Sometimes I want to have a transaction entered twice but in different accounts in Quicken. For instance suppose I paid $6000 to get my driveway repaved. I entered that transaction in my check register with a Category of "Household:Improvements". But since that is a major improvement to my property I want it to appear in a register that tracks my cost basis.
So, how can I get the $6000 both in my checkbook and in an asset account for my house?
Stubby wrote in news:142b76e6-38c2-4f03- snipped-for-privacy@v31g2000vbs.googlegroups.com:
If it is "just" re-paving, it may not be an improvement according to IRS rules, but just upkeep/repair. If it is a real improvemnet, it should likely be a "transfer" to the account that tracks your home's value, which is an asset account in all likelyhood.
Hi, Stubby.
Make your "Household:Improvements" an Asset Account - not a Category (in Quicken-speak). You will then have a Register for that Asset, but there are no Registers for Categories.
Repairs and maintenance are expenses and should be charged to an Expense Category. Improvements add to the value of an asset and should be added to that Asset Account. We can either add them directly to the House asset, or create a separate Household Improvements asset so that we can see the improvements separately from the original cost of the house itself.
This opens the question of "what IS an improvement", versus what is a repair, but that discussion is for another day. The theory is pretty simple; applying it to real life can often get messy. That would include such questions as what to do about the cost of the old driveway when you tear it out to build the new one. ;^{ Were you making your old driveway better than the original, or simply repairing the wear and tear from years of use?
RC
-- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX (Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.) snipped-for-privacy@grandecom.net Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010) (Using Quicken Deluxe 2011 R 8 and Windows Live Mail in Win7 x64)
Sometimes I want to have a transaction entered twice but in different accounts in Quicken. For instance suppose I paid $6000 to get my driveway repaved. I entered that transaction in my check register with a Category of "Household:Improvements". But since that is a major improvement to my property I want it to appear in a register that tracks my cost basis.
So, how can I get the $6000 both in my checkbook and in an asset account for my house?
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