401k Transfers not showing up in budget

clsanchez77

Hey all. I have my and my wife's paychecks setup so that 401k transfers are categorized as "Paycheck, 401k" and "Paycheck, Spouse, 401k"; the transfer parameter shows the respective account.

In my checking account, the paycheck net amount calculates and records correctly. I can go into my checking account and search for either category and the transactions show up. In the 401k accounts, the deposits show up correctly. So I am confident everything is recorded properly. My budget activity, however, shows $0 in the two budget categories.

I know this was a new feature added to Quicken Mac this year and I am running the latest version. I just can't seem to get this feature to work.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Chris S

John_in_NC

You need to go into your Budget and edit it.

When you choose what categories to monitor, notice there are now new ones (not listed in your category list) for Transfers In and Transfers Out (with accounts listed). I suspect that you need to select those to catch your 401k contributions.

Note: you will only want to watch only one side of the transfer. If you select both the Transfers out from your checking account and the Transfer In to your 401k account(s), the net amount will again be zero. 

John_in_NC

You need to go into your Budget and edit it.

When you choose what categories to monitor, notice there are now new ones (not listed in your category list) for Transfers In and Transfers Out (with accounts listed). I suspect that you need to select those to catch your 401k contributions.

Note: you will only want to watch only one side of the transfer. If you select both the Transfers out from your checking account and the Transfer In to your 401k account(s), the net amount will again be zero. 

clsanchez77

Took me a while to get to this. This technically answers my question but does not provide the results I was looking for. A bit disappointed honestly.

Problem No 1, this is my first year using Quicken, so the "Transfer Out" "To Household Savings" is the current balance minus interest earned.

Problem No 2, our paychecks do not show up correctly. Because the transfer to 401k's are showing up as a separate bottom line transfer, the net paycheck amount does not match the budget.

The Quicken for Mac interface allows you to establish a category and a Transfer To account when you split transactions and this should have reproduced the effects of what I was looking for. Pretty disappointed this was the approach Quicken chose.

It has been many years since I used Quicken for Windows, but I recall (selective bias I suppose) that version handled this better.

Chris