Linking Brokerage and Cash Accounts

dls23

I am converting from PC to Mac.

The conversion and transfer of accounts from PC to Mac worked fine. However, for my brokerage account I can not "Show Cash in a checking account" like I can on the PC version.


It is a Merrill Lynch brokerage account. If I connect the account to ML, all of the cash transactions go to the brokerage account. Moreover, I can not connect the cash account to ML.


I was not able to get "Quicken Connect" to work with ML for any of my ML accounts, so I used "Direct Connect."

John_in_NC

There aren't linked cash/checking accounts in Quicken for Mac. Your cash transactions have to be entered within the brokerage account itself. (Use a Type of "Payment/Deposit" for these, and you can add different columns such as check #) if needed. But, your cash balance with ML should be shown in your brokerage account.

I don't know how your cash account within Quicken got transferred. You might have to hide that (or keep separate) so that you retain the transaction history. 

Direct Connect is required for investment accounts.

Chris_QPW

Just a bit of information on Quicken Windows "linked checking accounts".

They are "virtual".  All the transactions come in to the brokerage account.
If the user has selected to use a "linked checking account" what Quicken Windows is doing behind the scenes is see if the transactions is a "cash action" and if it is it pushes it to the "linked checking account".

I think one of the major reasons this was done in Quicken Windows is because the investment register is limited in that its columns and transaction entry (tailored to just investment transactions) and such aren't setup to do "normal checking account functions" like writing a check or such.

John_in_NC

There aren't linked cash/checking accounts in Quicken for Mac. Your cash transactions have to be entered within the brokerage account itself. (Use a Type of "Payment/Deposit" for these, and you can add different columns such as check #) if needed. But, your cash balance with ML should be shown in your brokerage account.

I don't know how your cash account within Quicken got transferred. You might have to hide that (or keep separate) so that you retain the transaction history. 

Direct Connect is required for investment accounts.

Chris_QPW

Just a bit of information on Quicken Windows "linked checking accounts".

They are "virtual".  All the transactions come in to the brokerage account.
If the user has selected to use a "linked checking account" what Quicken Windows is doing behind the scenes is see if the transactions is a "cash action" and if it is it pushes it to the "linked checking account".

I think one of the major reasons this was done in Quicken Windows is because the investment register is limited in that its columns and transaction entry (tailored to just investment transactions) and such aren't setup to do "normal checking account functions" like writing a check or such.

dls23

Thank you, both John and Chris. I have become accustomed to the PC way for the past 25 years....I will need now to become aligned with the integrated way.

I will do as John suggests. Keep/hide the old file for history, and begin 2021 with the brokerage account being the primary/sole account.

fheatl

I converted to Quicken for Mac reluctantly last weekend, spent an entire day fixing transactions, horrible user experience. I have been a user of the product for 30 years, the quality of the product deteriorated in the last 10 years, I was optimistic the new owners will take advantage of the monopoly they have and make the product better. My 2 cents, they were successful in converting the pricing to subscription based, subscribers getting an extremely mediocre product in return. Is anyone manning the shop? This will not last forever.

fheatl

I converted to Quicken for Mac reluctantly last weekend, spent an entire day fixing transactions, horrible user experience. I have been a user of the product for 30 years, the quality of the product deteriorated in the last 10 years, I was optimistic the new owners will take advantage of the monopoly they have and make the product better. My 2 cents, they were successful in converting the pricing to subscription based, subscribers getting an extremely mediocre product in return. Is anyone manning the shop? This will not last forever.

Chris_QPW

Personally I think the "product deterioration" is mostly in three areas.

One is Quicken Inc (and a bit before with Intuit) try to expand Quicken's features to satisfy customers that think it should do more.  As in adding features that were a lot of it is out of their control like the new Bill Pay system, Zillow estimates,  and other third party services that are "mostly there", but the parts that aren't are really going to bite people.  And one that isn't third part, sync to cloud.  Every time they touch anything on that there is years of headaches.

The next is a long time problem that the financial institutions cause.  Because of no standards they have forced "aggregation" (Express Web Connect) which is not reliable.

And last area is the very fact that the user's perceptions/problems are "now" and they tend to forgot what was in the past.
Case in in point  Before Quicken 2010 the only way one might change from Quicken Windows to Quicken Mac was to export QIF files and import those.  And I might add you could only do that into Quicken Mac 2007.  If you think the "user experience" is bad converting from Quicken Windows with a QXF file to Quicken Mac you have never tried a full import of a QIF file in any version of Quicken.  Quicken is terrible at matching transfers, one could expect to spend weeks on fixing all the transfers in their data file.

The main reason this wasn't a big deal back then was simple, there wasn't a lot of people changing from Quicken Windows to Quicken Mac, because there weren't a lot of Quicken Mac user to begin with.