Investment into 401k/ORP from Paycheck

galojah

I am starting to enter my gross paycheck and then splitting out all the deductions.  This works for all my deduction except for my investment into my 401k/ORP with Fidelity NetBenefits.  

I have Fidelity NetBenfits set up in Quicken, so in my splits when I try to just transfer the funds to the Fidelity account, Quicken says: "Account XYZ does not currently contain a cash balance. Are you sure you want to transfer funds to this account?" 

Not sure what to do here.  Right now, I am just using the generic "Transfer" type to make this work. 

John_in_NC

Yes, you will want to transfer the funds in the way you are trying so confirm that dialog. I don't know if that is a new warning or something that comes from people who have transferred from other versions.

Your cash balance will go up, and when Fidelity makes the buys, it will return to zero as you expect.

Note: I have been doing this for years with NetBenefits. I don't know if the first time you try this if a placeholder (adjustment) will be added at the beginning of the account to offset the cash balance back to zero. (I have never seen one with NB, so likely not.) But, if one gets created, you can delete it.

galojah

Thanks, John! Maybe I shouldn't go back and do retroactive from 1/1/2017.  I had been updating all my payroll entries.  Not sure what it would do with historical entries. 

Notice you're in NC.  Probably the same UNC ORP

John_in_NC

galojah said:

Thanks, John! Maybe I shouldn't go back and do retroactive from 1/1/2017.  I had been updating all my payroll entries.  Not sure what it would do with historical entries. 

Notice you're in NC.  Probably the same UNC ORP

Close: Factory in Statesville :-)

galojah

galojah said:

Thanks, John! Maybe I shouldn't go back and do retroactive from 1/1/2017.  I had been updating all my payroll entries.  Not sure what it would do with historical entries. 

Notice you're in NC.  Probably the same UNC ORP

Do you think doing historical entries would break something? 

John_in_NC

galojah said:

Thanks, John! Maybe I shouldn't go back and do retroactive from 1/1/2017.  I had been updating all my payroll entries.  Not sure what it would do with historical entries. 

Notice you're in NC.  Probably the same UNC ORP

I don't know what you mean by "historical entries", but certainly make a backup before you try anything.

The reason I mentioned about conversions is that the only other time I have heard of this warning is when a Windows switcher came over and their cash balance was all screwed up. (It is a new error, as I haven't heard of it in helping out 8 years here.) I can't recall if they had a checking account linked to the brokerage account and that was causing issues. But, their situation wasn't quite like yours, so I don't want to take this in the wrong direction.

If you have a zero cash balance in that account and start adding cash from your freshly split paycheck, I think you will be good to go. But do make backups.

galojah

galojah said:

Thanks, John! Maybe I shouldn't go back and do retroactive from 1/1/2017.  I had been updating all my payroll entries.  Not sure what it would do with historical entries. 

Notice you're in NC.  Probably the same UNC ORP

What I mean are past paychecks where I have not made transfer entries to NetBenefit.  

John_in_NC

galojah said:

Thanks, John! Maybe I shouldn't go back and do retroactive from 1/1/2017.  I had been updating all my payroll entries.  Not sure what it would do with historical entries. 

Notice you're in NC.  Probably the same UNC ORP

You will be fine. You are just now adding in more detail to transactions moving forward that you didn't supply in the past.

Since you mentioned you never made transfers to Net Benefits before, you will have to investigate the running cash balance to see if it is really negative and a placeholder is offsetting it. This isn't hard. Splitting out your paycheck is easy. Figuring out what (has been) going on in your Fidelity account should be pretty obvious.