Outgoing transfer from 1 account disappeared on outgoing but shows on incoming. Fixable?

a1newman

Outgoing cash transfer from 1 account (OptionsHouse) to incoming account (Ameritrade) on April 28 disappeared on outgoing but shows on incoming. I believe that occurred when I changed in (Ameritrade 2 MiscInc transactions to IntInc for March 31 and April 30th. Now those transactions show up in both accounts Ameritrade and OptionsHouse accounts in addition to the wayward transfer. Is there a best approach to take here to fix all of these? Is it possible other items got fouled up that I have noticed yet? My files are very large - 231 MB and there are a lot of transactions from April 28th to now. My last backup was on 5-21 and the problem does not show there.

Chris_QPW

Well from the sounds of it you tried to change a transfer into the transaction type that can't be a transfer, and "broke the link".

Transfers can only be certain transaction types and they can only be in one direction.

For instance in a non investment account you can't have a transfer that is from a split transaction to another split transaction in another register.

In investment accounts certain transactions can have a transfer connected to them.  There are the ones that have a category/account field in them so you can fill it in with the transfer account.  And then there are ones that are really two transactions in one like a BuyX.  But note that again you are doing this in the "from" account.  If you have a transfer into another account and try to change then you are definitely going "break the link".

Now in theory when you make such a change Quicken should just remove the transfer from the other side, but I have certainly seen bugs in Quicken that don't do that and you end up with a transfer that "goes nowhere".  You can see that by selecting the transaction and right clicking and selecting "Go to matching transfer", and Quicken comes back with the error that it can't find the other side of the transfer.

It has been my experience that all you have to do is just delete this broken transfer.  And if need be reenter it.

a1newman

As I said "I believe that occurred when I changed in Ameritrade 2 MiscInc transactions to IntInc for March 31 and April 30th." I didn't do anything to the transfer. Somehow it changed what was in the the OptionsHouse account by eliminating the outgoing transfer of cash and took the 2 payments in Ameritrade and duplicated them in OptionsHouse even though I just changed those 2 transactions in Ameritrade.

If your suggestion of deleting the broken transfer is to work, what order of deletion is likely needed? Is it the 2 additional interest income items duplicated from Ameritrade into OptionsHouse first or ...?

a1newman

Chris, When I "select the transaction and right click and select "Go to transfer", it goes to OptionsHouse the IntInc transaction of March 31 which Quicken put there when I changed the Ameritrade MiscInc to IntInc for March 31. This transfer was on April 28th. So Quicken looks like it doesn't understand what it did and neither do I. So should I change the IntInc transaction showing for March 31 in OptionsHouse to April 28th as the transfer? Maybe I should firat delete the April 30th IntInc in OptionsHouse and see if that has negative results first. While backing up after each change to make sure I can go back a step if necessary.

Chris_QPW

Frankly it is hard to picture exactly what is going on here.  What I think I would do is first make a backup/copy of the data file, just in case you need to get back.

And then delete all of the problem transactions and reenter them.  Being that you are only talking about three transactions that shouldn't be hard.  Feel free to take it one transaction at a time to see the affect.

It isn't as "satisfying" finding out exactly what went wrong, but from your description I don't think you will ever find that that out.  For instance at times I have found that links between my wife's paycheck and her 401K are "broken" and I have never found rhyme or reason way it happened.

One thing that I have discovered over the years is that the "link" between transfer in the two accounts is "purely virtual".  As in there isn't really a link in the database between the two transactions.  And as such it is entirely possible to "link" to the wrong transaction or show as if it is linked and not be "linked" at all.