What does this dialog mean when converting to linked checking?

Rocket J Squirrel

As a test, I am converting a Morgan Stanley brokerage account to use a linked checking account instead of a cash balance. Rather than simply performing the action, Quicken is repeatedly interrupting me with the dialog shown below.

There is no indication which transaction it's talking about and I have no idea what the question means. Anybody know?

Rocket J Squirrel

Not knowing what to make of this, I went through the process twice. Once answering No and once answering Yes to all the prompts. (Yes, I have time on my hands.)

Both iterations resulted in the same error message at the end recommending restoring a backup. I clicked through to the Help and got a very confusing page. I cannot find a backup file anywhere.

I wonder what's going on here. It appears the conversion process is broken however you respond to the dialog above.

q_lurker

a)  If you can't find the "data file that Quicken automatically made", guess you'll have to use the one you made.
b)  Can you confirm that the cash balance does not correspond -- new linked cash acct versus old file cash-in-account setup?  Maybe Quicken is blowing that comparison?
c)  Sounds to me as if they want you to manually make corrections in the new setup that could not be corrected or revised during creation of the linked cash account.

Can't offer any specifics on why such problematic transactions might be problems.  Haven't worked through this myself.  Did some test linkages a few years ago but never saw that type of message.  

mshiggins

How determined are you to get the linked checking account? 

As an experiment, i would try making several Quicken Copies with various date ranges to exclude some of the transactions, then see if any of the Copies can complete the linked account conversion. 

mshiggins

Alternative approach. Transfer open positions to a new brokerage account and make the linked cash conversion on the new brokerage account. 

Rocket J Squirrel

This feature is not at all important to me. I was trying to convert to a linked checking account because another user posted of a negative cash balance issue when using such an account. I thought I'd see whether it was reproducible.

What I learned in the course of attempting the conversion was that it does not work. The flow of the conversion interrupts the user with repeated unanswerable questions. Then, when it's finished, it admits it failed and asks the user to manually fix it.

My intent posting this thread was to learn whether anyone here knew what was going on in this process.

mshiggins

I take it you don't have any linked checking accounts you are actually using.

The conversion is changing the source for every cash transaction to the linked checking account. For example, a Buy transaction gets changed to a BuyX transaction with the cash source the linked checking account. 

I've had linked cash accounts for my E*TRADE and Ameritrade accounts for many years. In both cases, I keep my cash position as a security in the brokerage side and manually enter BuyX and SellX transactions for the cash sweeps. 

Depending on how the cash position is tracked, the user with the negative cash balance may need to manually enter their cash sweep transactions. 

Rocket J Squirrel

I don't use linked checking accounts in real life. I can still write checks from the brokerage account.

If you want to help the guy who has the negative balance issue, the thread is
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7875307/why-is-there-a-negative-cash-balance-in-my-investment-account

q_lurker

So you inspired me to make a similar trial investigation.  In a copy of my main file I chose to switch a major investment account to linked checking.  7100 transactions.  
If I counted right, I received the ambiguous prompt 4 times.  I took the Yes route each time.  End of process - cash balance matched what it was supposed to be.  No prompt to restore and edit manually.  

I did not find any newly created backup file as your help file quote suggested.

I found 5 XOut transactions that all seemed to convert correctly.  I am thinking those were the questionable ones and I miscounted 4 rather than 5.  No other transaction type that would have included any form of transfer (BoughtX, MiscExp, Withdrawal, etc.) was close in count to the 4 (or 5).

Still don't know why the XOut transfers to another account would have prompted the question.

Rocket J Squirrel

Happy to have provided inspiration.

Now if you click Holdings in the brokerage account, does the cash balance show incorrectly? That is the user's complaint. The balance in his register itself is correct.

NotACPA

My brokerage account at Fidelity is also my main checking account ... and I've used the "Linked cash account" feature for YEARS (possibly since it was first offered).

We also use it with my wife's brokerage account, also at Fidelity.

Her account was only set up in early 2016 (shortly after I began managing her finances) and I don't recall seeing any such messages.  The creation of her LCA worked exactly as expected.

Rocket J Squirrel

@NotACPA , you have a pattern in your responses which is "Well, it works for me, so there must be something wrong with you."

I'm sure converting a new small account works fine. Converting my old large account generated problems as shown above. I am perfectly willing to believe my data file is corrupted. I know it has corruption elsewhere. But I claim that I have exposed a flaws in conversion-to-LCA process.

NotACPA

My LCA (as opposed to my wife's) was also fairly large when I created it.

And, you just affirmed what you claim is my "pattern" by stating that your file is corrupted.

Jim_Harman

Could it be that the LCA conversion failures are related to transfers to or from accounts that are now closed or deleted? I can imagine that it would be impossible to re-create those transfers when creating the LCA.

I have never closed or deleted an account in my production file and I have not encountered this problem, but of course that does not prove anything.

Rocket J Squirrel

Jim_Harman said:

Could it be that the LCA conversion failures are related to transfers to or from accounts that are now closed or deleted? I can imagine that it would be impossible to re-create those transfers when creating the LCA.

I have never closed or deleted an account in my production file and I have not encountered this problem, but of course that does not prove anything.

Good thought, but not applicable to my data. The only accounts I've ever closed were physical assets like cars & houses that I've sold. I've never deleted any accounts, either.

Looking through the accounts shows no broken transfers, but that doesn't prove anything, either.

q_lurker

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Happy to have provided inspiration.

Now if you click Holdings in the brokerage account, does the cash balance show incorrectly? That is the user's complaint. The balance in his register itself is correct.

The Holdings tab is accurate. 
It shows a Cash line at the end with the LCA cash amount. 
The Account Status section shows:

• Security Value = correct value;
• Cash Balance = 0.00;
• Total Market Value = Security Value, and
• Linked Cash Balance = correct value = Cash line in Holdings detail.  

Not seeing any issue in this case.  

Rocket J Squirrel

Thanks for running the experiment, @q_lurker . I guess we're no closer to helping @Jim Shiffrin with his Holdings issue. Such is Quicken.