Accounts needed for investment in another company

I've tried to read all the equity account and retained earning questions.  But nothing seems to be exactly my situation.  I have a copy that owns other companies (LLCs).  My participation in those companies varies.  I've modeled these companies in QB Pro with "Other Asset" accounts.  Each company has these types of accounts:

Equity in Sub-Company A

  Company A Contributions

  Company A Distributions

  Company A Retained Earnings

I receive random distributions from these sub-companies and a yearly K-1.

I'm using these accounts to keep track of my capital account in each of these sub-companies.  The contribution/distribution accounts are straight forward.  But when I receive my K-1 for these sub-companies, the "Current year increase (decrease)" line doesn't always match box 1 (ordinary income).    That's because the current year change value is income offset by expenses.  But the expenses are not something my company can lower my P&L by.

My question is this, how do I update retained earnings to correctly reflect my capital account change AND make an entry to "Other income" so my yearly P&L is correct?   Right now I'm using an Other Expense account to balance the retained earnings entry, but that incorrectly show's up on my P&L.

Also, I toyed with using Equity accounts instead of Other Asset accounts, but I didn't like how it showed up on my balance sheet.  Also, the contribution/distribution accounts seemed to have backward balances to me (ie - I put money into a business I expect it's value to go up, not down).

Thank you in advance for any help you give.