Q:

Subject: Quick Quicken question

Hi Kerry,

I ran across one of your web pages giving hints on how to use Quicken more effectively while searching for an answer to the following question:

How do you make expenses flow from one Quicken category to multiple Schedule Cs in TurboTax?

I have multiple Schedule C businesses, and some of them share similar expenses, for example, supplies. However, I’m unable to figure out how to separate the expenses for Business 1 and Business 2, and then make them flow to their respective Schedule Cs.

From consulting Quicken’s help and a Quicken Bible book I have here at home, it says to set up classes — and I did that — but how do I tell Quicken that “supplies expenses for the Business 1 class should flow to the Business 1 Schedule C, and supplies expenses for the Business 2 class should flow to the Business 2 Schedule C?”

Your web page gave me a partial answer — to run a P&L — and I appreciate that; it gave me a better answer than either Quicken’s online help or my Quicken Bible. However, I still don’t see how to make expenses/classes flow to specific Schedule Cs.

Is there any way to do that?

Thanks,

A:

Using Classes for each of your income and expense entries and then running a P&L with the columns set to show by Class is the best way to obtain accurate info to enter into each of your Schedule C forms.

As I’ve said on several occasions, I no longer use Quicken nor recommend it for small business owners. QuickBooks, which can import pre-existing Quicken data, is a much more reliable accounting program than is Quicken.

Even though there are some capabilities to export data directly from QuickBooks into tax prep programs, I have never felt that they were reliable enough to use. My clients send me their QB files and I have the class column P&L on one computer screen, while I have my Lacerte tax program on another screen, where I manually enter the data into each appropriate schedule.

You are making a huge mistake in trying to do your own tax returns and would be much better off by providing your Quicken or QuickBooks data files to your own professional tax preparer to enter into the tax program s/he uses.

As I’ve said since the beginning of consumer tax software, there is no better example of G-I-G-O (garbage in, garbage out) than programs like TurboTax.

I realize this isn’t the answer you were looking for; but I do not believe in the practice of people trying to prepare their own tax returns; so I can’t advise on how to do that.

Good luck.

Kerry Kerstetter

Follow-Up:

Thanks Kerry for responding. I appreciate your reply and advice. I did figure out the classes after writing to you.

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