how can I batch change Type & description/category?

Michael B

When I download from Morgan Stanley, the type comes in as Dividend Income, I want to change this to Payment, in Category it says the same Dividend Income, I want to change that to the account number I have set up, like 508 MB IRA, or 510 MB Roth.  Is this possible?

Thanks Michael

jacobs

I'm not sure I understand. When you download a transaction which is a Dividend, you want to change it to a Payment? That doesn't make sense to me. Are you wanting to transfer the proceeds of a dividend in one Quicken account to another account?

Michael B

Jacob, thanks for your help, when I down load from Morgan Stanley, the down load says Dividend Income, Category says the same thing.  I have 6 different account like the 539 Stock div, that like a main joint account, then 5 others with different numbers, 537, 538 or 540 all identifying the various account in the total portfolio.  I've attached a photo hope this helps explain what I would like to do, now I have to go to each line change the Type then give it an account number in categories.

Again thanks for the help
Michael

jacobs

Looking at the screen shot you provided, let me ask a few questions to make sure I'm understanding.

Are the columns you're showing here Type, Security/Payee and Category?

Is "539 Stock div" a category you created?

I also want to be clear about what is an account and a category. An account is an actual account you have with a brokerage. You might have a non-retirement brokerage account, a traditional IRA account, and inherited IRA account, a 401k account, etc. And you may have accounts at different brokerage companies. Each of these real-world accounts corresponds with an account in Quicken. Income from various accounts typically use the same categories to pull together all your dividend income, interest income, capital gains, etc. 

So, when you get a dividend in cash from an investment, the normal category for this income is Investments:Dividend Income. For instance, here's a dividend from Apple:



Depending on how the brokerage company transmits transactions, and how you have set up your Quicken accounts, there are two ways cash can be handled. In many cases, cash from dividends is moved into a money market account. Some people reflect this by taking cash in their Quicken account and creating a Buy transaction to buy shares of the money market fund at $1 per share; other people simple leave the cash balance in the account. Your choice on that may be influence by whether your brokerage transmits a Buy transaction for money market share or leaves the cash as a cash balance.

You typically use the Payment/Deposit type of transaction only when you are moving cash somewhere else: either to another account or if you pay a bill directly out of your brokerage account. The third transaction in your screenshot seems to be a movement of money from this brokerage account to a bank account. So if you are moving money to a checking account, using a Payment/Deposit transaction to Transfer to the checking account is the correct way to do that.

But I'm confused by the first two transactions you show. If these were dividends you received, they should have a Type of Dividend Income like your bottom four transactions. The category would normally be Investments:Dividend Income. You instead have a category of "539 stock div". Have you created different categories of dividend income? For what purpose? (I'm not saying it's wrong to do so, I'm just trying to understand your process.)

You want to be changing all the Dividend Income transactions to Payment/Deposit transactions, and unless I'm missing something, I think that's wrong. If you want Quicken to track your dividend income, why wouldn't these remain as Dividend Income transactions? Then your note in the screen shot says you want to move the dividend to other accounts. That's fine, and that would correctly be a Payment/Deposit transaction -- but that's a separate transaction. In other words, there's one transaction to record the payment of the dividend, and a second transaction to move the money to the account it was transferred to. You can't record receipt of a dividend and transferring the funds to a different account in one transaction. (If you've come from Quicken Windows, I know this can be done in that program, but that's not the way Quicken Mac works.)

So I'm saying, if I understand correctly, that I think the first two transactions are wrong, the third transaction is a proper transfer, and the last four transactions -- which you want to change -- are actually probably correct, and you need to add additional transactions (like the third one) to move the funds to other accounts to mirror what your brokerage did.

Write back and let me know if that makes sense, or if I've misunderstood the situation based on what you've shown here.

Michael B

Jacobs
Your correct column showing are Type, security, category. I have set up my own account numbers in each of the accounts shown, 120, 122, 150 etc with in each of the accounts, I have set up categories, so in account 120 I have in category 520 Joint mm int, 539 Joint Stock div, 805 Professional fees.  each of the 12 accounts have different category numbers so Account 150 has 548 MB IRA Stock div, as an example.  I may get any number of downloads 1-15 to each account (120-154 series) they all read Dividend Income, I want to change that if I can using a batch mode, to Payment/Deposit, now I have to change each one at a time, category now says Dividend Income, I want to then put in the identifier (that would be the 520, 548 etc) again using
batch if its even available.  hope that makes more sense 


 
Thanks again for your help and time

Michael

jacobs

Perhaps someone else will jump in with more or different thoughts, but I feel like you're fighting against the way Quicken is designed to work. Quicken expects to have one dividend category, not separate categories for every account. You can see performance of each security or account in other ways than having all those separate accounts. But if that's the way you want to use it, and it works well for you, then I'm not here to tell you it's wrong or you must do otherwise.

To answer your original question: no, sorry, there's no way to batch change Dividend Income transactions into deposit transactions. If you download your transactions, they will continue to come in as Dividend Income transactions, because that's the standard every financial institution uses, and you will have to edit each one to use the non-standard system you've devised. 

Michael B

Jacob, thanks for the help, you answered the question, there is no batch change. 

Michael