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QWin 2018: Help me understand dialog when converting to linked checking account

Rocket J Squirrel

I'm experimenting with showing cash in linked checking accounts rather than in brokerage accounts in QW2018. When converting to linked checking accounts, I periodically see the dialog below.

This transaction was created as a transfer to an investment transaction. If you edit the category, the corresponding transaction will be deleted. Do you want to change it anyway?

I don't know what it means.

There is no indication what "this transaction" is.
There is no indication what "edit the category" or "change it" mean in this context.
There is no indication whether deleting the transaction is the right or wrong action to take here.

Can anyone decipher this for me?

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mshiggins

Sounds like some damaged transactions? It's been a long time since I converted my accounts to use a linked cash account, but I don't recall seeing that dialog during conversion.

unknown

I don't use linked cash accounts so I can't give any details on any interaction with those. (Well I did use them for short period many years ago.), but I can tell you what that message is all about.

If you remember in the "old days" when you had a transfer from account A to account B, if you tried to delete/change it from account B it would tell you basically that you couldn't do it in that account, you needed to do it in account A.

Well for the most part you can now delete/change transfers from either side of that transfer.
But when an investment account is involved they give you that warning.

For instance say I have a paycheck reminder and there is a contribution from it to a 401K account.
And then you find that you have entered going to the wrong account. If you go in an change the account it is going to transfer to, you get the message you see.

If is basically saying "When the transfer account is changed, that will basically delete it in that first account. (and then of course create another transaction in the account you put in."

I'm not sure why they feel the need to notify the user about this since they allow changing transfer accounts in most cases "silently", but that is what the message means.

It is in no way an "error" or corrupted data.

unknown

P.S. On reason they probably didn't specify the accounts and such in the message is because the message was originally meant for notifying the user as they are doing the change to the transaction. So they should know what account it is talking about. When they "automate" things like in some of the wizards and such you get the messages that are meant for interactive processes and as such don't make much sense.

For instance the move transactions command prompting on every single reconciled transaction that is moved. The developer just put a single move into a loop and didn't think about any kind of messages that might pop up.

Rocket J Squirrel

Thanks, QPW. Your answer makes sense. I wish this confirmation dialog had been skipped in the loop converting cash balance to linked checking. It takes a time-consuming process and makes it a true pain in the butt.

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:

FWIW:

I tested with a very small sample of three transactions in an investment account:

1.) A non-zero opening balance transaction that transferred cash back into the investment account.

2.) A "Cash transferred out of Account" which transferred funds from the investment account to a checking account.

3.) A paycheck transaction recorded in a checking account which sent a portion of the paycheck deposit to the investment account.

When I initiated the "Show cash in a checking account" process, transactions 2 and 3 disappeared, with no messages. I could see transaction 1 still in the investment account - and I got the message reported in the original post in this discussion.

It seems to me the message was accurate (the remaining transaction was a "transfer to an investment transaction" - despite the awkward wording); and when I told Quicken "Yes" I "do want to change it anyway", that "opening balance" transaction that transferred funds back into the investment account ... was "deleted" from the investment account and then became a transaction in the new linked checking account that transferred funds back into the new linked checking account.

At the conclusion of the process, my investment account was empty, and the linked checking account had the 3 transactions I expected. The results seemed correct.

But when I repeated the process and said "No" to "Do you want to change it anyway" ... I get the exact same result.

Which sort of makes sense, since there can't be any cash in a Brokerage account with a linked checking account, so Quicken can't leave the opening balance transaction in the investment account, so the results appear correct.

But it does reinforce the notion that the question is being asked out of context.