Vaction home is owned by three parties - which version is best?

As long as you use the correct owners name for the Payee field in each deposit you can track each owners deposits.

I guess the answer would depend on how much you want Quicken to do in relation to tax handling. I think any personal version of Quicken would suffice for the most elementary functions and reports. If you want more of the sophisticated features Home & Business or QuickBooks may be the answer. I am sure others more knowledgeable with these two versions will weigh in with their opinions.

I believe that the MOST important matter is to set up a completely separate set of files for this house. Trying to manage the finances within YOUR Quicken data would simply be too convoluted.

That said, Quickbooks is probably overkill (for this relatively simple bookkeeping operation) -- although it WILL track "Owner's Equity" if you determine that you need that. Beware, however, that QBooks is a significant step up from Quicken.

Home and Business is, likewise, unnecessary -- unless you're going to be issuing invoices and monthly statements to your partners in addition to the ordinary P&L reports.

That leaves Quicken. Any version will report "amounts paid in" from multiple sources. Beyond that, you might want to wander over to Quicken.com and click thru to the "Quicken 2005 Comparison Chart" to select the appropriate version.

Some beginning thoughts, I'm sure others can improve/correct details.

Setup at least 4 accounts:

one Checking an asset account for each part-owner (these are assets of the home, not the owner's)

record assessments/amounts-due in each part-owner's account. (increasing the asset) record owner's payments in their account as transfers to checking (reducing the asset account, increasing the checking account)

A positive owner account represents an amount due. Amounts due will not always be the same; an owner who breaks a window or who wants a specific item in the home will owe more than the others (thus suggestions to use one account and total by payee may not be adequate). Agree on interest rate when a part-owner is out of town and misses a payment, the property tax is due for example, and the other owners have to put up the money.

Now consider the case where an owner on-site makes an emergency payment of $100 (to a plumber, for exampe). Record the $100 expense in the owner's account, reducing the account balance. You've recorded the expense and when the next assessment is made, this owner will owe $100 less than the other owners. Good luck (do I get a free weekend?)

dick w

I've got to disagree, somewhat, with Dick.

I think you need, on the balance sheet: An asset account for the House itself An asset account for a "House" checking account An asset account for Furniture/fixtures/etc. (so you can depreciate them) (possibly) a Real Estate and/or Insurance Escrow asset account (presumably) a liability account for the mortgage

The "Net Worth" of the venture is simply the net (assets minus liability) of the above.

If you believe that you need "Owner Equity" accounts, go to Quickbooks ... Quicken's handling of them is UGLY.

On the Income and Expense side: A "Paid In" (or whatever you want to call it) income category, with a sub-category for each partner. (possibly) a "Rent" income category An insurance expense category A real estate tax expense category {presumably} a mortgage interest expense category and, then, all the normal "household expense" categories ... depending upon how much detail you and your partners want.

sources of income -- not all together different from a renter. So anytime monies are paid into the House checking account (or, paid on behalf of the "House") they should be recorded in the appropriate "Paid-In" sub-category.

Just remember to think of the deal as "Three Parties Partnership", not just as a vacation expense, and you should be fine.

Actually, you can set up "owner's equity" accounts in Quicken by using simple liability accounts. Set it up like Dan said with the addition of three liabilty accounts, each in the name of an owner. When one of you puts in cash, make the coresponding entry to the liability account. That way you can track each cash addition.

Without those liabilty accounts, you have to "plug" something.

account.

BUT, Quicken won't automatically flow the (hopeful) excess of assets over liabilities to these "owner's equity" accounts, like Quickbooks does ... thus requiring constant adjusting, and re-adjusting, entries to distribute the net worth.

I figure it's just easier to ignore specific equity accounts, print the Net Worth report (wherein Quicken WILL automatically calculate the Net) and let each partner figure out that they own 1/3 of the Net.

I didn't say Quicken would update the equiry accounts. I don't think it even sugests that. I said it was a way to track the cash contributions, period. Otherwise you have to post the cash contributions to an income account.

Jumping in here late...if you wish to run this like a business then I would say you want to use Quickbooks. It will allow you to use classes to separate out a P&L for each of the 3 partners. It will also have the appropriate equity accounts by partner that you probably want. Jury-rigging Quicken to have equity accounts is probably not the cleanest way of doing it.

Small point: Quicken allows classes. If you used separate classes for the 3 partners on all applicable transactions, you could create separate reports for each.

contributions,

income

But with your 3 "simple liability" accounts, you would STILL have the undistributed Net Worth ... this is an improvement?

How do you enable Classes? In Quickbooks, you have to turn the feature on.

At least two ways; either is available whenever you want it.

In Q2005; Tools > Class List > New

and add whatever classes you like.

Or, when entering a category in your register, at the end of the category name, key a forward slash followed by the class name; if the class name does not already exist, Quicken will open a dialog box to allow you to add the class.

Once you have classes in your class list, you will be offered a "Class" tab on most reports to allow you to select the classes to appear in the reports.

Thanks. It also exists in 2004 basic.

The OP's question was "We want a program that will track which owner has paid how much and when, in addition to tracking where the money has gone, etc."

I stopped at the "etc.", addressing only owner payments - but the topics you raised did need to be addressed and I'm sure you've given the OP a good start, something for them to think about.

dick w