USA Quickbooks Pro 2012 - Building values?

[Ciarrai]

Hi, we are a church and I am the bookkeeper for about 4 yrs. The values on our 3 buildings - the church, the office and the rectory, have not been updated since 2002,
I want to update it and I thought this is the way I should show the updated values as of the last appraisal done in 2013

GENJRNL
Debit Fixed Asset acc# 1501 - "Land/Buildings - Church"
Credit Equity acct# 3900 "Retained earnings"

But when I tried a warning popped up:

"You are about to post to Retained earnings account "Retained Earnings". Quickbooks uses this account to track profits from earlier periods that have not yet been distributed.
This is an automatically generated account, and in most case you should post to another equity account.
To continue to post to the Retained Earnings account, click Ok.
To return to the transaction and select another account, click cancel."

Our other equity accounts are:
3600 Prior Period Adjustments
and
3500 Beginning Fund Balance

Would 3600 be the proper choice?

 

[Steve-LevelUp]

Typically, unless there are very good reasons, the book value of those assets are not increased. There are rules regarding the lower of cost or market, but with land, they generally only increase in value.

So, I don't recommend booking an entry at all but rather leaving the values as is.

 

[Ciarrai]

Thank you! I've decided that they don't need changing, it was a council member that wanted them updated so I will be including a note with our insurance values and premiums in my yearly reports - thanks again!