My Schwab Cash balance does not match in Quicken and my account.

L067541

My cash balances do not match between the Quicken investment account and the actual account. I only do online downloads of transactions so I don't understand why they do not match and why the online transfer doesn't match these amounts.

Boatnmaniac

Do the shares in Quicken and as reported by Schwab match?  A fast way to find out is to click on the Gear icon at the top right of the account register screen and then click on "Reconcile Shares".  If they match a popup will say that.  If they don't match, a popup will show what the difference is.  Make note of all details (security, shares, etc.) if they don't match.

Also, at the bottom right of the register screen, click on the blue underlined cash balance line.  The popup will show what your Quicken cash balance is and what Schwab reported to Quicken.  Are they the same or different from each other?  If they are different from each other, is the dollar difference equal to the dollar value difference of shares difference?

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @L067541

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community and post your issue, although I apologize that you have not yet received a response.

If you are still needing assistance please take a moment and review the information available here and please let us know what version and release of Quicken you are using.

If you haven't already, please take a moment to review the information available here regarding placeholder entries and see if this could the cause of the discrepancy.

To resolve a placeholder, please take a moment to review the information available here.

Let me know how it goes!

Thank you,

-Quicken Tyka

Boatnmaniac

Do the shares in Quicken and as reported by Schwab match?  A fast way to find out is to click on the Gear icon at the top right of the account register screen and then click on "Reconcile Shares".  If they match a popup will say that.  If they don't match, a popup will show what the difference is.  Make note of all details (security, shares, etc.) if they don't match.

Also, at the bottom right of the register screen, click on the blue underlined cash balance line.  The popup will show what your Quicken cash balance is and what Schwab reported to Quicken.  Are they the same or different from each other?  If they are different from each other, is the dollar difference equal to the dollar value difference of shares difference?

Ps56k2

L067541 said:

My cash balances do not match between the Quicken investment account and the actual account.

What kind of Schwab account is this ?

On my Schwab brokerage investment accounts there is no cash balance,
as the cash is deposited into a (separate) Linked Cash checking type account.

So - where are you seeing this "cash balance" ?

Boatnmaniac

@ps56k - I'm not sure who you directed your question to.  My previous post assumed that @L067541 did not set up his Schwab account in Quicken with the linked "Show Cash in a Checking Account" option.  If this option is not checked in the Account Details General tab the ending cash balance will be listed in the bottom right corner of the register screen and the running cash balance will be in a column in the register.  I stopped using this linked checking account option with my investment accounts because invariably at some point something would go wrong and it was a very time consuming pain in the b*tt resolving them.

@L067541 - If your cash is held in the linked checking account, I think the only option for comparing cash balances is to obtain your current online account cash balance and then using that amount to reconcile the account in Quicken (Account Register>Gear icon>Reconcile).

Ps56k2

Boatnmaniac said:

@ps56k - I'm not sure who you directed your question to.

I had a snippet quote for the OP and the orig Q&A -

Thanks for the review...
it's been so long, forgot that the Linked Account was actually an option and not a forced default.  One of the issues for me has always been not being able to reconcile the accounts.... due to the Linked Account -
  On the flip side, I have the Linked Account setup with a MM fund along with having a checkbook... 

BUT - we still have to find out the specifics of the OP and their account setup -

Boatnmaniac

@ps56k  - Agreed. 

I used to have a lot of issues with reconciling investment accounts but found out it was made immensely easier once I stopped trying to do that with a paper statement.  That's because paper statements are a snapshot of a specific date and time while the Quicken accounts are constantly evolving.  That and paper statements don't always include shares for transactions that were made prior to the statement date but were not settled by that date.  So, I rarely even bother looking at my paper statements, anymore.  Instead, what I now do to reconcile:

1. After downloading, I click on "Update Reconcile Shares" under the register Gear icon.  If there is no disagreement on the shares, I assume all is good.
2. Then I click on that blue underlined "Cash Balance" at the bottom right of my register.  If the dollar amounts in the Quicken account and what the FI reports are the same, I will then click on "Reconcile" under that Gear icon and enter the Cash Balance to start the reconciliation process.  Assuming all is OK, all transactions (both shares and cash) will be reconciled.  If the dollar amounts are not the same then I'll wait for a few days (usually 3-4 is enough) to let the shares buy/sell transactions to be settled and then try to reconcile.

This process works if the cash is not in a linked checking account.  If it's in a linked checking account it's a much more manual process.  (Another reason why I stopped using linked checking accounts.)

Ps56k2

Boatnmaniac said:   After downloading, I click on "Update Reconcile Shares" under the register Gear icon.  If there is no disagreement on the shares, I assume all is good

Do you mean this.....
but this appears to be a security by security manual compare ?
Postings updaated from .... Update Shares ---> Reconcile Shares

Chris_QPW

Shouldn't the process be using "Reconcile Shares..." not "Update share balances..."?

Note "Reconcile Share..." won't be there if the account isn't setup for downloading because there will be no share balance from your financial institution to compare to.

Boatnmaniac

Yes, I meant Reconcile Shares, not Update Shares.  I've corrected my previous post. Sorry about that.

Chris_QPW

I wasn't going to post an answer here because as with all the questions about "why doesn't my account match the online account " it really boils down to what reconciling is all about.

From my experience almost every difference can be summed up in either one or two ways.  One is the fact that your Quicken account might have information in it that hasn't yet cleared the financial institution (or provided for download yet), like a check.  And the other is for various reasons there is a problem in your Quicken accounts.  A last possibility is the financial institution made a mistake, but that almost never happens.

But investment account reconciling adds another twist to the problem and that is the security shares.

The process for reconciling investment accounts has to always go this way.

First you make sure that the number of shares you have in each security matches what the financial institution has on the given date.  If it is wrong you need to go through all the non reconciled transactions and find the difference.

Next you reconcile for "cash".  Note that you will have both transactions that have a security and ones that don't.  They both can affect the cash amount, and can be wrongly coded.  For instance my wife's 401K which is managed by Merrill Lynch codes every dividend as "dividend" even when they are reinvestments, so I have to fix these every time.

Note just reconciling to the cash will not get you a good reconcile.  For instance in 401K/IRA is typical that you will have a zero cash balance, and you can get that zero balance without the shares being correct.

Boatnmaniac

@L067541  - Sorry about this thread diverging down a path that looks away from your initial post.  Please do reply to the questions asked above so we can perhaps pinpoint the cause of your issue and address it.

L067541

Thank you all for you comments.
The shares in the account do match. Usually if they do not then you get a message at the end of updating the transactions showing the discrepancy. That is not true with the cash balance.

Your comment on being able to compare the share balance at the upper right hand corner is very good. I did not know that feature.

Same goes with the cash Balance. Using that I found out what the issue was.

It was related to a transfer between two different brokerage accounts both under Schwab. When the transactions get download it does not show it as a transfer but as a deposit and a withdrawal. I changed on to a transfer and that resulted in a double entry in the other account. I had to delete the additional transaction and now everything is OK.

The information was informative.

Boatnmaniac

I'm glad you found the information helpful and were able to resolve your issue.