Automatic investment funded from another account

Alexander L. Belikoff

Hello Quicken gurus - I'm having a [hopefully] fairly common situation: I've got a checking account and an investment account (different institutions). I've set up a monthly stock purchase for a fixed amount of money by the investment account funded via checking. Once a month, the investment account "pulls" the aforementioned sum from checking and buys stock for this amount (those are funds so fractionals are OK; stock is kept in the investment account).

Unfortunately, with Quicken, this means a world of pain. Checking account transactions are downloaded automatically, so I see a monthly "payment" in my Checking. Then I have to create a BoughtX transaction in my investment account with proper amounts and sourcing funds from Checking, at which point the new transfer transaction shows up in Checking and I match it to the downloaded one. Not fun, obviously.

Question: is there a way in Quicken to schedule a BoughtX transaction? This is something Microsoft Money has been doing well for many years, yet Quicken seems to be amazingly inept at. I've played with Scheduled Transaction Group but I'm not sure if it retains the necessary transfer functionality.

Any thoughts/experiences?

markus1957

It's not clear if you are also downloading from the investment account. If you are, this would be the first transaction seen by Quicken so the Memorized Payee described below might be set up as originating in the investment account instead of the checking account.

BoughtX is not required. The transfer from checking to investment account could be done using a Memorized Payee that would automatically assign the downloaded checking transaction as a transfer to the investment account.

Then in the investment account, either manually or via download, let the fund Buy occur from the cash balance in the investment account.

q_lurker

Question:  Is the investment account set up as a Single Mutual Fund account?  Such an account in Quicken only handles (holds) a single security.  If that is the case, I would suggest a regularly scheduled transaction in the Checking account as a transfer to (category is) the investment account.  When the companion transaction is entered in that account, it will appear as a BoughtX using the latest value (in the data file) for the price/share.  You may need to edit the price and share quantity accordingly when you get that info from the brokerage facility.  

If the investment account is not a SMF account, I would still schedule the transaction in the checking account.  In this case, the transaction will appear in the investment account as a "Cash-in" deposit.  Subsequently, you would enter a Bought transaction (accept a downloaded transaction?) using the cash now in the account.  

When you download the transactions for your checking account, the downloaded transaction should match the entered-by-schedule transaction with little to no further input from you.  

Jim_Harman

The problem with scheduling a BoughtX transaction is that you don't know in advance how many shares you will be buying.

One way to handle this situation is to enter a reminder for the cash transfer between the checking and investing account. One way to do this in QWin 2020 is to click on the + sign at the top right of the Bills & Income > Bills, Income & Transfers page then pick Add a transfer reminder and follow the directions from there. You can have this reminder entered automatically a few days before the transfer, or you can accept it manually.

The outgoing transfer in your checking account should match the download from your bank. and the incoming transfer in the investing account puts the cash there,

Then you wait for the downloaded Bought transaction to use the cash to buy the appropriate number of shares of the security.

Tom Young

"Checking account transactions are downloaded automatically, so I see a monthly "payment" in my Checking."

Presumably you know the date that the cash is going to be pulled out of checking, so set up the transfer of cash from checking to investing either manually or via reminders, in advance.   You set up the transaction as a "transfer" where X dollars are removed from checking and transferred to the investment Account.  

From what you've said here it appears that the movement of cash occurs before the actual buy, which is typical, so when you do your download from the bank the manual entry gets "matched" to a downloaded transaction from the bank.  And you're done with that transaction on the "bank" side.  (If you're off on you transaction date by a day or so due the weekends or whatever , simply correct the date to the actual date in the checking Account.)

When the buy finally shows up in your investment Account, you simply accept it.  That buy will sop up the previously transferred cash.