Incorrect cash Balance, cannot change or fix

Tony Luers

I have an account (Fidelity), where I sold 1 holding and bought more of another holding in the same account. Yesterday the balance was a few hundred $, it should be .01. I was able to use the update cash balance to bring it back to .01. Today, the balance is over $1500, and this time it will not let me update the cash balance. This obviously shows me having over $1500 more than there is. How do I fix this?

Tony Luers

It seems to have resolved itself. I had read on one comment that the SPAXX core account can cause this, so I suppose that was the problem.

Tom Young

Was the cash balance in the transaction list correct immediately before the Sold/Buy transactions? 

The cash balance, absent Placeholders, is simply a function of transactions that involve cash so you'd expect that if the cash balance was correct before the Sold/Buy transactions it should be correct afterwards.  What do those transactions look like?  Maybe post a picture?

The Update Cash Balance function is simply a "plug" entry that creates a placeholder to bring the cash in the Account into line with whatever the Financial Institution is reporting to Quicken - even if that reported cash balance is wrong - and the better approach if you want to keep the Account correctly stated in all its details is to not use Placeholders but instead figure out what's wrong with the accounting.

If cash was correct before the transactions then it should be correct after the transactions so I'd suggest getting rid of the Placeholders and looking at those two transactions as one or the other of them may be incorrect.