what worked before doesn't now

budi

I have a brokerage account that holds several investments. In the past I would transfer money into the brokerage account and then to a buy using the cash in that account.This time, I followed the usual steps to transfer the money into the account but when I attempted to make the buy, it didn't draw from the cash reserves
when I transferred the money in, the brokerage account wasn't an option, only the cash reserves IN the brokerage account was.
When I attempted to make the buy, only the cash in this account was an otion. The drop down list did not include the cash reserves
No matter how I enter it, the amounts in the investments inte brokerage account are wrong.
Suggestions?

budi

Quicken Deluxe current version, last updated this week

budi

I am using Quicken Deluxe version r46.12 for WIndows.
I posted my question a few days ago and haven't received any replies. Do I need to rephrase my question to clarify my problem?

Rocket J Squirrel

budi said:

When I attempted to make the buy, only the cash in this account was an otion. The drop down list did not include the cash reserves

budi said:

I posted my question a few days ago and haven't received any replies. Do I need to rephrase my question to clarify my problem?

Yes, I think so. What is the difference between "cash" and "cash reserves"?

Quicken will always use a brokerage account's cash balance to buy securities unless you tell it to use a different account's cash.

budi

I will try to clarify. The brokerage account holds multiple investments. One of them is a cash reserve account. When I want to buy a new item in the brokerage account, I transfer money into the cash reserve holding in the brokerage account and then make the new purchase from that accounts cash balance. This time it let me make the buy but did not take the money from the cash reserve account. It added the amount of the buy to the value of the account and left the money that I had transferred in the cash reserve account.
I have used this method for several years and never encountered a problem until this transaction, which was placed after I installed the most recent update
I hope that helps expalin my problem more clearly

NotACPA

"The brokerage account holds multiple investments. One of them is a cash reserve account. "

This makes no sense.  You can't hold  an account within a Q account.

What EXACTLY is that "cash reserve account"?  Is it a Money Market Fund, or is it another, different, account in Q?

Chris_QPW

NotACPA said:

"The brokerage account holds multiple investments. One of them is a cash reserve account. "

This makes no sense.  You can't hold  an account within a Q account.

What EXACTLY is that "cash reserve account"?  Is it a Money Market Fund, or is it another, different, account in Q?

I don't know what is going on it this case, but maybe some explanation of how Quicken works in in order.

Brokers have all kinds of setups that might involve multiple accounts, but they only download the main one with securities to Quicken.

This dealt with in few different ways in Quicken, part of which are things that the broker does to the download, and part of which Quicken is actually doing something different.

In non-retirement accounts it is possible to select an option that pushes the cash transactions to a virtual checking account.  Given that the broker might have a checking account for that brokerage account, one might thing that the broker is actually sending transactions to the checking account, but that isn't what is happening.  All the transactions are being sent to the investment account and Quicken is pushing the cash transactions to the virtual checking account.

Next some brokers actually use a fund/security to hold the "cash" and they will send down buys and sells of that security to sweep money in and out for the buys/sells of all the other securities in the account.  In other cases, there might be an account at the broker, but they represent that account as a security in the same way.

And there are brokers that might have the cash in a security or an account but choose never to send any information about the sweeping in and out of the "cash".  The result is that Quicken just uses the cash balance of the investment account.

For some accounts Quicken has a special setting that says to treat a security as cash.  So, if one doesn't want to deal with the fact that the broker is sweeping money in and out of a security for the buys/sells of securities, Quicken will treat the buy/sell of that security as if it never existed, and just take from/put into the cash balance.

And it can get even crazier.  JP Morgan/Chase uses multiple "cash" accounts for different reasons and sends them to Quicken as different securities.

@budi as you can see trying to follow what your exact problem isn't as easy as it might seem to you, especially without knowing which broker it is so that maybe someone that knows the quirks of that broker can chime in.

Rocket J Squirrel

Yes, there are many variations in brokerages. My Morgan Stanley account holds cash in two different ways.

1. The actual cash balance is called "Bank deposit program". I buy securities from this cash and when I sell, dollars land here. I can write checks from this cash. Quicken sees this as cash.
   
2. A pseudo-security called "MSBNA Preferred Savings" which earns more interest than the bank deposits. I cannot buy or sell from this pile of cash, nor can I write checks from it. I must use the bank deposit program for those transactions. Quicken sees this as a security even though it is not and that's fine.
   

So this is why I wondered if there was a difference between "cash" and "cash reserves" in @budi's brokerage account, as there is in mine.

budi

Between the two above expalinations, I was able to figure out a way to solve my problem
Thanks for your input!