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Vanguard Cash Plus Account Handling

Shannon M M

Other than another user following for an answer, I didn't get any solutions to the Vanguard Cash Plus account handling question posted in March. (NotACPA's response to others with this issue "It's Vanguard's decision, NOT Q's, as to what account types are eligible for download." is singularly unhelpful as the data IS being downloaded from Vanguard. There just doesn't seem to be a viable option within Quicken to use it properly.)

Now that there are other accounts of this type popping up, maybe there are other users who have found a solution? Or Quicken can let us know if they are working on something?

To recap:
Because of its unique type of money management account, I'm finding it difficult to administer the Vanguard Cash Plus. Vanguard uses its own in-house brokerage template for this account that is trying to mimic a cash account. So, the downloads look like what you'd expect of a brokerage core account. But, in my case anyway, that has led to a huge imbalance in shares with Quicken showing shares that are not being reported as such by Vanguard.
I'm sure there's a solution. But I'm appealing to the experts for the best way to manage it.

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Tom Young

I looked at Vanguard's statement about the Vanguard Cash Plus Account and it does appear to really be an account that's separate and distinct from your brokerage account:

——————————————————————————————————————————————-

The Vanguard Cash Plus Account

Our Cash Plus Account is an alternative to a traditional savings
account. Please note that eligibility rules apply. The Cash Plus
Account:

May be appropriate for emergency savings, retirement living expenses, or other savings goals and needs.
Offers FDIC insurance for up to $1.25 million for individual accounts and $2.5 million for joint accounts.*
Can be used to pay bills, set up direct deposit with your employer, or connect to payment applications like PayPal and Venmo.

——————————————————————————————————————————————-

Since it's FDIC insured it's clear that the money is actually sitting in a bank somewhere, and since Vanguard doesn't own a bank it appears that they use a group of banks for this particular "account."

You haven't really provided enough detail to understand what transactions look like nor how Vanguard presents the "balances" information to you, but I'd think that in the broker account you'd see money being shuttled back and forth between the brokerage account and the bank account, so it seems like that's what you should be mimicking in Quicken, even if the Vanguard Cash Plus Account side of the transactions can't be downloaded.

A fuller explanation (pictures if possible) of what the interaction between the brokerage account and bank account looks like and how the balance in the Vanguard Cash Plus Account are presented to you - shown by Vanguard in a separate account, or included somehow in the brokerage account? - would be helpful.

Shannon M M

Thank you for chiming in!

When adding the account, the only correct option is “Vanguard”. (The same login is used for several of my Vanguard accounts.)

When the account connects, I’ve said “No” to the “single mutual fund account” question as it does not apply.

Then both the brokerage account and the Cash Plus account are listed as being added as investment accounts and are calculated in the reports accordingly.

There is also a securities mismatch because nothing is reported as shares. However, Quicken seems to think there should be and pops up with a screen every time.

When deposits are made (Xin) Money Fund Purchases are made in that amount (Bought) and shares are sold corresponding to withdrawals.

Either I’m just not grasping this (I’m in good company) or the way Vanguard reports and Quicken interprets just doesn’t mesh.

I would love to hear how the experts manage this type of account so that it is represented as cash in Quicken, if there is any way to do so. I did play around with using the “Show cash in a checking account” switch in account details. But I found that I had to go back an forth between accounts to verify transactions.

There has to be a way to do this that isn’t too complicated.

002 Mutual Fund Question.pdf

001 Search for Institution.pdf

003 Accounts Added.pdf

004 Securities Mismatch.pdf

GeoffG

I cannot speak to your Cash Plus account, but I do have a Cash deposit account for my settlement account that sounds similar to your account. This "investment" is tracked with ticker symbol PBK12Q799. With this symbol, I am able to track interest and balances like any other Vanguard investment. Might that be an option?

Tom Young

I guess I might have established that Vanguard Cash Plus Account as a bank Account but in the great scheme of things that's not really important. But I still don't have a good mental picture of what's going on here since you haven't really described in detail what takes place in Quicken with the Cash Plus Account and/or the brokerage Account. I also don't know if the Cash Plus Account is receiving downloads. (Yes, I know you said "the data IS being downloaded from Vanguard" but you never specified if the data is ending up in the Cash Plus Account, the brokerage Account, or both.) Let's try this:

I assume that the Vanguard Cash Plus account is not being treated as a "sweep" situation for your brokerage account where idle cash in the brokerage account is automatically moved into the Cash Plus Account and automatically drawn from the Cash Plus Account and into the brokerage account when needed. Is that correct?
(In the same vein as 1.) I take it than when you send cash to Vanguard you can specify which account the cash goes into, either the Cash Plus account or the brokerage account. Is that correct?
You said that "When deposits are made (Xin) Money Fund Purchases are made in that amount (Bought) and shares are sold corresponding to withdrawals" and ASSUMING the Money Fund shares have a fixed $1 quote then, everything else being equal I'd think the share balance would equal the cash balance so I don't really understand what the problem is. Are Money Fund Shares quoted at something other than $1/share?
But then you said "There is also a securities mismatch because nothing is reported as shares. However, Quicken seems to think there should be and pops up with a screen every time", but then I don't understand what's being Bought and sold going back to the comment about money fund Purchases and sales if it's not "shares."

Assuming 1. and 2. are correct, please walk us through, in complete detail, what happens in Quicken when you make a deposit into the Cash Plus Account and when you withdraw from the Cash Plus Account. What do you see in Quicken with subsequent downloads. (I'm assuming you're not making manual entries for these events but instead are letting Quicken make the entries for you.)

In your second post you said "I would love to hear how the experts manage this type of account so that it is represented as cash in Quicken." When Schwab moved from Direct Connect to EWB+ for downloading I saw, for the first time ever, that there was an option to have a money market fund considered as "cash" in Quicken, not shares. Vanguard uses Direct Connect and as far as I know there's no option on the users end that allows you the same choice. IF the money market fund you're referring to here maintains a $1 quote THEN I just don't see a problem here, unless it comes down to "Balance" information provided by Vanguard referencing the money market fund balance as "$X" while you, in Quicken have "X" shares valued at a dollar each, but that seems trivial.

Shannon M M

Thanks, GeoffG. Your symbol led me to another discussion about it here: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7927123/new-vanguard-cash-deposit-settlement-fund)

The subject line is misleading because it is not a "settlement fund", but fashions itself as a unique kind of savings account. (You would have to move money from it to your brokerage account to settle investments.)

In the end, it looks like the user went with what you suggested, using the symbol PBK12Q799 and having it process as an investment account. But because I use it more like a checking account (i.e. paying credit cards, depositing dividends, etc.), I was hoping to find a way to make the funds in the account show under banking and not play havoc with my Portfolio Value.

Shannon M M

Tom- Sorry about the confusion. I'm still very new at Quicken and I'm not sure if what I am trying to accomplish can even be done! Let me try to clarify (hopefully with the right wording!)
1. Correct. The brokerage account is not sweeping into the Cash Plus account, though the Cash Plus account seems to have a "sweep-type" function. When cash deposits are made, shares are purchased. When withdrawals are made, shares are sold.
2. Correct. Though the login is the same for both brokerage and Cash Pus accounts, they are separate on both the Vanguard website, and they download as separate accounts in Quicken.
3. The shares are, indeed, $1 each. And the account is treated as a brokerage account wherein the funds appear as an investment.
4. The "Securities Mismatch" pop-up may be a red herring and totally my fault. The Securities Value is greater than the Total Market Value and there is a negative cash balance. This may have more to do with my initial setup than what I'm trying to achieve here. I believe I need to adjust the opening balance/shares.
The Security Details use the symbol CMA12Q45Q and Type as "Mutual Fund".
Though I do have to add the "Transfer Account" to get the transactions to connect to the credit cards they are in payment of, I let Quicken do the bulk of the work.
Well now I'm a little jealous of Swab customers! It sounds like that is exactly what I'm trying to do. It's about getting good, at-a-glance information and not having to take the extra step of deducting from Investing and adding it to Banking in order to see how much ready cash is available and not swinging around with the Portfolio Value in this crazy market!
I really appreciate you taking the time to clarify the options!

Tom Young

A screen shot of the Cash Plus Account showing several transactions being recorded (the "passive voice" is used here since you're allowing Quicken to make the entries) is what's really needed here to end my confusion.

In a normal Investment Account in Quicken that only has a $1 per share money market fund in it and where Quicken is making the entries, I'd expect a deposit of $100 to that Account to result in two entries. For sake of illustration I'll specify that this is the first deposit in a brand new Account.

The first entry, probably with "Deposit" in the "Action" column, would show the cash coming into the Account and that $100 amount would appear in the "Cash Amt" column. and the "Cash Bal" column. Of course Quicken/Vanguard doesn't necessarily "know" what other Account in my file sent that cash, so I'd probably have to edit that entry to specify the "from" Account.
The second entry would have "Bought" in the "Action" column and would show the actual purchase of 100 shares of the money market fund at $1 per share. The "Description" column probably would have "100 shares @ 1" in it, the "Share Bal" column would show "100", the "Inv. Amt" column would indicate "+100", the "Cash Amt" would show "-100" and the "Cash Bal" column would report "0.00."

Depending on how Vanguard deals with this Account and fund the transactions might show up with the same Date or separate Dates, but I wouldn't expect Quicken would be any misstatements as to the cash balance or the number of share in either case, unless there's an error on Vanguards end.

Withdrawals would work pretty much in reverse order - Sold Action followed by an XOut or Withdraw Action - and the Withdraw Action probably would need to be edited too in order the get the correct Account or Category attached to it.

IF this is more or less what you're seeing with your Cash Plus Account then I'm not sure where you're going wrong. If it's a problem with the initial setup then I'd suggest simply making adjustments to Cash and Shares as needed as of "today" and things should be fine going forward. The Account really does need to be an "Investment" Account because of the Bought and Sold Actions, but it should be easy enough to look at the share and cash balance in the Account and mentally call it all "cash money."

Shannon M M

Tom, I think we're agreeing here. The Vanguard Cash Plus is marketed and attempts to be a a bank account, but is reported and treated by Quicken as a brokerage account. Creating a mirror "Show cash in checking account" there doesn't appear to be a way of having the account appear as a purely cash bank account.
As I mentioned in #4, the mismatch does not have anything to do with this problem and can be rectified.
Mentally changing balances from Investing to Banking is precisely the type of calculation most people buy Quicken to avoid having to do.
I'll keep an eye on this topic in the hopes that either/both Vanguard and Quicken adjust to make the end result match the marketing.

dbg42

Has anyone asked Quicken to look at how their software handles Vanguard Cash Plus accounts? What did they say?

ahabig

I've been following along the various threads about this for a month or so now, and am more lost than ever. Ok, awkward that it must be a regular bank account rather than an investment account, but fine: an investment account should still let me see the correct balance, something that works for all my other (Vanguard or not) investment accounts. Deleted and re-imported this account from Vanguard in all possible permutations, and this screenshot is of a "not a single mutual fund, complete investing" import.

Short form: I opened the account with $50k. It's got one month's interest credited. Total balance shows up as zero. Share balance is 100,000. Neither thing is actually true, I'd expect both totals to be $50,141.97.

I'm missing something basic here.

Tom Young

Assuming that all the transaction you posted (thanks for that) except the Opening Balance entry are downloaded from Vanguard and knowing that Vanguard uses Direct Connect, (though you might want to confirm this for this particular Account, more and more Financial Institutions are moving away from DC and Vanguard might be doing that too for new Accounts), this would appear to be a programming problem on Vanguard's end. That seems doubtful to me but you can look inside to OFX file and see exactly what Vanguard has sent to you. If the Account is using DC and Vanguard is actually sending you these transactions then Vanguard needs to fix things.

On the other hand if this Account is using one of the flavors of EWC then the problem most likely is on the Quicken/Intuit end of the stick.

I think that you can easily enough fix this by deleting the transactions and entering your own, but it does prove that you can't blindly rely entirely on "downloads" to keep your Investment Accounts correct.

ahabig

Thanks for the fast reply!

This is done from Direct Connect entirely from within Quicken rather than me going to Vanguard and downloading a QFX file. Checking the Online Services for this account in Quicken, it says "Financial Institution: Vanguard. Connection Method: Direct Connect". Behind the scenes, of course, I've no idea what files Quicken and Vanguard might actually be exchanging when the Create a New Account popup windows are sitting there spinning.

The Opening Balance line is whatever comes along for the ride when you tell Quicken to add a new account from an online source.

I'm actually hoping to be able to blindly rely on downloads to keep my investment accounts correct, that's exactly the use case for software like Quicken! I could always use a spreadsheet on my own to do things manually - different set of headaches of course, but at least the bugs would all be my own :)

This is the downside of commercial software, be it a PC program like Quicken or complicated web front end like Vanguard. I'm spoiled doing a lot of work in the open source, where I could go right to a bug ticketing system and open an issue. Doing the same with customer support phone lines is an exercise in frustration.

Tom Young

Did you look in the OFX file to see what transactions are actually being sent? If they are the erroneous entries shown here then it's a Vanguard problem. With Direct Connect Vanguard is responsible for coding transactions in the QFX format and placing those transactions on their server. The connection with DC is your computer direct to the server, Quicken basically isn't involved.

"I'm actually hoping to be able to blindly rely on downloads to keep my investment accounts correct, that's exactly the use case for software like Quicken!"

Quicken as a program works pretty much perfectly in the DC situation. The weak link here is the FI responsible for coding transactions. Some FIs are fairly sophisticated with their programming and do a good job. Others, not so much. And there are situations such as mergers and acquisitions, (tax law complications), where I'd say it's impossible to code in QFX unless the person/program doing the initial coding is very sophisticated, has access to all the legal details of the transaction, knows what "fair market values" to use for the calculations, and knows the details of every lot in your portfolio. The only person involved here that could possibly fill that role is you in your role as "Chief Accountant" for your enterprise. To make this work as "software" involves a sophistication far beyond any retail level personal finance program

With the EWCs its more complicated and not as well understood by most of us as to who does what to whom, but the EWCs methods do seem to be more prone to error.

If all you want to do with your Investment Accounts is keep track of their market values you have a better chance of simply relying on "downloads", but that's about it.

ahabig

I'll try a standalone download of the QFX from the Vanguard website: poking around various cache directories it's not obvious what files Quicken and Vanguard might be using to talk behind the scenes.

Yes, I'd be happen with just market values, a lot of the tools built into Quicken are far more heavy-duty than I need, and I can see how trying to code that all up would be seriously challenging.

ahabig

OK. Downloaded an OFX file directly from Vanguard. Creating a new account from that file results in the same state as the direct connection. So, at least I've got a copy of the data being used. And, it's just ASCII markup so human readable.

In there I see to my puny little human eyes something that looks like what I'd like displayed in Quicken for a total:
<INVBAL><AVAILCASH>50141.97<MARGINBALANCE>0.00<SHORTBALANCE>0.0</INVBAL>

And, I can confirm earlier posts about the ticker symbol, transactions are tagged with:

<SECID><UNIQUEID>CMA12Q45Q<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID>Of course, as a markup language there are many ways what looks fine to be malformed to a computer parser, and there's a lot of info in there. Does quicken have a bug tracking system I can open an issue in, or are message board denizens on their own in the dark?

Tom Young

I I think the very best thing to do is to contact Official Quicken Support directly. Look under the Help tab and there's various ways to get in touch with Quicken support. Since you now have that Account in its own separate file you could even send them that file and they should have all the information they need.

Unfortunately, I'm traveling right now with only my phone but should be back home in a couple of days and I'll follow up.