Investment Account(s) - Unrealized Gains & Losses - General Journal Entries

Unfortunately I only have a comment for you.... It is my understanding from our accountant that mutual funds stay on a Companies books at the value they are when purchased. You do not put the gain/loss on your books until they are actually sold or scrapped. That may be why QB doesn't track this information like Quicken and Microsoft money (which are for individuals not Companies). Have you asked your accountant about tracking the losses and gains?

Responding to Lizhere:

I have visited w/our Accountant and it was his suggestion that the Unrealized Losses be listed in the Balance Sheet to be more representative of actual Asset Values. We recognize that in filing a 1065 there will be a modification to Schedules M1/2 to reflect differences between book values and Tax Return values, but that was at the Accountant's suggestion. My problem is trying to make my books "reflect" the changes. In running a "test" case (dummy corp) I was able to generate the original numbers w/ease but not the 12/31 values with the Unrealized Losses. In my actual "books" I made the Journal entry at the end of the year, so they actually reflect the 12/31 numbers, but the Unrealized Losses show Positive and Gains Negative (???). Reversing the entries does not affect the values or the sign (+/-) and frankly we're stumped! The Realized Loss is reflected in the P/L properly (though the Accountant seems to think that the P/L should somehow also reflect the Unrealized Losses as well). From what I've read, they probably only show up on the Balance Sheet, but somehow I need to have them deduct from the totals vs adding to the totals, hence my question as to how to enter the debits and credits. The original check debited cash/credited Brokerage, then my year end adj credited the various Mutual Funds and debitied the Brokerage account plus showing all the reinvested dividens/interest/cap gains w/Unrealized Losses making up the difference. When I tried to make the transaction (dummy corp) from the initial purchase, I could not get the actual 12/31 balances to be listed for the Mutual Funds, it fails to reduce their purchase price to the current market value or place the "Unrealized Loss" as a line item.

Sorry, I can't help you out.

As the finance manager at a nonprofit, I have had to do this since we "store" our savings in a batch of mutual funds and money markets ourselves. I just upgraded from QB Pro 2006 to QB Pro 2009 (and not entirely happy about some of the changes and assumptions behind why some things were changed.) But I digress.

I do an end of month reconciliation within my chart of accounts, but in the Other Income by creating accounts that specifically record unrealized gains/losses, dividends, interest, captial gains and realized gains and drawdowns. I have no formal accounting background so I guess I don't know what you're supposed to do or cannot do. (Smile?) The key for me is to record an accurate view of the month-to-month balances of the overall portfolio in the balance sheet (Other Assets, set up with Cash and Equities line items), and on the P&L I have the option of showing how much income vs. withdrawals we might have to make to create a total Net Income that posts to my monthly balance sheet (just not broken out by operating and investment income or loss).

I can send you some examples if we can go offline.