How to seperate SWGXX shares transactions and cash in Schwab downloads?

FollowTheMoney

Schwab reports transactions and No. shares held of Schwab Government Money Market shares (SWGXX) and also reports the market value of shares held as cash. Need to separate actual cash from shares reported as cash. How does Quicken propose to fix this issue? Has totally messed up my investment accounts along with switch to new download system only reporting share transactions from January 1, 2022. Totally missed some/most of transactions from Oct. - Dec 31, 202.

Tom Young

I'm not sure I'm completely understanding what you're saying here with respect to SWGXX.  I think that in some Schwab accounts SWGXX is treated as a "sweep" fund, i.e., buys and sells of the fund are not initiated by you but instead cash is swapped into and out of the fund automatically, while in other Schwab accounts you must initiate Buys and Sells on your own. 

I think you're in the latter camp where you want to see SWGXX treated as a security, such that the cash in the Quicken Account is "immediately available" cash?

Try this, after making a backup first: in the affected Account and click on "Update Cash Balance."  You should see the Update Cash Balance window and a pop-up over that window. In that pop-up window you should see words to the effect that Quicken is treating SWGXX as cash.  Click on the "Cash Representation" button in the Update Cash Balance window and you should be able to get on a path that gets SWGXX treated as a security.

(Sorry for the lack of detail steps here; I did this long enough ago that things are a little hazy at this point.)

FollowTheMoney

SWGXX is Schwab's government money market funds and acts as a "Sweep" fund. Shares held/traded are downloaded as transactions in Quicken and added/subtracted to the Quicken account balance. On the "Update Cash Balance" pop-up, a "cash balance downloaded from Schwab" is reported and that value is the total of SWGXX shares held and any (generally zero but not always) "immediately available" cash. The value of SWGXX shares is being counted twice. This creates a problem in reconciling the account. If I include share transactions, the account won't reconcile. If I change the cash balance to "immediate available cash" I get a "balance adjustment" entry that makes the total value of the account wrong. Adjusting the cash balance results in another cash balance entry. I'm going around in circles and need a way to separate shares used as cash and cash in the account cash balance in order to reconcile investment accounts. Thanks for your help

Tom Young

Apparently, (I'm not really sure), SWGXX can act as a true "sweep" fund (you don't need to initiate Buys and Sells, those happen automatically) or it can act like a security.  When I download transactions for the Schwab Value Advantage fund, a fund that's treated as a security, the associated Actions are Bought and Sold.

You say "Shares held/traded are downloaded as transactions in Quicken and added/subtracted to the Quicken account balance" but that doesn't identify whether SWGXX is being handled as a security or as cash, so what Actions are associated with the outflows and inflows for SWGXX?  From the sounds of it I'd guess that SWGXX is being treated in your Quicken file as a security and if that's the case then I'd expect that absent any errors the Total Market Value shown on the Holding screen for the Account would agree to Schwab.  Is that the case?  If that is the case then it seems like the problem has to do with how SWGXX is being shown on the Update Cash Balance window, meaning it's not a "double counting" problem within Quicken, not really.

At the Schwab site, on the "Positions" page, I know that SWGXX (and Schwab Value Advantage) are included down at the bottom of the page in the "Cash & Money Market Total", but when I click on Update cash balance... the Schwab Value Advantage fund is not included in the Update Cash Balance window, all I see is real immediately available cash.  ASSUMING that the overall value of the Account in Quicken agrees to Schwab's figure it sort of sounds like SWGXX might be treated like a security when it comes to transactions - Buys, Sells, Value = # of shares x $1 - but as cash when you call up the Update Cash Balance window.  This sort of sounds like a Quicken problem, meaning that their script to gather information out of your Schwab account is picking up an incorrect number.