you expect Quicken to provide a way to enter multiple payment dates and amounts for each transaction? I just don't think that's feasible.

I think you're trying to pound a square peg through a round hole. You can already get a cash basis report showing your credit card payments rather than the actual categorized transactions. But if I'm misunderstanding what you're suggesting, please reply and add more information.

P.S. In this forum, you aren't speaking to Quicken management and developers; you're speaking with fellow Quicken users like me and a small team of Quicken moderators who help answer questions and keep things organized. If you want this to be considered a suggestion for a product feature, though, we can ask a moderator to change this into an "Idea" topic moved to the Product Ideas section of the site. There, other Quicken users can vote for features they think would be desirable, and if/when a topic gets a required number of votes, it is then sent on to the development team for their consideration.