Investing account cash balance is incorrect on Holdings screen

nancybabs

One of my investment accounts is showing a $0 cash balance when I look at the Transactions screen (correct) but is showing a significant cash balance when I look at the Holdings screen. If I click on 'cash' on the Holdings screen and enter $0 as the cash balance on the pop-up screen, I get an entry showing miscellaneous income in the incorrect amount. What's going on and how can I get rid of this?

Boatnmaniac

When you click on the "Cash Balance" number in the lower right corner of your investment account register (transactions screen), what do you see?  Are the cash balances in Quicken and as reported by the FI in agreement or are they different?

Also, what is name of the company where your investment account is being held?

nancybabs

I see $0.00. The cash balance displayed on the investment account register (transactions screen) is correct. The cash balance shown on the 'Holdings' screen and in reporting is incorrect.

Boatnmaniac

Did you click on the blue colored cash balance displayed in the bottom right corner of the investment account register?  That will bring up a pop-up that will show what your cash balance is for your Quicken investment account register as well as the cash balance that is being reported to Quicken by the FI (financial institution).  If the amounts shown are equal to each other we'll need to head down one path.  But if those two amounts are different from each other then we'll need to head down another path.

Also, please do a reconcile shares and let me know what comes up.  You can do that by clicking on the gear icon at the top right of the account register display and then clicking on "Reconcile Shares."

Finally, what is the name of the company where your investment account is being held?  Believe it or not, that can provide some insight into what might be the issue. For instance, Fidelity holds cash in "core" money market mutual funds, not as actual cash.  But how they report that information to Quicken can cause the issue you are seeing.  There is a "fix" for this but I need to know the information requested above to know if that is the likely cause of your issue.

Old Bob

I have the same problem with a Fidelity account.The cash shown in the register is zero and that is correct. The cash shown in the holdings window though is incorrect as it is not zero. The other holdings are all correct.

Boatnmaniac

Fidelity (and some other brokerage companies) hold their investors' cash in a "core" money market mutual fund (the default fund is SPAXX but there are other funds that investors can opt to use) instead of in a more traditional sweep deposit account (essentially a savings account).  This allows Fidelity to pay much higher interest rates to their customers for their cash holdings than what they could do with a sweep account. 

If you look at your Positions in your on-line Fidelity account you should see that you have shares of SPAXX** or some other money market fund listed (with the ** identifying which account is your "core" fund) with no cash balance.  You'll also notice that on the Balances tab the value of your SPAXX shares will instead be included in "Cash Available to Withdraw."  That's because as far as Fidelity is concerned "core" = "cash" and "cash" = "core" and Fidelity folks will often refer to "core" and "cash" interchangeably.  We also need to have that same mindset.

When Fidelity downloads into Quicken it downloads both the "core" fund position/transactions and the cash balance.  This causes two issues:

1)  Quicken will show share holdings for SPAXX but if you try to reconcile your shares in Quicken it will say that your shares in Quicken and your shares as reported by Fidelity do not match.  You will probably also see that Quicken has added transaction Placeholders to identify what changes need to be made to bring your Quicken holdings into balance with what Fidelity has reported to Quicken.

2)  In your Quicken register you will see a blue underlined cash balance of $0 at the bottom right of the account register.  But if you click on that cash balance you will get a pop-up that shows your Quicken cash balance is $0 and your Fidelity cash balance is equal to the shares value of your "core" fund.

To resolve this issue I edited the following SPAXX (my "core" fund) transactions in my Quicken account register as follows:

1)  Deleted all SPAXX "Buy" and "Sell" transactions in the register which moved the cash used for these transactions into my Quicken register cash balance.

And, since I also had "ReinvDiv" transactions in Quicken for SPAXX:

2)  Changed all "ReinvDiv" transactions in Quicken to "Inc - Income (Div, Interest, etc.)"  which moved the dividend payouts into my Quicken cash balance instead of using them to buy SPAXX shares.

3)  In my on-line Fidelity account, I changed my Dividends and Capital Gains setting for SPAXX so they are directed toward my "core" account and not reinvested into SPAXX.  Making this change doesn't really affect how cash is shown in my on-line Fidelity account since dividends paid are still by default automatically reinvested by Fidelity into SPAXX.  But it does change how the dividends get downloaded into Quicken...all dividend payouts are now downloaded as cash dividends instead of reinvested dividends.

I had to take these steps only one time.  After completing them my Quicken and Fidelity downloaded cash balances always match and Reconcile Shares always shows the shares reported in Quicken and as reported by Fidelity match.  It also eliminated the Placeholders for SPAXX that Quicken had generated.  The one thing I have to keep reminding myself of is that my Quicken cash balance is really the value of my SPAXX holdings but that it's OK because "core" = "cash" and "cash" = "core".

If you decide to do this yourself, be sure to make a backup of your Quicken file first so you can pull it up again in the event this doesn't work for you.