Quicken not handling cash waiting to trade in scottrade flexible reinvestment program

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Gary
Gary Member ✭✭
edited March 2018 in Investing (Windows)
I have my dividends automatically reinvested thru Scottrade's Flexible Reinvestment Program.  The dividends accumulate in a separate bin waiting to buy more stock, which is predesignated.  Periodically the money buys more stock and the money is removed from that bin.  Quicken does not handle that properly.  My balance is way off from my account at Scottrade.  I don't know what to do to fix it.
I am using Quicken Premier 2017 in Windows 10.

Help please!

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  • K.O. (Win-Premier)
    K.O. (Win-Premier) Member ✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2017
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    When you say "Quicken does not handle that properly" what transactions is Scottrade sending to Quicken as it relates these transactions?  I don't use Scottrade but logically these should just be a bunch of dividend transactions and then a buy transaction.  What are you seeing?

    When you say "separate bin" do you mean the dividends do not go into the cash balance of the account?   How does Scottrade track the amount and how does it report these to Quicken (via download)?

    When you say "balance is way off" are you implying it is off by more than just these dividend transactions?  When is the last time you reconciled the account?
  • Gary
    Gary Member ✭✭
    edited December 2017
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    First let me say I don't quite understand all the methods of Scottrade.

    Their statement has separate areas for different types of info, what I referred to as Bins.  After the account summary area, it has security positions.  That I understand fine.  That is correct in Quicken.

    The next area is Flexible Reinvestment Program Activity.  It has dividends transfered in and stock bought.  It also has it's own beginning and ending balances.

    Then comes the Cash Account activity.  It has the dividends put into cash when declared.  Then the cash is immediately transfered to the Flexible account.  There are no stock bought from that account.  That is done in the Flexible account.

    Next comes the Bank Activity account, where interest is added to my cash balance each month.  The cash balance in that account is not correct in Quicken.  You said to Reconcile the account, so I did.  I reconciled with my November statement.  Quicken adjusted the cash account by adding $358.92.  My account at Scottrade opened on 7/6/2010, if it matters.  This was my first reconciliation of this account.

    The only part of the account that is incorrect was the cash total.  The adjustment brought it up to date, but it shouldn't have to do that, should it?  I have Quicken download the data directly, so I thought it should be correct.  I don't know what or why the cash balance was incorrect.

    I hope this helps!  Your help is appreciated!

    Gary
  • K.O. (Win-Premier)
    K.O. (Win-Premier) Member ✭✭✭✭
    edited January 2017
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    Gary said:

    First let me say I don't quite understand all the methods of Scottrade.

    Their statement has separate areas for different types of info, what I referred to as Bins.  After the account summary area, it has security positions.  That I understand fine.  That is correct in Quicken.

    The next area is Flexible Reinvestment Program Activity.  It has dividends transfered in and stock bought.  It also has it's own beginning and ending balances.

    Then comes the Cash Account activity.  It has the dividends put into cash when declared.  Then the cash is immediately transfered to the Flexible account.  There are no stock bought from that account.  That is done in the Flexible account.

    Next comes the Bank Activity account, where interest is added to my cash balance each month.  The cash balance in that account is not correct in Quicken.  You said to Reconcile the account, so I did.  I reconciled with my November statement.  Quicken adjusted the cash account by adding $358.92.  My account at Scottrade opened on 7/6/2010, if it matters.  This was my first reconciliation of this account.

    The only part of the account that is incorrect was the cash total.  The adjustment brought it up to date, but it shouldn't have to do that, should it?  I have Quicken download the data directly, so I thought it should be correct.  I don't know what or why the cash balance was incorrect.

    I hope this helps!  Your help is appreciated!

    Gary

    Thanks for the info.  A couple comments based on the information provided.  

    I would recommend reconciling every month. This way you can catch any discrepancies sooner before they become big problems.

    It sounds like Scottrade is just keeping cash on a separate section of your statement for tracking purposes. When a dividend occurs what transaction is generated in Quicken?  When Scottrade moves that dividend to its special tracking place does it send a transaction to Quicken and if so what is the transaction?

    How I would handle this is to reconcile your cash balance in Quicken to the total of the statement cash plus the amount in the this special dividend holding section on the statement as tracking it separately in Quicken doesn't make much sense to me.  Then when the dividend money is used to purchase stock its just a buy transaction in Quicken from cash.

    As this is your first reconciliation in 6 years you might just want to keep the adjustment and move forward. If that bothers you then I would suggest going back in time and reconciling each month to find the problems and fix them in that period.  Personally I never accept the adjusting entry from Quicken if I'm out of balance.  I want to find out why and correct the incorrect transactions to get back in balance.
  • Unknown
    Unknown Alumni
    edited September 2017
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    Hi Gary,

    Unfortunately, I don't have any information to add to your original question, but I would recommend that you consider not using your email address as your member name here in the community, since this is a public forum. Of course, the choice is yours, but most of our members choose NOT to advertise their personal email addresses.

    I hope this helps,
    Dave
  • Unknown
    Unknown Member
    edited April 2017
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    I have a problem with Quicken and Scottrade's ability to download available cash balances.  Quicken does not download cash balances listed in  Scottrade  into Quicken for the mac.  How can this error be corrected?
This discussion has been closed.