T Rowe Price exchange shares sold and shares bought but money not transfered

QknConfused

I exchange $1000 worth of MF shares between T RowePrice Trad IRAs. Downloads show "Sold" shares and "Bought" shares. The Memo field describes the transaction as an Exchange. However, the Bought side of the ledger shows a Cash Balance of -$1000. Why doesn't the money show as transferred onto the Bought ledger? What is the simplest way of showing the money transfer? Neither account is a SMF. Quicken Windows version R.29.12. TIA.

Tom Young

Trying to do both GAAP accounting and "statutory accounting", (e.g., income tax accounting), at the same time is difficult and Quicken is trying to do both, with mixed success.  The program generalizes that "cash in" to a traditional IRA is a contribution - which it is most of the time I'd guess - but doesn't directly support a transfer of cash between traditional IRAs.  I'd probably settle for leaving the ContribX as is and just remember that it's not really a "contribution" at tax time.

I can come up with other ways of getting cash into the "to" Account with out resulting in a ContribX action - doing an Add shares of a fictional money market fund worth $1,000 and then selling those shares for $1,000 would do the trick - but that's going to confuse the heck out of you when you look at that Account 5 years from now.

q_lurker

My usual step to avoid that "Contribution" message is to transfer shares rather than cash between IRA accounts.  Shares can be either MM shares at $1/share, real or fictitious.  In your case, transferring the security and then selling the security in the receiving account (rather than in the original account) would do the trick.  It is unfortunate that any such workaround breaks the pattern of having your Quicken record model real-world transactions.

I have never seen the consequence of that 'Contribution' message, but I do not use the tax planner or lifetime planner modules in the program.  I think that is where the 'contribution' could be misinterpreted.        

Tom Young

A "Sold" action should have resulted in a cash balance of $1,000 in the "from" Account.  Isn't that where the cash is? 

The logical sequence of events is:

1. Security sold in 1st Account
2. Cash transferred to 2nd Account
3. Security bought in 2nd Account

So the logical thing to do is to transfer the cash from the 1st Account to the 2nd Account, eliminating the negative cash situation.  Seems like T Rowe Price didn't put that transaction in their downloads.

QknConfused

I did that using a "WithdrwX", which results in the unfortunate "ContribX" in the receiving account. Is that the way you would have handled the movement of the cash?

Tom Young

Trying to do both GAAP accounting and "statutory accounting", (e.g., income tax accounting), at the same time is difficult and Quicken is trying to do both, with mixed success.  The program generalizes that "cash in" to a traditional IRA is a contribution - which it is most of the time I'd guess - but doesn't directly support a transfer of cash between traditional IRAs.  I'd probably settle for leaving the ContribX as is and just remember that it's not really a "contribution" at tax time.

I can come up with other ways of getting cash into the "to" Account with out resulting in a ContribX action - doing an Add shares of a fictional money market fund worth $1,000 and then selling those shares for $1,000 would do the trick - but that's going to confuse the heck out of you when you look at that Account 5 years from now.

q_lurker

My usual step to avoid that "Contribution" message is to transfer shares rather than cash between IRA accounts.  Shares can be either MM shares at $1/share, real or fictitious.  In your case, transferring the security and then selling the security in the receiving account (rather than in the original account) would do the trick.  It is unfortunate that any such workaround breaks the pattern of having your Quicken record model real-world transactions.

I have never seen the consequence of that 'Contribution' message, but I do not use the tax planner or lifetime planner modules in the program.  I think that is where the 'contribution' could be misinterpreted.