How do I find the sources of "-Cash-" as shown in the investment report?

NebularNovice

An amount labelled "-Cash-" appears in various investment reports, such at Portfolio Value. I assume it is intended to be the total of actual cash amounts in my investment accounts, but I cannot find cash amounts in the investment accounts which total to the amount shown in the investment reports. My total cash in investment accounts comes out about 10% less than the amount in the reports.

How do I find the sources of this -Cash- amount?

Jim_Harman

Another place to look for -Cash- would be the Net Worth & Balances > Account Balances report. Click the gear at the top right to customize it. On the Display tab, check Account Detail. This causes it to break out the securites in each account. On the Securities tab, click Clear all then select just "No security (includes cash)".

In my file, I have one long-unused accout that shows a large negative balance on this report if the only security selected is "No security (includes Cash)". The account in question once held employee stock options but it has a zero balance today. If I also include in the report the security I used to track the options, it shaows a zero cash balance as it should. Someday I'll have to figure that out...

Frankx

This is how I would do it - for the "Portfolio Value" report:
1) Make sure you can see the graph at the top of the report
2) In the upper right hand corner there is a graph legend & you should see "Cash" as the first item - click on the word "Cash"
3) You should now see a graph of cash balances over a period of time
4) Click in the bar graph for whatever period for which you want to see the cash breakdown and that will open up a "Price & Value History" report
5) On the "Subtotal By" drop-down box at the top - select "Account"
6) the report should now show the amounts of "Cash" for each investment account.

Hope this helps.

Frankx

UKR

"- Cash -" in a Portfolio Report or "Cash" in a Portfolio View represents the Cash Balance in your investment account register.

You can turn this on or off by customizing the Portfolio view. Select the Securities tab. The first entry in the list of securities is named "No Security (includes Cash)". Putting a checkmark on this entry turns on the display of cash balance as if it was a security named "Cash" in the Portfolio view.

Depending on how the view is sorted, the amount shown represents the amount of cash available in each individual account or the sum of all cash balances.
The As of Date controls if today's cash balance is shown or the balance on a different day.

Have you reconciled your accounts regularly to ensure that cash balance in the account register matches the end of month cash balance from the broker's statement?

Are there any Placeholder transactions floating around the account register?

NebularNovice

Responding to Frankx:

Thanks for your reply. Looking at the Portfolio Value report, I see the graph in the upper right corner. Cash does not appear. It shows a list of my 10 most valuable investments, followed by Other. When I click on Other, I get a list of my other investments sorted by descending value. Then I click on Cash (not -Cash-) and get the bar graph of cash over time. Since I want today's balance, I changed the interval to Weekly and clicked the right-most bar. So far, so good.

But when, I ask for subtotal by account, I get just a LONG list of dates and amounts. The total in the Cash column for each account is not the cash balance in that account.

Since all I want is today's balance in each account, I tried setting custom dates to start and end today. I was told Quicken cannot find any transactions. I then went from Jan 1, 2019 to today. I got a much shorter list of transactions and now believe the total shown for each account is a subset of the net cash movement into/out of the account during 2019. It is not inclusive since cash dividends received into brokerage accounts are not reported. That really does not matter because I don't want the transactions. I want the current balances.

NebularNovice

UKR:

Thanks for your reply. The key is that I needed to go to Portfolio View, not one of the reports.

Now I'm in business. My remaining issue is that the total of the cash shown in the accounts in this view is substantially less than the total -Cash- shown on both Portfolio Reports. In fact the amount of cash shown in Portfolio View for each account is identical to what I found in my manual search.

That fact that the manual cash total (the same as the total reported in Portfolio View) does not reconcile with the -Cash- I see in the Portfolio Reports was the reason I was trying to find out where my cash is. Apparently the rest of the cash does not exist -- or is hidden somewhere else.

Now for the rest of the story: the total value for my investment accounts in Portfolio View is less than the amount shown for total investment value in either Portfolio Report. The difference between the two total values is approximately the same as the amount of cash that does not appear in Portfolio View.

Say that Portfolio Reports show total -Cash- as $5,000 more than total Cash in Portfolio View. The total Investment Value reported in Portfolio Reports is $4,990 more than the total Investment Value reported in Portfolio View. Further Portfolio Reports both show one money market account with a cost of $152.82 and value of $142.82. Portfolio View correctly shows cost of $152.82 and value of $152.82 as does the account itself in Quicken. That is not a Cash amount, so what I am seeing is that Portfolio reports show $5,000 more cash and $10 less in that money market account for the net difference in total investment value of $4,990.

So the general question: what is going on?

Addressing your last question: I do verify that the amounts reported in the account registers match the brokerage statements.

Frankx

NebularNovice,

Sorry that you didn't get the correct data from my above suggestions. While I am not sure why that first approach didn't work for you, I have what I think is a simpler approach. Rather than using the "Portfolio Value" report, let's start with the Investing Tab. Under the Investing Tab - choose "Portfolio". Then on the various drop-down options at the top pick the following:

Show: Value
Group by: Accounts
As of: pick a date that you can reconcile to such as the month end date of your most recent statements

Then click on "Customize" and then for the "Accounts" tab hit "Select All" and for the "Securities" tab first hit the "Clear All" button and then select what should be the first box titled "No Security (includes Cash)" Then hit "OK".

This should take you back to the "Investing>Portfolio" screen and on this screen you should see only your cash accounts that are part of your your investments, displayed and subtotaled by brokerage account, or other investment account. If you then compare the balances to your most recent paper or on-line statements, you should hopefully be able to find out where your Quicken balances vary from the other source data.

Let me know how you make out.

Frankx

NebularNovice

Thanks for the followup, Frankx. I basically implemented your idea by following UKR's advice given above. You can check the reply above yours where I report the results.

I should note that my Quicken balances exactly equal the source data. The problems (as I discovered from the advice in this thread) are in Quicken's reports. The reports do not agree with the Quicken accounts.

Frankx

Nebular,

Is is possible that you have a "separate account" set up in Quicken, such as a donor advised fund or funds held in trust for a minor? If so, that could be where the difference lies. Such accounts would be included in your Portfolio View under the Investing Tab but will not be included in a Portfolio Value Report.

NebularNovice

Frankx,

I do not have a separate account within this file. I do have other current Quicken files, but since they are separate files, I do not think they would affect this issue. Also the problem is the reverse of what you suggest: I have more cash showing in the Portfolio Value Report than in Portfolio View.

Your idea did suggest something else to me. It may be included in what you meant by separate. This file has several accounts which are inactive and closed and hidden and set for "Keep this account separate- account will be excluded from Quicken reports and features." That would imply that the Reports would NOT include these inactive accounts. They might be included in Portfolio View. If so the Portfolio View should have more Cash than the Reports.

However "should" is a dangerous word. I am now going back through the inactive accounts to make sure they do not have any Cash (or anything else) in them.

I will also play around with the Reports to see if I can convince one to give me a list of -Cash- balances in accounts.

Back later, possibly much later because there are a lot of inactive accounts.

Jim_Harman

Another place to look for -Cash- would be the Net Worth & Balances > Account Balances report. Click the gear at the top right to customize it. On the Display tab, check Account Detail. This causes it to break out the securites in each account. On the Securities tab, click Clear all then select just "No security (includes cash)".

In my file, I have one long-unused accout that shows a large negative balance on this report if the only security selected is "No security (includes Cash)". The account in question once held employee stock options but it has a zero balance today. If I also include in the report the security I used to track the options, it shaows a zero cash balance as it should. Someday I'll have to figure that out...

NebularNovice

Great suggestion, Jim_Harman!

Setting Account Balances Report as you described shows the accounts which have -Cash- balances included in this Report. That -Cash- total is the same as in the Portfolio Value report, which is $5,000 higher than Portfolio View shows.

My finding is that a Fidelity brokerage account for my IRA shows $5000 more cash in both Reports than is shown in Portfolio View. The Portfolio View amount matches what I see when I go to that account from the Quicken sidebar (the normal way I would do it).

Similarly the total value of that account shows as $5000 higher in the Reports than in the account itself.

In the strict sense, my original question is answered. I found the sources of -Cash- in the Reports. Now I need to try to figure out why the Cash amount differs between the Reports and my account. I suppose one way to do it would be to compare the two amounts at different times, then see what happened on the date the discrepancy first appears. (I don't believe it can be the same date the double-counting of -Cash- starts in the Investment Allocation Report in the thread on that topic. This account did not exist then.)

I'll see what I can find out by manipulating dates. (I'll also be doing that for the account with the $10 discrepancy between account and Reports, but not Portfolio View.)

Thanks again.

NebularNovice

The transaction causing the problem was last year's RMD. The gross RMD amount came out of the IRA, with the withholding amount going to a tax account and the rest to another Fidelity account. The Quicken problem was that the gross amount was pulled out of the IRA account itself, but somehow the Reports element of Quicken thought that the amount removed was only the after-withholding amount. I "fixed" it by deleting the entry and re-entering exactly as it was originally entered.

Thanks for the help. I am now marking that the question has been answered.