Still Lost - How do I reconcile a manual investment account from statement (TSP)?

TXShooter

I'm still trying to understand how this works with investment accounts. I have employee and employer contribution transfers from my paycheck in a QWD investment account (TSP Contributions). I also have an investment account for share purchases (TSP Shares) that I manually 'import' from a converted CSV file. I had all of these transaction into a single Investment Account, but the reconciliation process confused me, so I split the out to their own accounts for Shares and Contributions... I'm not sure this was necessary and it may be why I'm even more confused.

The TSP Contributions account has Securities value of $0.00 and Cash Value equaling the Total Market Value of $10,688.37. Manually reconciling this account to the statement ending 6/302018 (my first quarter of contributions), when I check-off each statement-matching 'Increases' in the reconcile window, the Difference decreases down to $0.85, which matches the statement Gain/Loss. This part of reconciling sorta makes sense to me. It doesn't show me the number of shares that I own nor their value, but I get how the contributions need to match up, and that is why I reconcile that.

The 'TSP Shares' account has 'Securities' value of $10,515.76, 'Cash Value' of -$10,688.93, and 'Total Market Value' of -$173.17. Each transaction has a negating 'Cash Amt' opposite of the 'Inv. Amt' value (i.e., Inv. Amount: 143.31, Cash Amt: -143.31). My statement's Vestment balance through 3/31/2020 is $8,554.64, and the Value of the same statement is $9,511.87. Even before getting into reconciling, these numbers don't really make sense to me, and I'm trying to find information on the Web to teach me about this, but so far... not finding anything related to how Q works for investment accounts that are manually maintained.

When reconciling the TSP Shares account against the statement ending balance of $892.24, the 'Cleared Balance' decreases from 0 to -$839.09, and the 'Difference' also decreases from -$892.24 to -$1,785.33. When completing the reconciliation process, Q creates a Deposit transaction of $1,785.33 for 'Inv. Amt' and $1,785.33 for the 'Cash Amt', bringing my 'Cash Balance' up to -$8,903.60 and 'Total Market Value' to $1,612.16. I'm not understanding what Quicken is doing here, especially since none of this confirms the number of shares I own and their value. Can someone explain it to me using crayons on construction paper with glitter?

Jim_Harman

As we have recommended before, the cash contributions and the shares should be in the same account.

The deductions from your paycheck should be transferred to the combined account.  

When shares are purchased, they will reduce the cash balance in the account. The cash balance should go down to zero when the shares that correspond to a particular contribution are purchased.

I do not use Quicken's Reconcile for investing accounts. When you get a statement, enter the ending share prices into Quicken's price history. Compare the share counts on the statement with the share count in Quicken. If they agree, the ending balance in Quicken should match the ending balance in the statement.

[Edit] There may be a discrepancy between Quicken's cash balance and the cash shown on your statement If a contribution has been recorded but the corresponding shares have not been purchased as of the statement close.

Jim_Harman

Further explaining your current situation:

Since you have one account in Quicken for your contributions and a separate account for the shares that the contributions purchased you will have a negative cash balance in the 'TSP shares' account. 

I don't know what the 'Vestment balance' is but it may have to do with your contributions not vesting, i.e. being available if you were to quit your job, immediately. Google "vesting" if you do not understand this. This has nothing to do with reconciling your account.

Or is it actually 'Investment balance'? That would be the current value of the investments in your account, which may be different from the price you paid because the investment fluctuates.