Quicken 2018 Investment Account Cash Balance

Guest3

Hello Quicken Community,

I noticed that after upgrading from Quicken Deluxe 2016 to Quicken Deluxe 2018 R9.34, any buy transactions in my 401k account downloads now default to pulling the money from the "cash" part of the investment account and creating a negative cash balance.  Before the upgrade the "cash" balance always stayed zero. 

I found two ways to fix this problem.  The first way is to EDIT each buy transaction and where it says "Use cash for this transaction from this account's cash balance" choose the From option instead and select the name of the 401k investment account in Quicken.  So essentially the cash source becomes the 401k account itself.   That seems to be what the default behavior was before the upgrade but I never had to edit each transaction and choose it like I do now.

The second way to fix the negative cash balance is to use the update cash balance option and set it to zero.  Quicken then creates an adjusting entry somewhere which I've never been able to see or find in the register- but that's another issue. 
 
I'm thinking that of these two options, using the FROM account option is probably the more correct procedure for 401k type investment accounts but will defer to quicken/community comment.  

I realize that with a non-401k account that you actually do want to buy shares using the cash part of the investment account, and the cash balance going more negative is desirable, but I think 401k accounts are different somehow because that money is never being transferred from somewhere else first - it just shows up in the 401k account directly on pay day.  

My current challenges are now 1) figuring out how to make new buy transactions in the 401k investment account default to using the 401k account itself as the cash source without having to manually edit each transaction to set that each time,  and 2) figuring out how to track down and make visible all the update cash balance to zero transactions I erroneously made in the past and undoing them.  They don't show up as placeholder entries and seem to be hidden.

Anyone else currently working with these issues and have any thoughts or comments?   Thank you for reading.

Jim_Harman

Normally with any investment account you want to track where the cash for each Buy came from: sale of another security in the account, a Deposit, transfer from another account, a Split in your paycheck, etc.



This is generally preferable to either of the methods you mention above.



The invisible transactions you have are Placeholders. See the Quicken help for info on how to make them visible.

Guest3

Hi Jim,



Thanks for your reply. I agree with you that it’s preferable but I think only if you can somehow automate all the splits within a paycheck so that quicken canidentify the 401k entries as a transfer from the checking account deposit that has all the splits . The problem is manually entering a paycheck with multiple taxes, benefits, insurance, contributions- employer matching and not, etc. can get a little involved. But you are right and the capability to track all of that is there.

Jim_Harman

I agree getting all the splits correct on a paycheck is difficult, but I found it worth the effort. Setting up a Reminder for the paycheck lets you define the splits just once, then adjust the amounts as needed.

Have you tried the Paycheck Setup wizard? This makes the setup process somewhat less painful. Go to Planning > Tax Center and click on Add Paycheck.

One tip: It you have an item like a 401k contribution or match that stops part way through the year, you may find it easier to edit the paycheck to set that amount to zero for the rest of the year then restore it again the next year rather than deleting the split and figuring out how to add it back in.  

Guest3

Hi Jim,

What kind of account set up do you recommend in Quicken 2018 for tracking the value of a pension / portable cash option ?  There is no ability to download anything or get a statement- it's just a number on a benefits website.  There's a total amount shown, and a paragraph that basically says here's what you would get monthly at your normal retirement date, or you can take it as a lump sum via the portable cash option.   It would have to be manually updated from time to time, but might be useful to have this total shown in Quicken as part of an overall net worth or one of the more conservative asset classes under investment portfolio. 

Jim_Harman

I would set up a security called Pension Fund or whatever with an asset class of cash, and an account that holds it. Define an Income category "Emp pension Contrib"



When you get a statement that shows $XXX more in the account, record a Deposit of $XXX with that category and Buy XXX shares of the pension fund at $1.00



You can track the potential income in the lifetime planner OR include the cash value in your retirement portfolio, but not both.

Guest3

This will work great.  Thank you so much Jim!