How Can I Remove a "Pseudo" Cash Account?

Ken45140

I created a problem many years ago and am trying now to solve it. For reasons I do not remember, I created in my investment accounts, what seems to be a pseudo-cash account, which I called "Fid-Cash". Over the years I never tried to reconcile the accounts nor deal with this Fid-Cash thing. Right now several of my accounts show either positive or negative balances for Fid-Cash as well as regular Cash. I want to solve this and make the retirement accounts reflect reality. With hat in hand, I respectfully ask for your suggestions.

For example, o ne account has a positive balance in Fid-Cash and a negative balance in cash. I entered a "Remove Shares" transaction and brought the Fid-Cash line to zero, but at the same time lowered the total balance of the account. The Cash balance did not change from its negative total. I have been unable to "deposit" cash, and the program seems to want the deposit to come from another account, such as a checking or savings account. This is something I do not want to happen.

Is there an approach to fixing this years old problem?

Thanks for any help,
Ken

q_lurker

Please clarify.  You identify Fid-Cash as an account albeit a pseudo-cash account.  Separately, you also seem to indicate it is held in several accounts and can be 'removed'.  That suggests Fid-Cash is a security.  Which is it?  Does it appear in your security list (Ctrl-Y)?  

How to handle it is very mush dependent on what it is.

Now I really expect it is a security that you have bought and sold, added or removed, at various times.  It may have one time represented a MM sweep account.  Different users have different preferences on how to handle such account.  I think your first action to get a handle on that security would be to develop (and print?) a security report for Fid-Cash and see how it has been used.  Maybe you simply delete all those transactions.  Maybe you do something very different from that.  

First and foremost, before doing anything substantial to them, create a backup of your file!

Ken45140

Q_Lucker: thanks for your initial comments. This Fid-Cash is a security, and has 389 entries/transactions. Mostly Div Recd, but some Bought and Sold ones. I have no idea why I set it up, nor why I have ignored it for so long. It will not let me delete it because it "has transactions". It looks like I would have to delete each transaction individually, a non-starter. If there is not someway to get this thing "off the books", I will have to export a Portfolio file to Excel and massage it there to remove the effect of the infamous Fid-Cash. Any suggestions would be most welcome. I regularly make backups.
Ken

Jim_Harman

A couple of options come to mind:

-- If the money is actually in a money market fund and you want to track it that way, you can rename Fid-Cash to the name of the money market fund. In this case you will want to Buy enough of the money market fund to bring the account's cash balance to zero.

-- If you want to track the account's cash as "Cash" in Quicken, you can enter a Sold transaction for the amount that is in Fid-Cash. That will add the Fid-Cash balance to the cash that is already in the account.

Ken45140

Jim_Harman: thanks for responding. Fid-Cash is not a MM account. By selling Fid-Cash, the cash in the account does not then match the actual cash. So the second task is to bring the cash balance into alignment with actual cash. Cash balance in Quicken does not match real cash even without considering Fid-Cash. Again, a real mess I am trying to fix. I continue to appreciate suggestions.
Ken

q_lurker

Ken45140 said:

Q_Lucker: thanks for your initial comments. ...  It looks like I would have to delete each transaction individually, a non-starter. ...
Ken

You can call up a BANKING transaction report customized to investment accounts and limited to select categories, etc.  Within that report, you can highlight select transactions and Edit to delete those selected transactions with one click.  Beats the 'individual' approach. 

But deleting those transactions will (I expect) alter the cash balance in your account in some fashion.  If you want to get rid of that pseudo-security, you are going to have to deal with that cash issue somehow.      

Jim_Harman

If you don't want to or can't find the origin of the cash imbalance and just want to fix it going forward, you can click on the gear t the top right of the account and select Update cash balance. Enter the correct cash balance and date.

This will affect Quicken's performance calculations, but they are wrong now anyway.