Add Shares versus Buys in ESP downloads.

Unknown

Quicken for Mac (4.4.3) downloads transactions from my ESP 401 as buys. This creates a cash balance and, of course, the balance of the portfolio is off. Question 1) Is there a way to avoid this (guessing no), and 2) How can I change multiple Buys to add shares (which fixes the problem) all at once (or do I have to do each one individually)

RickO

The reason they download as Buys is because they really are buys. But what's missing is a corresponding Deposit transaction to add the funds to the accounts cash balance before those funds are used for the buy. 

Do these shares get added as a result of a deduction from your paycheck by chance? If so, your paycheck split should include a Transfer to the 401 account. If the shares are coming directly from your employer, then the 401 account should probably contain a regular Deposit transaction with an appropriate category such as "Employer Retirement Contribution". You could make this a scheduled transaction to make entry easier.

If I'm off base and these transactions are not really buys, the sorry there is no easy way to change them en-masse. You could talk to the brokerage holding the 401 about why they are being transmitted that way though.

Unknown

Thanks for the great response. I understand completely what you are saying and yes, indeed, they really are buys via payroll deduction. It becomes unwieldy to set this up as you describe, in part, because my paycheck varies. En masse changes would simplify this. Oh well. Quicken for Mac has made nice progress in the past year. Back to Mint ---- for now. Many Thanks

RickO

Paul G Schmitz said:

Thanks for the great response. I understand completely what you are saying and yes, indeed, they really are buys via payroll deduction. It becomes unwieldy to set this up as you describe, in part, because my paycheck varies. En masse changes would simplify this. Oh well. Quicken for Mac has made nice progress in the past year. Back to Mint ---- for now. Many Thanks

Ok...but... are you not already entering your paycheck as a split transaction and therefore have a split line for payroll deduction (even though it varies)?

If so, all you need to do is add a Transfer to that split line and the funds will show up in the 401 without any extra work on your part.

Unknown

Paul G Schmitz said:

Thanks for the great response. I understand completely what you are saying and yes, indeed, they really are buys via payroll deduction. It becomes unwieldy to set this up as you describe, in part, because my paycheck varies. En masse changes would simplify this. Oh well. Quicken for Mac has made nice progress in the past year. Back to Mint ---- for now. Many Thanks

Agreed. It is doable. Wish their was an automated download and categorization for paychecks. 

RickO

Paul G Schmitz said:

Thanks for the great response. I understand completely what you are saying and yes, indeed, they really are buys via payroll deduction. It becomes unwieldy to set this up as you describe, in part, because my paycheck varies. En masse changes would simplify this. Oh well. Quicken for Mac has made nice progress in the past year. Back to Mint ---- for now. Many Thanks

Auto categorization of a download would be difficult to implement for paychecks with varying amounts since some deductions are fixed, some are percentages and some vary in other ways (eg. federal income tax). Such a system would have to work backward from the net paycheck to figure out the gross pay which would undoubtably produce rounding errors, etc. 

But if you have not already, you can certainly make the process easier by creating a pro forma paycheck as a scheduled transaction. Then all you have to do is enter the amounts that vary each pay period, but not have to enter all the categories, memos, etc.

Wens

I would also like to see a way to change selected transactions from Buy to Shares Added for my payroll deducted retirement funds. You can change the category this way, why not the type too.