Change in presentation of unrealized gains/losses in QD2010's spending report?

Hi all:

Once a year, at year end, I prepare a Balance Sheet and Income/Expense by Category report with unrealized gains and losses included in both reports. This is my first year of preparing these reports using QD2010; previous years' reports were prepared using QD2007, QD2004, QD2001, etc.

I noticed that this year the category _UnrlzdGain is showing up twice, as a positive number, in both the Income and Expenses sections of the Income/Expense report instead of as a net number, positive or negative depending on the circumstances, in the Income section. This is a change in presentation from all previous years.

The net number (Income section _UnrlzdGain minus Expense section _UnrlzdGain) is correct and I can't dispute that in some sense this year's presentation is more informative, but I can't see any option in "Customize" that will let me net the two numbers back into one net figure in the Income section. Any way of doing that?

TIA.

Tom Young

?Hi, Tom.

Sad to say, that's not a brand new issue. It has been happening for a couple of years now. I've been meaning to mention it here, hoping that John Pollard has some insight for us, so I'm glad you brought it up.

The good news is that adding the two numbers together gives the right total or net, as you said. When adding, we must remember to put (or remove) a minus sign in front of the Expenses number before adding. In other words, if the _UnrlzdGain in Income is positive (black), then it is a gain; if that number is in red, then it's a loss. Reverse the colors for the UnrlzdGain line under Expenses. Note that it never says UnrlzdLoss; I guess the programmers always think hopefully. So, if Income shows $10,000 (black) and Expenses shows $3,000 (also black), your net gain is $7,000.

It is? Doesn't seem very informative at all to me, especially since there's no way that I've found to determine which investments are represented on which line - and, yes, I've tried to figure them out. I'm not even sure the same investments are on the same lines each month.

I haven't found any way to do this, either. Since the statement is only for me and not for public consumption, I've just been mentally adding/netting them in my head. I rarely print out any Quicken Reports, but I look at them onscreen almost every day. In addition to the Portfolio/Value screen, I also look at two versions of the Income/Expense by Category - YTD: one Including Unrealized Gains and the other without gains.

In Quicken 2011, this split-reporting of gains hasn't occurred for me - yet - so MAYBE someone at Intuit woke up and fixed it. We can hope.