How to reclassify transactions from BoughtX to Bought

Chris_QPW · July 2020

@q_lurker
Since we don't really know what is triggering the BuyX, yes these kinds of tests might help to narrow down why Quicken is deciding to change the Buy to a BuyX.

Jim_Harman · July 2020

Chris_QPW said:

Jim_Harman said:

The Div appears in the Downloaded transactions area as a DivX and the Buy of the other fund downloads as a BoughtX.

Would it be possible to get example OFX entries for these transactions?

[Correction - the first acct is a legacy Vanguard mutual fund acct.]
OK, here is a legacy Vanguard account Div transaction that shows as a DivX in the download area and stays a DivX in the transaction list after I accept it.

<FITID>88024068642.0511.06302020.0

<DTTRADE>20200630160000.000[-5:EST]

<DTSETTLE>20200630160000.000[-5:EST]

</INVTRAN>

<SECID>

<UNIQUEID>92203J308

<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP

</SECID>

<INCOMETYPE>DIV

<TOTAL>274.5

<SUBACCTSEC>CASH

<SUBACCTFUND>OTHER

</INCOME>

And here is a Div in another Vanguard Brokerage account where it is recorded as a Div and is sent to the Federal Money Market.

<FITID>131145728

<DTTRADE>20200707160000.000[-5:EST]

<DTSETTLE>20200707160000.000[-5:EST]

<MEMO>DIVIDEND PAYMENTDIVIDEND PAYMENT

</INVTRAN>

<SECID>

<UNIQUEID>921937835

<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP

</SECID>

<INCOMETYPE>DIV

<TOTAL>16.24

<SUBACCTSEC>CASH

<SUBACCTFUND>CASH

</INCOME>

The difference appears to be the CASH in the SUBACCTFUND for the one that is handled properly and OTHER where Quicken interprets it as a DivX.

BTW there is an old utility "OFX formatter.exe" floating around that does a nice job of formatting OFX files to make them more readable by humans.

Chris_QPW · July 2020

@Jim_Harman OK I took your first DivX example transaction and threw it into one of my QFX files, and here it the result:

For this first test I let Quicken create the account from the QFX and it created a brokerage account.

So clearly there is more to it than what the sub account fund is set to.
It is either something else in the QFX file, the account type, or the security type.
Note that the security type is unknown in my case because I don't have the list of securities you would have in your QFX file.

I retested with linking to a 401K account and that didn't change the result.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/a8/deh509by62pu.png

So scratch the account type. So we are down to the security or something else in the QFX file.

Chris_QPW · July 2020

BTW I also have the OFX Formater.exe too, but since I got it from Intuit's financial institution's support page that was in the past open without a login, but is now closed, I'm not sure if I would get in trouble for making it available to others.

Terry Locke · July 2020

> @Chris_QPW said:
> BTW I also have the OFX Formater.exe too, but since I got it from Intuit's financial institution's support page that was in the past open without a login, but is now closed, I'm not sure if I would get in trouble for making it available to others.

You can get a copy of the OFX spec from https://www.ofx.net/ just go to the downloads and select what you want.

Chris_QPW · July 2020

@Terry Locke thanks, and yes I'm very aware of the OFX spec, but what @Jim_Harman and I were talking about is a program that you can dump an unformatted OFX file into and it will nicely format it to make it more readable.
Turning something like this:
<OFX><SIGNONMSGSRSV1><SONRS><STATUS><CODE>0<SEVERITY>INFO<MESSAGE>Successful Sign On</STATUS><DTSERVER>20200710172430[-5:EST]<LANGUAGE>ENG<DTPROFUP>20140605083000<FI><ORG>Vanguard<FID>15103</FI><SESSCOOKIE>1E3702CDF1A7394B5E42787C7F3BC571.SkKTkPz9z4THr_hnwprd01_1<INTU.BID>15103<INTU.USERID>XXXXX</SONRS></SIGNONMSGSRSV1><INVSTMTMSGSRSV1><INVSTMTTRNRS><TRNUID>0<STATUS><CODE>0<SEVERITY>INFO</STATUS><INVSTMTRS><DTASOF>20200710160000.000[-5:EST]<CURDEF>USD<INVACCTFROM><BROKERID>vanguard.com<ACCTID>XXXXXXXX</INVACCTFROM><INVTRANLIST><DTSTART>20200610160000.000[-5:EST]<DTEND>20200710172430.000[-5:EST]<REINVEST><INVTRAN><FITID>578459602<DTTRADE>20200701160000.000[-5:EST]<DTSETTLE>20200701160000.000[-5:EST]<MEMO>DIVIDEND REINVESTMENTDIVIDEND REINVESTMENT</INVTRAN><SECID><UNIQUEID>72201B101<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><INCOMETYPE>DIV<TOTAL>-215.93<SUBACCTSEC>CASH<UNITS>13.925<UNITPRICE>15.5072</REINVEST></INVTRANLIST><INVPOSLIST><POSSTOCK><INVPOS><SECID><UNIQUEID>72201B101<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><HELDINACCT>CASH<POSTYPE>LONG<UNITS>1674.924<UNITPRICE>15.31<MKTVAL>26011.56972<DTPRICEASOF>20200709160000.000[-5:EST]<MEMO>Price as of date based on closing price</INVPOS><REINVDIV>Y</POSSTOCK><POSMF><INVPOS><SECID><UNIQUEID>922906300<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><HELDINACCT>CASH<POSTYPE>LONG<UNITS>12.31<UNITPRICE>1.0<MKTVAL>12.31<DTPRICEASOF>20200709160000.000[-5:EST]<MEMO>Price as of date based on closing price</INVPOS><REINVDIV>N<REINVCG>N</POSMF></INVPOSLIST><INVBAL><AVAILCASH>12.31<MARGINBALANCE>0.00<SHORTBALANCE>0.0</INVBAL></INVSTMTRS></INVSTMTTRNRS></INVSTMTMSGSRSV1><SECLISTMSGSRSV1><SECLIST><STOCKINFO><SECINFO><SECID><UNIQUEID>72201B101<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><SECNAME>20PIMCO CORPORATE INCM OPPORTUNITY FUND<TICKER>PTY<UNITPRICE>15.31<MEMO>Price as of date based on closing price</SECINFO><STOCKTYPE>COMMON<YIELD>10.1299</STOCKINFO><MFINFO><SECINFO><SECID><UNIQUEID>922906300<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><SECNAME>Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund<TICKER>VMFXX<UNITPRICE>1.0<MEMO>Price as of date based on closing price</SECINFO><MFTYPE>OPENEND</MFINFO></SECLIST></SECLISTMSGSRSV1></OFX>

Into this:

<OFX>

<SONRS>

<CODE>0

<SEVERITY>INFO

<MESSAGE>Successful Sign On

</STATUS>

<DTSERVER>20200710172430[-5:EST]

<LANGUAGE>ENG

<DTPROFUP>20140605083000

<FI>

<ORG>Vanguard

<FID>15103

</FI>

<SESSCOOKIE>1E3702CDF1A7394B5E42787C7F3BC571.SkKTkPz9z4THr_hnwprd01_1

<INTU.BID>15103

<INTU.USERID>XXXXXX

</SONRS>

</SIGNONMSGSRSV1>

<TRNUID>0

<CODE>0

<SEVERITY>INFO

</STATUS>

<DTASOF>20200710160000.000[-5:EST]

<CURDEF>USD

<BROKERID>vanguard.com

<ACCTID>XXXXXXXX

</INVACCTFROM>

<DTSTART>20200610160000.000[-5:EST]

<DTEND>20200710172430.000[-5:EST]

<FITID>578459602

<DTTRADE>20200701160000.000[-5:EST]

<DTSETTLE>20200701160000.000[-5:EST]

<MEMO>DIVIDEND REINVESTMENTDIVIDEND REINVESTMENT

</INVTRAN>

<SECID>

<UNIQUEID>72201B101

<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP

</SECID>

<INCOMETYPE>DIV

<TOTAL>-215.93

<SUBACCTSEC>CASH

<UNITS>13.925

<UNITPRICE>15.5072

</REINVEST>

</INVTRANLIST>

<SECID>

<UNIQUEID>72201B101

<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP

</SECID>

<HELDINACCT>CASH

<POSTYPE>LONG

<UNITS>1674.924

<UNITPRICE>15.31

<MKTVAL>26011.56972

<DTPRICEASOF>20200709160000.000[-5:EST]

<MEMO>Price as of date based on closing price

</INVPOS>

<REINVDIV>Y

</POSSTOCK>

<POSMF>

<SECID>

<UNIQUEID>922906300

<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP

</SECID>

<HELDINACCT>CASH

<POSTYPE>LONG

<UNITS>12.31

<UNITPRICE>1.0

<MKTVAL>12.31

<DTPRICEASOF>20200709160000.000[-5:EST]

<MEMO>Price as of date based on closing price

</INVPOS>

<REINVDIV>N

<REINVCG>N

</POSMF>

</INVPOSLIST>

<AVAILCASH>12.31

<MARGINBALANCE>0.00

<SHORTBALANCE>0.0

</INVBAL>

</INVSTMTRS>

</INVSTMTTRNRS>

</INVSTMTMSGSRSV1>

<SECID>

<UNIQUEID>72201B101

<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP

</SECID>

<SECNAME>20PIMCO CORPORATE INCM OPPORTUNITY FUND

<TICKER>PTY

<UNITPRICE>15.31

<MEMO>Price as of date based on closing price

</SECINFO>

<STOCKTYPE>COMMON

<YIELD>10.1299

</STOCKINFO>

<SECID>

<UNIQUEID>922906300

<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP

</SECID>

<SECNAME>Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund

<TICKER>VMFXX

<UNITPRICE>1.0

<MEMO>Price as of date based on closing price

</SECINFO>

<MFTYPE>OPENEND

</MFINFO>

</SECLIST>

</SECLISTMSGSRSV1>

</OFX>

Chris_QPW · July 2020

I thought about this for a bit and realized I can reconstruct the security list for @Jim_Harman 's security by looking up the CUSIP.

So I did that and now have the security in stored in Quicken and the transaction, but I'm still getting Div not DivX. So there must be something that Quicken is keying off in your QFX file that makes it think this should be DivX instead of Div.

Terry Locke · July 2020

@Chris_QPW @Jim_Harman @q_lurker @NotACPA

I have a theory of what is going on with these transactions.

My theory is this: Quicken decides how to classify a transaction like a buy (BoughtX vs Bought) or a Sell (Sold vs Soldx) etc. based on the Financial Institution (FI) and how the FI decided they want to have Quicken behave for their accounts.

On Friday I spent significant time on the phone with Quicken support confirming that the OFX logs for my transactions with my FI were correct and what the results should be. They kept dodging the question of why was I getting BoughtX rather than Bought. After a number of hours of screen sharing while I generated new Quicken files and new accounts and importing the QFX files and comparing these Quicken test files with my real Quicken files and accounts, they ended the session by saying that I need to contact the Fi and discuss it with their OFX department. I thought that was just a way to pass the buck.

I went back and read every post in this thread and what stood out was:
1. BoughtX, SoldX, DivX are all Quicken inventions. They do not fit into the OFX standard.
2. Chris showed where a similar a transaction for <BUYMF>…..</BUYMF> in his accounts produced a Bought and not a BoughtX.
3. Chris stated to Jim Harman that he put one of Jim's transactions into his QFX file and ran it and he got a DIV not a DIVX
4. Chris stated that “So there must be something that Quicken is keying off in your QFX file that makes it think this should be DivX instead of Div”

This all got me thinking of why Quicken wanted me to talk to my FI and then I had an AH HA moment and hypothesized “What if Quicken works with FIs to tailor how their program works for that particular FI and what if that template is stored in the Quicken program and some kind of a trigger is in a QFX file that tells the program what template to use” That would explain #3 above and why Quicken support wants me to contact my FI.

So I did a dive into the OFX spec and a few of my OFX logs and discovered the Financial Institution ID record aggregate tags. The aggregate syntax is:

<FI>
<ORG>the FI name goes here
<FID>the FI unique FID number
</FI>

Looking in my OFX logs I found this syntax near the beginning of every set of investment transactions for every investment account I have.
In one of @Chris_QPW examples the <FI> tag aggregate looks like:

<FI>
<ORG>Vanguard
<FID>15103
</FI>

For my QFX file it looks like:
<FI>
<ORG>Alliance Benefit Group</ORG>
<FID>57654</FID>
</FI>

I also have a Schwab account and I have never had a BoughtX or a SoldX in it. So to test out my hypothesis I edited my QFX file and substituted in Schwab’s <ORG> identifier so that the <FI>……..</FI> looks like:

<FI>
<ORG> SchwabRPS</ORG>
<FID>57654</FID>
</FI>

I then set up a new test Quicken file and imported the edited QFX file and BANG! All the Buy transactions come up as Bought (not BoughtX) and all the Sell transactions come up as Sold (not SoldX).

So by changing the <ORG> Quicken treats these transactions differently. Not that I want to edit the QFX so that it uses some other FI’s template for Buy and Sell transactions.

Now that I know this, it seems obvious that the only people that can change the behavior of how to treat these transactions (Bought vs BoughtX) is the Financial Institution working with Quicken.

I have included four screen shots at to illustrate the differences in the register and transactions between keeping the <ORG> as Alliance Benefit Group and setting the <ORG> to SchwabRPS.

Chris_QPW · July 2020

@Terry Locke That is some great work, and it is really interesting. But I think there is still a missing piece here. As in looking at what security @Jim_Harman income/DivX is for, a Vanguard security, I suspect that the financial institution in his data is also Vanguard like mine.

And as much as I would like to find out what that is, but I have one important point to make. No matter how this is determined, I believe that Quicken still has a bug in it that needs to be fixed.

At no time should a ***X transaction be set to using the account you are in. That syntax means that the money comes/goes without affecting any category or account in Quicken. This is clearly not right!

I would further argue that the only times that a ****X transaction makes any sense (during a OFX download) would be when Quicken can determine the account that the money is going to be transferred to/from. If it can't determine that they it needs to either ask the user for that information or change it to an action without the transfer.

And the only times Quicken can determine the "transfer account" without out prompting the user would be if the account is linked to a cash account.

Chris_QPW · July 2020

Edited typo for "can to can't".

And in fact I will extend that bug even more. Prompting for the account for a BuyX will not fix the problem now that I think of it!

The money for this transaction comes from a transfer from your checking account in the form of the paycheck reminder. In Quicken you can have transfers in a split "out of the account", but it isn't possible to create a transfer in the investment account than in turn connects up to the split line in the paycheck reminder.

So this operation is totally "illegal" in a 401K account. 401K accounts can't have linked cash accounts, and the transfer can never be properly connected to the paycheck reminder that supplies the cash.

q_lurker · July 2020

Terry Locke said:

@Chris_QPW @Jim_Harman @q_lurker @NotACPA

I have a theory of what is going on with these transactions.

...

setting the <ORG> to SchwabRPS.

A possible aspect as might relate to your theory: Some FIs (actually mutual fund families) have required account setups as one Quicken account for each mutual fund owned. For that setup, the standard has always been the the Quicken account should be designated as a Single Mutual Fund (SMF) account. For those accounts, a ...X transaction is always required. A Single Mutual Fund account cannot hold cash nor anything other than the singular initial fund.

For those situations I had assumed the transaction came in just like any other and Quicken was the one making it a ...X type transaction. That forced X-type applies for manually entered transactions going into a SMF account. My assumption on the downloaded transaction may be in error, or your research may be showing a second factor.

Chris_QPW · July 2020

@q_lurker very good point, I had forgotten about SMF accounts. And in fact I believe at Vanguard they can optionally change accounts on whether they should have all the securities in one account or not.

And that would line up with changing the organization because once you did that you would have to setup another account that isn't connected to the original account that might be setup that way.

Chris_QPW · July 2020

P.S. And in that case the "missing information that Quicken is keying off of" would most likely be in the initial exchange when you create the account in Quicken. Note I didn't look in to the OFX spec for anything like that.

Jim_Harman · July 2020

Here is some further info on the Vanguard account that is giving me ***X transactions in Quicken:

This is a very old account in my very old QDF file - dates to 2000 probably. It was originally a 401k account with manual entry. In 2007 I rolled the 401k over to Vanguard and set the same Quicken account up for online access. In my QDF file it is still a 401k.

One experiment I could try would be to disconnect the old account from Vanguard, create a new IRA account in Quicken, transfer the securities to the new account, and connect the new account to Vanguard. Maybe the new account will handle the ***X transactions correctly.

Chris_QPW · July 2020

Well looking at this further the idea about SMF account seem to line up unless it is some kind of internal setting bug in Quicken.

First off the SMF setting isn't allowed for for 401K accounts.
Second when I did setup an IRA account as a SMF account it did force me to pick an account for the transfer for each buy/sell/... but it is a not something you can type in, it is a list and that list didn't have the account I was in. So I could reproduce what is happening in this thread.

Also looking up what is sent for the account information at setup didn't yield anything useful as far as I can tell.

<BROKERID>vanguard.com

<ACCTID>xxxxxxx

</INVACCTFROM>

<USPRODUCTTYPE>IRA

<CHECKING>N

<SVCSTATUS>ACTIVE

<INVACCTTYPE>INDIVIDUAL

</INVACCTINFO>

</ACCTINFO>

Boatnmaniac · July 2020

Wow. I sure wish I would have seen this thread earlier. I strongly suspect that @Terry Locke 's 401K plan (the actual plan, not what is in Quicken) does not allow for cash to be held (2 of the 3 401Ks that I had were such accounts). With these type of 401K plans the cash transferred from the employer for the employee contribution and the employer match go directly into buying securities. That money never is reflected as a cash balance in the account. So, it is perfectly logical with this type of plan that the securities buys would be downloaded as BoughtX transactions because the securities were directly bought with transferred (the X part of BoughtX) cash instead of account cash.

This clearly creates a problem with these kinds of 401K accounts when using the Gross Amount option of the Paycheck Wizard because the Wizard will transfer cash into the 401K account in Quicken which should not really have a cash balance.

To correct for this you can, as noted above, manually change each of the BoughtX transactions to Bought transactions making sure that the cash is used is from the account cash balance. But, that's a lot of work that shouldn't need to be done.

Or you can do what I did to eliminate the issue entirely once and for all:

1) Delete the Paycheck Reminder.

2) Set up a standard Income Reminder for your Net Paycheck amount.

3) Split the category:

First line: Enter your Gross Pay (a positive number) and categorize it as such.
Other lines: Enter your deductions (1 per line) as negative numbers. Make sure to use the correct tax line item categories for each of these to make sure they are properly accounted for in Tax reports and Tax Planner.
Here's what fixes the 401K account issue: For your 401K contribution deduction categorize it as _401Contrib (or _401ContribSpouse) instead of as a transfer to your 401K account.
After all the splits are entered, the total at the bottom should match the Net Pay amount you originally entered when you started setting this up. If it doesn't match then review all your splits amounts and your Net Pay amount to find and correct the error.
When all matches up, click OK > OK > Done.

Now you will no longer have your 401K contributions going into your 401K account and they will still be captured in your Tax reports and Tax Planner. Problem solved.

You will still need to go back into your 401K account and clean up any remaining BoughtX transactions but once that is done you shouldn't have to do that, again.

The one thing this process doesn't address is employer matching contributions. For me tracking that was never all that important. But if you want to track it I suppose you could create a dummy Cash Account and then create another Income Reminder to be transferred into that Cash Account for the amount of the employer match. Categorize it as _401EmployerContrib (or _401EmployerContribSpouse) instead of transferring it into your 401K account. You can then hide that Cash Account in your Net Worth and selectively include or exclude it from your various reports and tools.

Chris_QPW · July 2020

@Boatnmaniac that makes perfect sense. Still wish I knew how Quicken "detects" this situation, but that is more curiosity then anything else. With this information what Quicken is doing isn't a bug, it recording the transaction the way it should.

Terry Locke · July 2020

> @q_lurker said:
> (Quote)
> A possible aspect as might relate to your theory: Some FIs (actually mutual fund families) have required account setups as one Quicken account for each mutual fund owned.

Understood but that is not what is happening here. The Alliance 401k is set up to deal with many securities not just 1. Also this is not a case of having just one mutual fund family in this account. There are 14 different funds from different fund companies in this account. Have a look at the Register and you will see some of the funds.

>And that would line up with changing the organization because once you did that you would have to setup another account that isn't connected to the original account that might be setup that way.

Well in my testing I don't set up another account I start with a brand new Quicken file so there is no confusion over what account is linked to what. I have built 10 different Quicken test files while running my tests. Setting up a Quicken file is very simple and quick. I then only have the one account in the file and import the QFX into that account.

Jim_Harman · July 2020

I suspect that the ***X problems I have been having have the same root cause.

I went ahead and deactivated my Quicken 401k account with the ***X problem then created a new IRA account linked to the account at Vanguard.

This downloaded and accepted 18 months worth of transactions. These appeared to be correct Div and Bought transactions, but I had to delete them all one at a time.(Grr!) along with Placeholders for my holdings as of 18 months ago. This left the new account empty.

Then I transferred all the securities in Quicken from the old account to the new one. This took a few minutes but eventually all the Adds and Removes were in place and now everything looks balanced.

We'll see what happens when I get more dividends at the end of the month.

Boatnmaniac · July 2020

Chris_QPW said:

@Boatnmaniac that makes perfect sense. Still wish I knew how Quicken "detects" this situation, but that is more curiosity then anything else. With this information what Quicken is doing isn't a bug, it recording the transaction the way it should.

I don't know that either. I do agree that it's not a bug but I think there is something that can be done pretty easily in Paycheck Wizard to fix the issue (see my next paragraph). There's got to be something in what the FI downloads that tells Quicken to enter the transaction as a Bought or BoughtX transaction, kind of like the FI downloading dividend info as Div or ReinDiv....one tells Quicken that the cash goes into the cash balance and the other tells Quicken to use the cash to directly purchase the security, instead.

@Terry Locke - I remember how frustrated I was by this whole thing when I was still working and making contributions to my 401Ks. I just posted a product improvement idea to address this in Paycheck Wizard because I hate the idea of others having to go through this. Please review it and if you like it vote it up: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7878169/paycheck-wizard-allow-for-401k-contributions-to-be-categorized-instead-of-transferred-to-401k-acct/p1?new=1

Chris_QPW · July 2020

BTW the paycheck reminder can be fixed in the same way @Boatnmaniac did with a split transaction by simply deleting the 401K contribution and then adding a Pre-Tax Deduction, where the category is _401Contrib or _401EmployerContribSpouse.

Chris_QPW · July 2020

Jim_Harman said:

This downloaded and accepted 18 months worth of transactions. These appeared to be correct Div and Bought transactions, but I had to delete them all one at a time.(Grr!) along with Placeholders for my holdings as of 18 months ago. This left the new account empty.

There is a trick to deleting multiple transactions in an investment account.
Reports -> Banking -> Transaction
Customize to be just that one investment account.
Now in that report you can do a multiple select, and delete the transactions.

Chris_QPW · July 2020

P.S. I looks like "under the hood" Quicken uses this category to separate out the employer contribution:.

So you could just add a second pre-tax deduction and use that category with Employer in it.

Chris_QPW · July 2020

Boy am I blind! @Boatnmaniac had already mentioned _401EmployerContribSpouse, but I don't see why a cash account would be needed.

Boatnmaniac · July 2020

Chris_QPW said:

BTW the paycheck reminder can be fixed in the same way @Boatnmaniac did with a split transaction by simply deleting the 401K contribution and then adding a Pre-Tax Deduction, where the category is _401Contrib or _401EmployerContribSpouse.

Sorry for laughing at you @Chris_QPW Now I see it's mud in my eye. For some odd reason I tend to find the less simple way of doing things when there's a simpler way of accomplishing the same thing. Good catch!

Terry Locke · July 2020

> @Chris_QPW said:
> @Terry Locke That is some great work, and it is really interesting. But I think there is still a missing piece here. As in looking at what security @Jim_Harman income/DivX is for, a Vanguard security, I suspect that the financial institution in his data is also Vanguard like mine.

Are you talking about 401K accounts or just investment accounts in general?

>
> And as much as I would like to find out what that is, but I have one important point to make. No matter how this is determined, I believe that Quicken still has a bug in it that needs to be fixed.
>
> At no time should a ***X transaction be set to using the account you are in. That syntax means that the money comes/goes without affecting any category or account in Quicken. This is clearly not right!

Well yes, that is the problem with these kinds of transactions. As an example, if in the transaction window in the "Use Cash For This Transaction" group you set the "From" to be your checking account then there will be a debit in your checking account for the amount of the purchase and the transaction is still a BoughtX. So yes, in that case a BoughtX would mean that a security was bought from the proceeds of some cash being transferred in from your checking account. But as we have seen, if it points to itself it is like the security magically appears out of thin air, there is no cash debit from anywhere to pay for the security. I am not sure what that should signify for a financial institution unless like @Boatnmaniac states there are those FIs that simply do not have cash deposit in their accounts reflected as cash and simply show the purchase of the securities. In my case, the register I can see in my FI web page shows the cash coming in and then the individual security purchases. But still, Quicken has this method of setting up 401Ks that have this cash transfer every payday from your checking account to your 401K so why does it no have the Buy transactions take the money from the cash (if you have set up the 401K transfer from paycheck) or at least give you the option to set that up when you are setting up the 401K account. So very frustrating.

>
> I would further argue that the only times that a ****X transaction makes any sense (during a OFX download) would be when Quicken can determine the account that the money is going to be transferred to/from. If it can't determine that they it needs to either ask the user for that information or change it to an action without the transfer.

I agree with this statement. But in the case of a 401K where if when setting up the 401K you have set up a "Paycheck" with the 401K contribution section filled in, this won't work and you really need the Buy transaction to take the cash from the 401K account. @Boatnmaniac solution to the problem is interesting but it changes the classification the contribution from a transfer to an expense.

>
> And the only times Quicken can determine the "transfer account" without out prompting the user would be if the account is linked to a cash account.

Chris_QPW · July 2020

@Terry Locke

My assumptions above are wrong based on the new information that @Boatnmaniac posted.

What is happening in the 401K account is actually correct. What is wrong is what the paycheck reminder is doing.

We still don't know how Quicken knows, but what is going on is Quicken has detected that for this 401K account the financial institution not allowing any cash balance, and the securities are purchased without recording any cash transactions.

So it is correct for Quicken to use a BoughtX with the transfer account being [Diana's ABG 401K], which means the money for this transaction came not from the cash balance, but from somewhere outside of Quicken.

What is wrong is that instead of using a 401K entry in the paycheck you will need to use two categories to record the them. This will get the money into the proper categories for tracking what was put into the 401K without putting cash into your 401K balance.

Delete this entry:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/vy/uje9zqzsw1tq.png

Select Add Pre-Tax Deduction -> Other Pre-Tax Deduction
Change Name to something like 401K Contrib
Change category to either _401ContribSpouse or _401Spouse
Fill in the proper amount.

If the employer contributes to this 401K do this again with the Name something like:
401K Employer Contrib
And the category of _401EmployerContribSpouse or _401EmployerContrib
Fill in the proper amount.

And to clean up the cash that is currently in that 401K account go to it and enter a Withdraw transaction with the category of [Diana's ABG 401K] and the amount equal to the cash balance.

And also you should vote up @Boatnmaniac 's idea to fix this in the Paycheck reminder:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7878169/paycheck-wizard-allow-for-401k-contributions-to-be-categorized-instead-of-transferred-to-401k-acct/p1?new=1

Boatnmaniac · July 2020

FYI - I checked my two 401Ks in which the 401K plan does not allow for cash to be held in the account. Buy transactions downloaded in those two accounts going back to 2006 (when I started tracking them in Quicken) were all BoughtX transactions and there were no Bought transactions in those two account registers. Also, everyone of these BoughtX transactions pointed to itself as the source for these transactions. There were also no downloaded cash transferred in deposit transactions, nor were there ever any cash balances, in those two accounts.

The other 401K which did allow for cash to be held in the account showed only Bought transactions and the employee and employer matching contributions were downloaded as transferred in cash deposits.

Unless @Terry Locke is also seeing downloaded employee and, if applicable, employer matching contributions in the register, then I agree with @Chris_QPW that this is not a FI issue nor a general Quicken issue but it is a Paycheck Wizard/Paycheck Reminder issue where it doesn't allow for anything but transfers to the 401K account in Quicken (unless you set up those contributions under "other pre-tax deductions"). The proposed improvement I posted should resolve this issue.

@Terry Locke - I'm not sure what your concern is about changing these contributions to expenses (actually, pre-tax deductions) instead of keeping them as transfers. As far as the IRS and Quicken is concerned, pre-tax deductions (expenses) from Gross Pay is exactly what they are and they will be accurately reflected as such in your reports and Tax Planner provided they are categorized correctly as noted above. Could you explain your concern in more detail, please?

Chris_QPW · July 2020

Maybe if I can put this into perspective that will let @Terry Locke "feel more comfortable" about the proposed solution.

The paycheck reminder is actually doing something that in normal situations we would tell never should be done.

In Quicken there is a category field in each transaction. And when you want to do a transfer it reuses that field with the syntax of [Other account]. This does two things, first it saves having a second field that would take up space, but maybe even more important it forces you to either have a category or a transfer, not both.

This normally is very important so that you aren't double counting transactions in reports and such which would happen if you were allowed to categorize a transfer.

Well behind your back the Paycheck reminder is actually doing this. It creates a transfer to the 401K and it also gives it a category (it does this in a hidden tax account).

This allows it to "fund the 401K account", but at the same time have categories that it can used for reporting 401K contributions.

So using a split transaction or a "Other" Pre-Tax Deduction" is no different than then "half" of what the Paycheck 401K entry is doing. It just leaves out the transfer part.

And that is important for this use case because the 401K account is setup so that there should never be any cash in that account. So the Paycheck reminder should never transfer money to that 401K account. It is a violation of how that account is setup.

Terry Locke · July 2020

@Boatnmaniac Wrote "Unless @Terry Locke is also seeing downloaded employee and, if applicable, employer matching contributions in the register," I am seeing both an employee and employer cash 'deposit' in my online register at my Financial Institution's website.

@Boatnmaniac Wrote: "I'm not sure what your concern is about changing these contributions to expenses (actually, pre-tax deductions) instead of keeping them as transfers. As far as the IRS and Quicken is concerned, pre-tax deductions (expenses) from Gross Pay is exactly what they are and they will be accurately reflected as such in your reports and Tax Planner provided they are categorized correctly as noted above. Could you explain your concern in more detail, please?" This is the first 401K I have had that treats the Buy transactions as a BoughtX. Other Financial Institutions that I have dealt with for 401Ks are people like Schwab and all of them worked 'correctly' in that the paycheck contribution goes into the 401K account as cash and the securities are bought using the cash in the account. I have been using Quicken since the early 1990s and have never seen this BoughtX problem in all that time until 2 weeks ago. So I still need to do a little head scratching and research into what appears to be a valid 'workaround' to some kind of a bug or 'undocumented feature' in Quicken to see how it impacts my accounts, reports etc.

Also I have managed to make all the BoughtX to be Bought transactions simply having that 401K be set up as an investment account in Quicken. Then when importing the QFX file all the transactions are Bought and Sell with the cash for the transactions coming from the cash in that account, no more BoughtX and SellX. I know that's not what I want to do but what the hell?

How to reclassify transactions from BoughtX to Bought

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