Why do ReinvDiv transactions not increase balance of money market account?

Unknown

When I download my transactions from Fidelity, my reinvested dividends appear in the "Inv Amt" column, but my "Cash Bal" amount is the same it was for the previous transaction (i.e., the dividend is not reflected in the balance). It appears that only transactions with an amount in the "Cash Amt" column are able to affect the "Cash Bal" column.

This sort of makes sense, since it is a cash money market account, so only cash counts as cash. However, I am unable to edit these transactions to get the amount into the "Cash Amt" column. As a result, the only way to reconcile my monthly statement is to make an adjusting entry to force the balance in Quicken to match my statement.

How do I get this to work properly? Or, is my account perhaps set up incorrectly.

Unknown

One additional bit of info: When I click "Edit" on the ReinvDiv transaction, it seems to appear correctly with the "Amt" and "Shares" fields filled out, and "1" in the "Price per share" field (since it is a money market account).

Rich_M

If this is a money market fund like Fidelity Cash Reserves, then it's treated like a mutual fund, where the NAV is always $1.

When you receive dividends on the fund, Fidelity reinvests them buy purchasing more shares, so a ReinvDiv doesn't affect your cash balance.

If you had elected not to have dividends reinvested, then they would just be added to your cash balance.

splasher

Rich M said:

If this is a money market fund like Fidelity Cash Reserves, then it's treated like a mutual fund, where the NAV is always $1.

When you receive dividends on the fund, Fidelity reinvests them buy purchasing more shares, so a ReinvDiv doesn't affect your cash balance.

If you had elected not to have dividends reinvested, then they would just be added to your cash balance.

The way Fidelity is handling is the way you want it to happen because now you can see how much you invested and how much you reinvested by adding those columns to your portfolio view.  If they gave you a dividend and then invested it, you would lose sight of the reinvestment amount.
The stocks that I have setup for reinvestment end up showing up as two transactions, dividend and purchase, and I have to rework them to be reinvestments which is a bit of a hassle.  I prefer the ReInvDiv.

gclutterman

Rich M said:

If this is a money market fund like Fidelity Cash Reserves, then it's treated like a mutual fund, where the NAV is always $1.

When you receive dividends on the fund, Fidelity reinvests them buy purchasing more shares, so a ReinvDiv doesn't affect your cash balance.

If you had elected not to have dividends reinvested, then they would just be added to your cash balance.

Why can I not do a ReinvDiv into a Money Market account? I need to correct entries that I made as "DivX" before I realized Quicken was handling my brokerage downloads correctly? Or, alternatively, how can I make this correction without having an error in the total value of the MM account?

Unknown

Rich M said:

If this is a money market fund like Fidelity Cash Reserves, then it's treated like a mutual fund, where the NAV is always $1.

When you receive dividends on the fund, Fidelity reinvests them buy purchasing more shares, so a ReinvDiv doesn't affect your cash balance.

If you had elected not to have dividends reinvested, then they would just be added to your cash balance.

Do you have the money market account set up as a separate security?

Do you have the money market account set in the investment account, or as a linked checking account?

I have zero problems with Vanguard's money market account.  I treat it like an actual security with buys and sells and reinvested dividends...and I have it set up in my specific Vanguard account.  It is NOT set up as a linked checking account. 

Tom Young

Rich M said:

If this is a money market fund like Fidelity Cash Reserves, then it's treated like a mutual fund, where the NAV is always $1.

When you receive dividends on the fund, Fidelity reinvests them buy purchasing more shares, so a ReinvDiv doesn't affect your cash balance.

If you had elected not to have dividends reinvested, then they would just be added to your cash balance.

@gclutterman

"Why can I not do a ReinvDiv into a Money Market account?"

I don't know why you are asking that question because you certainly can do a ReinvDiv with a money market fund.

That action compresses what would ordinarily be entered as two transactions into one transaction:

1. A Div action that deposits cash into the Account credits a Category, typically _DivInc and,
2. A Buy action that takes that cash and buys more shares in the money market fund.
   

A DivX action compresses two transactions into one transaction:

1. A Div action that deposits cash into the Account and credits a Category, typically _DivInc and,
2. An XOut action that transfers the cash to some other Account

If you were manually entering DivX actions by mistake, which Account were you transferring the money to?  It seems like you'd have offsetting errors: an understatement of shares of the money market fund in one Account and an overstatement of cash in another Account.  The only way you wouldn't see both sides of these two misstatements would be if you were transferring the cash back into the same Account where the dividend originated.  In that case the only obvious error would be the understatement of your holdings of the money market fund.

The "fix" in either case is the same:

1. Make one "reversing" XIn transaction for all the previous XOut transactions you made using the same Account as you used for all of your XIn's.
2. Do one Buy transaction in the same dollar amount used in step 1 for the same amount of the money market fund.

Absent any other errors that should bring you back to the correct balances.