401K balance changing drastically after a day

RichJS

So I had some issues with my 401K account and how it was tracking cash. Rather than go back a year for each transaction and fix it, I deleted the account, then added it again. This time I went with simple view, so just balances no individual transactions. When I first download/add my new account it shows the correct balance. The next day I go in and do an update and my balance is significantly lower than what the correct balance is. Ex: 75K when added, next day 40. This is NOT due to a market swing, Quicken is just showing a wrong number and I can't figure out why its doing this.

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Jim_Harman

Is this a Fidelity NetBenefits account? They provide incorrect balances in Simple mode.

sam28

Good to know-why doesn't Quicken know this and alert users setting up accounts in simple mode. How many other 401K providers have this same Error?

Jim_Harman

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20345109#Comment_20345109

As far as I know, only Fidelity Netbenefits has the problem with Simple mode.

sam28

Hi again, thanks for that info. I have a question maybe you could help. I set up my 401k account in Quicken years ago. I dont have contributions any more to account. I only care about the ending daily account balance. Does Quicken 401k account setup now have a feature to only show the updated account balance. I dont need to see daily stock gains losses transactions , just want to see the updated ending account balance.

Jim_Harman

As long as it is not a Fidelity Netbenefits account, Simple investing mode should work for you. It hides the Investing Transaction list and stops downloading the detailed transactions. It just keeps track of how many shares of each security are in the account, and how much cash. With this information and the share prices, it computes your balance. You can still add cash and take distributions.

If the account set up for downloading, it only downloads the necessary information. If the account is offline, you can enter the share quantiries from your monthly statements.

Because Quicken does not track the detailed transactions in Simple mode, performace measures like Average Annual Return will no longer work for that account. Also it can't keep track of dividends or capital gains and losses, but these don't matter in a 401(k) account.