Mutual fund sales show up as negative cash transactions

aggilb071679
Member ✭
Any idea why Quicken is treating sales of mutual funds in my retirement account as taking cash out of the account?
There's a monthly fee on my retirement account, paid for by selling fractions of a mutual fund. The downloaded transactions correctly decrease the share balance, but instead of increasing the cash balance, Quicken appears to DECREASE it.
What am I missing? Why are sales taking cash out of my account?
Also, is there a better way to record sales of mutual funds to pay administrative fees/expenses?
There's a monthly fee on my retirement account, paid for by selling fractions of a mutual fund. The downloaded transactions correctly decrease the share balance, but instead of increasing the cash balance, Quicken appears to DECREASE it.
What am I missing? Why are sales taking cash out of my account?
Also, is there a better way to record sales of mutual funds to pay administrative fees/expenses?
0
Best Answer
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To check if it is a Single Mutual Fund SMF open the Account List. Go to Tools-Account List or do Ctrl+A. Click Edit by the Account. There might be a checkbox for Single Mutual Fund.
Or you might be able to change it on the Holding Tab.
See 2 screen shots (from my Q2013).
I'm staying on Quicken 2013 Premier for Windows.
5
Answers
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You need to review the details of the Sold transactions to understand what is happening to your cash balance. Did you record the fee as a commission?
Is this account set up as a "Single mutual fund" account?
Usually you should record the sales for fees with the proceeds going to the account's cash balance then record a MiscExp to withdraw the fees.QWin Premier subscription1 -
I download the transactions and don't enter them manually, so I had to take another closer look at the entries. They appear to be set up as you described, as a sale with proceeds going to the account's cash balance. No fee/commission is on the sale transaction. (See attached screenshot)
I wonder if it's an error in how the financial institution provides the data because I mocked up a new transaction and it was recorded as expected.
This account currently only has a single mutual fund, but I'm not aware of an account-level setting where I would be able to specify it as a "single mutual fund" account.0 -
To check if it is a Single Mutual Fund SMF open the Account List. Go to Tools-Account List or do Ctrl+A. Click Edit by the Account. There might be a checkbox for Single Mutual Fund.
Or you might be able to change it on the Holding Tab.
See 2 screen shots (from my Q2013).
I'm staying on Quicken 2013 Premier for Windows.
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Ok, I don't see that option so it's not a single mutual fund account. It's correctly set up as a 401k/403b account.
I did some more digging into my initial issue and it does appear that the values are coming in incorrectly from the financial institution. I figured out how to re-process the transactions after download (edit the transaction, make no changes, then save) and Quicken correctly handles the cash.
So all along it was a data issue from the bank. It'd be nice if Quicken applied some logic/validation to downloaded transactions (besides format), but I have a way to force them to be processed correctly so I'll survive.0
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