Updating transactions in Vaguard brokerage accouunt

Timothy Myers

I created a brokerage account at Vanguard two years ago. I hold only one mutual fund in it, and my only transactions are periodic, automatic dividend and capital gains reinvestments, plus very occasional sell and withdraw transactions. Because I neglected to update transactions after initially setting up the brokerage account in Quicken, my recent download left out some transactions (because Vanguard limits downloaded transactions to 18 months). Since I do not have so many transactions, I am OK with manually updating. But I don't quite understand how. When I entered transactions manually (by just looking at a printed out account activity, I discovered that "ReinvDiv" did not sweep back the dividends into the mutual fund account. This left me with a positive cash balance, when my actual cash balance is zero. In other words, ReinvDiv bought new shares of the mutual fund, but did not subtract a similar amount from my cash account (or sweep account, which is Vanguard Federal Money Market Account). I did not set up a separate money market account.

I also noticed that some sales of shares were categorized by Vanguard as SoldX, which I don't think is correct. So I reverted to a backup to start over again.

How do I enter reinvestments and sales/withdrawals to make my investment account accurate?

Quicken Premier for Windows
Year: 2020
Version: R26.21
Build: 27.1.26.21

Chris_QPW

One way to get a feel for what is needed is to just look at the transactions that you did download.

But here is some information that might help.  The ReinvDiv action means to take the dividend and buy more of that security.  As such there isn't any cash to "sweep back" to your security that is being used for the "cash" in your account.  You should only be using this action on securities that are reinvesting the dividend in the same security.

If you are not reinvesting your dividends then the action you are looking for is "Inc - Income (Div, Int, etc.), and then you put the amount in the Dividend field. This will record it as a dividend, and put the cash into the register balance.  Now to "sweep" it into the security used to hold "cash" you will need a second transaction, a buy of that security.

A similar thing happens when you buy or sell a security.  Say you but XX shares of YY security, and that costs $515.34.   Well that $515.34 has to come from somewhere, and that "somewhere" is the security that is holding your "cash".  They sell $515.34 of that security to pay for the buy.  You need to put in both of these transactions to do the "sweep".  Reverse this for a sell.

Chris_QPW

One way to get a feel for what is needed is to just look at the transactions that you did download.

But here is some information that might help.  The ReinvDiv action means to take the dividend and buy more of that security.  As such there isn't any cash to "sweep back" to your security that is being used for the "cash" in your account.  You should only be using this action on securities that are reinvesting the dividend in the same security.

If you are not reinvesting your dividends then the action you are looking for is "Inc - Income (Div, Int, etc.), and then you put the amount in the Dividend field. This will record it as a dividend, and put the cash into the register balance.  Now to "sweep" it into the security used to hold "cash" you will need a second transaction, a buy of that security.

A similar thing happens when you buy or sell a security.  Say you but XX shares of YY security, and that costs $515.34.   Well that $515.34 has to come from somewhere, and that "somewhere" is the security that is holding your "cash".  They sell $515.34 of that security to pay for the buy.  You need to put in both of these transactions to do the "sweep".  Reverse this for a sell.

Timothy Myers

Thanks very much, you have been very helpful!