Advice on 401K and Paycheck setup

JCNickell

I apologize if this has been asked, I didn't find a match that made sense to me.

I have a paycheck setup with corresponding checking and 401K accounts. The weekly deductions for my 401K and the employer match are properly posted to the 401K account.
Quarterly I am trying to download the QFX from the 401K provider to provide the breakout of the how my deductions were invested.
For this provider (John Hancock) the QFX file includes "Deposits entries" individually for my contribution, and the employer match. It also includes "Buy" entries that look like they should be the sum of the individual and match contributions.

This appears to overstate the 'deposits' to the Investment account. What is the best way to correct this? I'm thinking that the best way might be to delete the QFX deposit entries and just use it for the "Buy" entries.

Looking for advice since I think this could get messy, trying to avoid deleting dividends and it doesn't appear that I can delete multiple transactions at once.

Jim_Harman

You are correct that the Deposits in the QFX file are duplicating the transfers from your paycheck and should be deleted. You can delete multiple transactions in a investing account by clicking on the gear and selecting Edit multiple transactions. You can click on the Action column heading in the editing window to sort the transactions so all the Deposits are together.

Always back up your file before making bulk changes.

The transfers from your paycheck will add to the cash in your account, and the Buys should bring the cash to zero.

Note that there may be a delay between the paycheck deductions and the Buys of securities.

Jim_Harman

You are correct that the Deposits in the QFX file are duplicating the transfers from your paycheck and should be deleted. You can delete multiple transactions in a investing account by clicking on the gear and selecting Edit multiple transactions. You can click on the Action column heading in the editing window to sort the transactions so all the Deposits are together.

Always back up your file before making bulk changes.

The transfers from your paycheck will add to the cash in your account, and the Buys should bring the cash to zero.

Note that there may be a delay between the paycheck deductions and the Buys of securities.

JCNickell

Thanks Jim. I'm working through this. I would note for anyone that stumbles upon this thread that in the "Multiple Transaction" editor what showed up as Action: "Deposits" in the main register showed up as Action: "Cash" with a category of "Div Income"

JCNickell

I wanted to add a link to another thread post that I think answers my original 'problem' better than what we wound up arriving at here. I tried following this process again for a two week 'reconciliation and it's just messy. If you get paid weekly and your FI provides the QFX in the way that mine does it can mean _alot_ of transactions that need to get deleted for every week. If you're invested in say 8 accounts in the FI and (as in my case) the QFX file reports that as 16 different deposits (1 for employer, 1 for employee) you're looking at 64+ transactions a month you've got delete and I was originally going to do this quarterly... ick.


So, not happy with deleting transactions post import, I went looking in the forums again and found this buried within another thread by @Boatnmaniac. This is on the 2nd page.

It holds enough promise I'm going to give it a go.
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Wow. I sure wish I would have seen this thread earlier. I strongly suspect that @Terry Locke 's 401K plan (the actual plan, not what is in Quicken) does not allow for cash to be held (2 of the 3 401Ks that I had were such accounts). With these type of 401K plans the cash transferred from the employer for the employee contribution and the employer match go directly into buying securities. That money never is reflected as a cash balance in the account. So, it is perfectly logical with this type of plan that the securities buys would be downloaded as BoughtX transactions because the securities were directly bought with transferred (the X part of BoughtX) cash instead of account cash.
This clearly creates a problem with these kinds of 401K accounts when using the Gross Amount option of the Paycheck Wizard because the Wizard will transfer cash into the 401K account in Quicken which should not really have a cash balance.
To correct for this you can, as noted above, manually change each of the BoughtX transactions to Bought transactions making sure that the cash is used is from the account cash balance. But, that's a lot of work that shouldn't need to be done.
Or you can do what I did to eliminate the issue entirely once and for all:
1) Delete the Paycheck Reminder.
2) Set up a standard Income Reminder for your Net Paycheck amount.
3) Split the category:
First line: Enter your Gross Pay (a positive number) and categorize it as such.
Other lines: Enter your deductions (1 per line) as negative numbers. Make sure to use the correct tax line item categories for each of these to make sure they are properly accounted for in Tax reports and Tax Planner.
Here's what fixes the 401K account issue: For your 401K contribution deduction categorize it as _401Contrib (or _401ContribSpouse) instead of as a transfer to your 401K account.
After all the splits are entered, the total at the bottom should match the Net Pay amount you originally entered when you started setting this up. If it doesn't match then review all your splits amounts and your Net Pay amount to find and correct the error.
When all matches up, click OK > OK > Done.
Now you will no longer have your 401K contributions going into your 401K account and they will still be captured in your Tax reports and Tax Planner. Problem solved.
You will still need to go back into your 401K account and clean up any remaining BoughtX transactions but once that is done you shouldn't have to do that, again.
The one thing this process doesn't address is employer matching contributions. For me tracking that was never all that important. But if you want to track it I suppose you could create a dummy Cash Account and then create another Income Reminder to be transferred into that Cash Account for the amount of the employer match. Categorize it as _401EmployerContrib (or _401EmployerContribSpouse) instead of transferring it into your 401K account. You can then hide that Cash Account in your Net Worth and selectively include or exclude it from your various reports and tools.
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Original Thread:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7877763/how-to-reclassify-transactions-from-boughtx-to-bought/p2