Is there a way to designate a money market account as the cash account?

Unknown
Unknown Member
edited October 2018 in Investing (Windows)
Quicken is double booking transactions in cash. My Fidelity brokerage account uses a money market account as the cash account or "sweep" account. Quicken considers the money market account as a separate security and so my cash balance goes off the rails after updates with dividends, sales, purchases, etc.



Comments

  • Unknown
    Unknown Member
    edited December 2016
    I am not aware of a way to do this. I also have a Fidelity account that does the same thing. What I do is this: I look at the activity. You will see a transaction that says something like "Dividend received [security name] (Cash)". That tells you that the dividend was put into "cash". You will also see a transaction like "Reinvestment [Money Market Fund] (Cash). This tells you that the amount was put into the money market fund from the cash account. Unfortunately those transactions don't get downloaded. So I manually add them, keeping the cash balance and money market balance in sync with Fidelity. It's a PITA especially if you have multiple accounts as I do.

    The alternative is to forego the money market fund in Quicken and leave it all in Cash, remembering that cash should be what's in the money market fund. This is much easier.

    The downside of both of these is that Quicken always thinks the downloaded balances for the money market fund do not agree. You can ignore this.
  • Unknown
    Unknown Alumni
    edited September 2017
    Hi Mulecanter,

    I'm sorry for the trouble you are having with your cash transactions. To help us provide you with the most appropriate answer, please let us know what Quicken product (QWin or QMac), what version (2015, 2016, etc.) and what release you have installed. Also, let us know whether you using the US version of Quicken or Quicken Canada. 

    Thanks,
    Dave
  • Jerry Kutche
    Jerry Kutche Member
    edited September 2019
    Sane thing here...  2017 Premiere r3... also cannot connect to bank or cc any longer.. Fighting this all [removed] day. May revert back to 2016 and get a refund.,.
  • Unknown
    Unknown Member
    edited December 2016
    I am using Quicken 2016 for Windows 10.
  • Unknown
    Unknown Member
    edited October 2018
    Just a few points.
    1. The original post is 4 years old.  Mulecanter probably isn't "hanging" on answer.
    2. "Most" of this problem lies in what the financial institution is doing.  If there is suppose to be a transfer to another account and there isn't in the data from the financial institution.  But even if they code one, they can't code in what account that would be in Quicken, so at most you would get a Withdraw transaction where you would have to put i the correct transfer account.
    3. It is possible to use a "linked cash account".  This setting is on the account details dialog.  What that does is that the investment account no longer holds any cash.  Instead any cash transaction sent by the financial institution will be convert to a transfer to/from that linked account.  This is a "special" account, you can't just link any account.  Note that the linked account can't actually be an account that you download transactions from for other purposes.  As in you can not set it up as an Online account.
    4. The way these cash transactions get into the linked account is that Quicken will first download the transaction into the investment account, and then push it to the linked cash account, and if you have not selected the "automatic transaction entry" mode for investment accounts, a Downloaded Transactions tab should open in the linked cash account for you to accept these transactions.
    5. There is a bug in Quicken 2017 where the Downloaded Transactions tab in the linked cash account doesn't open like it should.  And as such these cash transactions are "hidden".  The current workaround for this is to go to the preferences and select the automatic entry mode for investment accounts.  This will push the transactions through to the linked cash account.  Note that on you actual online investment accounts you can override this setting on an account basis by going to the account details -> Online Services.  There is a link there.
  • Unknown
    Unknown Member
    edited October 2018
    One more thing.  If you do decide to go with a linked cash account make a back up first, and try it, and "be sure" that you want to use continue using it before you go with it for very long.

    I have found that the converting over to use the linked cash account seems accurate, but the same cannot be said for the conversion back.  If you remove a linked cash account, expect some transactions to be wrong.
  • Unknown
    Unknown Member
    edited January 2017
    I'm using quicken for Mac 2017 and find a similar problem.  In a brokerage account in which all cash is currently in a money market deposit account, quicken is adding in a "cash balance" for available cash to the total account value and artificially inflating it.  How do I rectify this, since there is not a separate cash balance?
  • Concordman
    Concordman Quicken Mac Subscription Mac Beta Beta
    edited November 2017
    As it pertains to QM17 this issue can not fixed at present.the cash activity shows up under the account transactions and you can see the Account cash balance in the portfolio view but linked cash accounts like your accustomed to working with in QW are not available in QM
  • Unknown
    Unknown Member
    edited January 2017
    Concordman said:

    As it pertains to QM17 this issue can not fixed at present.the cash activity shows up under the account transactions and you can see the Account cash balance in the portfolio view but linked cash accounts like your accustomed to working with in QW are not available in QM

    Thanks, Concordman.  I think I probably didn't explain myself very well, or I'm just confused.  Currently, the account has no positions, other than the money market.  Every penny in the account is in the money market, which is essentially a cash position (even though it technically has to be sold to cash to liquidate).  So, I have "cash" access to all money in the account but QM17 is taking the total amount in the money market (share balance) and adding another amount (cash balance) which greatly exaggerates the market value of the account.  I can't even figure out where this "cash balance" is coming from, since there is no actual cash in the account.  Thanks in advance!
  • RCinNJ
    RCinNJ Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭✭✭
    edited January 2018
    Using QM 2017 v 4.5.6 so most current available, although this hasn't changed since earlier Mac versions. It would be so easy if I could designate my Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund as the Cash Balance/Available Cash as per the original post. However, my problem is that I can't figure out any way to manually adjust the bogus Cash Balance/Available Cash value that QM is reporting. 

    I've tried every combination I can think of, but nothing I've found changes the reported CASH BALANCE which is reporting -$271,375.71. I also can't figure out where this number is coming from except that adding this to the Market Value gets me very close to the correct answer. I would ignore it if it didn't make the reported "Market Value" at the top meaningless!

    I did give up on having QM properly track the values of both the Cash and the Money Market accounts correctly, so I manually adjusted the money market account value to be correct. This I could adjust, but it made no change in the reported CASH BALANCE. If one was linked with the other I would understand, but if they are linked I'm not seeing it.
  • Unknown
    Unknown Member
    edited December 2017
    RCinNJ said:

    Using QM 2017 v 4.5.6 so most current available, although this hasn't changed since earlier Mac versions. It would be so easy if I could designate my Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund as the Cash Balance/Available Cash as per the original post. However, my problem is that I can't figure out any way to manually adjust the bogus Cash Balance/Available Cash value that QM is reporting. 

    I've tried every combination I can think of, but nothing I've found changes the reported CASH BALANCE which is reporting -$271,375.71. I also can't figure out where this number is coming from except that adding this to the Market Value gets me very close to the correct answer. I would ignore it if it didn't make the reported "Market Value" at the top meaningless!

    I did give up on having QM properly track the values of both the Cash and the Money Market accounts correctly, so I manually adjusted the money market account value to be correct. This I could adjust, but it made no change in the reported CASH BALANCE. If one was linked with the other I would understand, but if they are linked I'm not seeing it.

    You track your money market account as you would any other security in your Vanguard account.  

    Create a security with the proper ticker.  You purchase shares of the money market fund...usually at $1 per share...and the number of shares equals your cash balance.

    Because, in reality...these ARE shares.  It ISN'T cash.  You OWN the security. 

    BTW, if it's possible in Quicken Mac, you can uncheck "download quotes" for the security, since it's fixed at $1 per share.  
  • Unknown
    Unknown Member
    edited December 2017
    RCinNJ said:

    Using QM 2017 v 4.5.6 so most current available, although this hasn't changed since earlier Mac versions. It would be so easy if I could designate my Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund as the Cash Balance/Available Cash as per the original post. However, my problem is that I can't figure out any way to manually adjust the bogus Cash Balance/Available Cash value that QM is reporting. 

    I've tried every combination I can think of, but nothing I've found changes the reported CASH BALANCE which is reporting -$271,375.71. I also can't figure out where this number is coming from except that adding this to the Market Value gets me very close to the correct answer. I would ignore it if it didn't make the reported "Market Value" at the top meaningless!

    I did give up on having QM properly track the values of both the Cash and the Money Market accounts correctly, so I manually adjusted the money market account value to be correct. This I could adjust, but it made no change in the reported CASH BALANCE. If one was linked with the other I would understand, but if they are linked I'm not seeing it.

    However, you can't do that, since you need to reflect sales and purchases.... your comment doesn't help.
  • Tom Young
    Tom Young Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2017
    RCinNJ said:

    Using QM 2017 v 4.5.6 so most current available, although this hasn't changed since earlier Mac versions. It would be so easy if I could designate my Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund as the Cash Balance/Available Cash as per the original post. However, my problem is that I can't figure out any way to manually adjust the bogus Cash Balance/Available Cash value that QM is reporting. 

    I've tried every combination I can think of, but nothing I've found changes the reported CASH BALANCE which is reporting -$271,375.71. I also can't figure out where this number is coming from except that adding this to the Market Value gets me very close to the correct answer. I would ignore it if it didn't make the reported "Market Value" at the top meaningless!

    I did give up on having QM properly track the values of both the Cash and the Money Market accounts correctly, so I manually adjusted the money market account value to be correct. This I could adjust, but it made no change in the reported CASH BALANCE. If one was linked with the other I would understand, but if they are linked I'm not seeing it.

    @Disney Walker

    I assume that your comment on gmalis1's post is directed at his "uncheck 'download quotes'" recommendation, not his recommendation to treat a MM fund as a security.  (It's hard to tell.)

    If that's the case then I think you misunderstood what he said.  He recommended not downloading quotes.  He didn't recommend to stop downloading transactions.  Downloading transactions gets those sales and purchases reflected in your Account.
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