Treasury Direct - I Bonds and T Bills

MMY

Please develop a easy to understand and use process for adding Treasury bonds. I've contacted Quicken Support multiple times and I still haven't been able to get it set up correctlyk

NotACPA

What difficulties are you having with recording Treasury instruments in Q? Be specific.

And, Treasury Direct won't be a "Participating Financial Institution", and available for downloads, until the US Treasury signs the contract with Q/Intuit to provide such service. 

I really don't expect that to EVER happen.

MMY

i am new to quicken and am trying to add Treasury I bonds that I had purchased prior to using quicken. When I try to add a bond transaction it requires a bank account for the purchase. I already owned the bond so what should I do?

NotACPA

In your investment account, what ACTION are you using to record these actions?

It sounds like you're using "Bonds Bought", which is why a bank account is being requested.

Use "Shares Added" instead, noting that when talking about debt instruments, a "Share" is equal to $1000 face value of the debt instrument.  So a $10,000 bond is input as 10 "shares" (10,000 / 1000).

Frankx

Hi @MMY,

First, congratulations on your purchase of the I Bonds - and recent rates are certainly better than we've had in quite some time, so you may want to think of purchasing more in the future.

That being said, I believe the best, and easiest, way to enter Treasury bonds is to setup a "brokerage" type account in Quicken.  It won't be a downloadable account - because the US Treasury doesn't "connect" like many financial institutions do.  So, you'll need to manually enter your transactions.  Here's an example of a purchase transaction that you might make to enter transactions you make (or made in the past).


Let me know of you have ay followups.

Frankx

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MMY

Thanks everyone for the great advice!

MMY

One more question, there is the option "use cash from this account", how do I indicate that the bond was purchased prior to setting up quicken. No matter what I select, it deducts the price of the bond from the account, creating an out of balance situation

Jim_Harman

If you use an Added transaction instead of Bought, the bonds will appear in your account without affecting the cash balance.

Ps56k2

@Frankx - just for clarification on your screen grab for the Buy Shares -
Did you pre-define and create the Security Name (I-Bond) entry before coming to the Buy Shares screen ?
That's what I did... just wondering if there is another methodology

Frankx

Hi @Ps56k2

Yes, I created the security prior to initiating the Buy Shares screen.

Frankx

767pilot

Is there anyway to set up an alert, say a week in advance of maturity to remind us to roll it over or that there will be money coming back to our account?

I'm guessing at maturity when it goes back to our bank, you reconcile it as a transfer from the manual treasury direct account you made. Sound about right?

Rocket J Squirrel

Do Tools > Alerts Center. Go to the Setup tab. Expand the Investing branch of the tree. Check Maturity Date. See your securities which will mature. Make the alert Urgent. I don't know how far in advance it alerts, though. The wording says "has reached", so it might alert too late. I haven't tried it. If that's the case, you might want to tell Quicken the bond will mature a week earlier than it actually will.

767pilot

How would you enter a t Bill where it pay 100,000 at maturity but your cash outlay is $98,000?

Frankx

Hi @767pilot,

The difference between the amount that one pays for a T Bill and the amount that is received at maturity is deemed to be Interest Income from a US government security.  As such, it is taxable for Federal (think IRS) purposes but non-taxable for state and/or local tax purposes.  Which means that you need to report that interest on your Federal tax return (i.e. Form 1040) in the tax year received, but it is not reportable, or taxable, for state and local tax returns.

All that being said, when the T Bill matures (and not before unless you are an accrual basis taxpayer) - you should record the $2,000.00 as interest income in Quicken.  And, if you have setup Quicken with this level of detail,  that interest would be non-taxable for Federal purposes but only taxable for state and/or local purposes in the year of maturity.

Let me know if you have any additional questions.

Frankx

[N.B. the information presented above is not the provision of tax return preparation or advice, or information related to the preparation of, or review of tax return information.  It is not, in any way, connected to the preparation or review of a tax return, and does not, in any way, represent the provision of tax related advice.]