We own a few timeshare weeks that we typically rent out. We’re looking for an easy way to track our expenses and income. We use Quicken Deluxe. Neither of us has any accounting experience so don’t know the "correct" way to do this. I tried creating an asset account in Quicken, but when I did a deposit in our checking account with the category being a transfer to the timeshare asset, it came out as a decrease in the asset. Should we just do two transactions instead of trying to tie the them together? Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
I don’t think you need the asset account for a timeshare. In my experience, the asset account is good if you have a liability account (loan) associated with it and you want to see equity calculations (asset value minus loan balance) and you want to track increases in value of the asset or sale/disposition of the asset.
The easiest way to track these things is to create categories for your expenses and income. I’m not sure what Quicken Deluxe is missing from Quicken Home & Business (what I use), so sorry if you aren’t able to do what I suggest:
You probably only need a couple of categories – I’m assuming you report income associated with the timeshare on a Schedule E tax form? If so, consider creating a category group called "Rentals" or "Timeshares". Create a category within that group that is in the "Income" group and call it something like "Rent". If you take security deposits, you may want to create a separate asset account for that, or at least a separate category, because those deposits often have to be treated differently, and aren’t considered income until you actually get to keep them. Create a category within the "Rentals" category group that is in the "Expense" group and call it something like "Rental Expense". You can create subcategories within this category or create more categories if you want to track more detail (i.e. cleaning, legal expenses, office expenses, miscellaneous, repairs, etc.).
If your Quicken version allows it, associate these categories to the related tax form (Tax Line Item Assignments) to make reporting at tax time easier.
I created an account called "Undeposited Cash & Checks" to enter any cash or rent checks, etc., that I receive. I assign them one of my rental income categories. When I deposit those into checking, I record it in my checking account as a transfer from Undeposited Cash & Checks. When I write a check for an expense, I associate it with on of my rental expense categories. The same goes if I use my credit card to pay a rental expense.
I hope this makes sense – email me if you need more help…