Issues with 401(k) accounts: categorizing/including employee contributions & generating reports
I'm trying to build a report that includes (1) transactions that reflect direct deposits of my salary into my checking account, and (2) transactions that reflect both my and my employer's (matching) deposit into my 401(k). I'm having a hard time with the latter. I did get the report to include my employer's deposit by using the built-in _401EmployerContrib category that Quicken assigns to appropriate transactions when you do the Update 401(k) Holdings operation. For my contributions, that operation produces an XIn-type transaction that weirdly shows the same account in the Account and Transfer Account fields. So I manually changed that to a Deposit-type transaction with its Category field set to _401Contrib. Then I built a report that selects these fields: Salary, _401EmployerContrib, and _401Contrib. The report shows a line item for the salary and employer contributions, but not for my contributions. Any ideas?
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For best tracking of 401(k) contributions, you should use Quicken's Paycheck wizard rather than Update 401(k) holdings.
The Paycheck Wizard generates a split transaction in the account that receives your paycheck that includes both your contribution and the employer match, with the appropriate Categories.
To set up a Paycheck, go to Planning > Tax Center and click on Add Paycheck.
QWin Premier subscription0 -
Thanks for the suggestion. I've never looked at the Paycheck Wizard but from what I can tell it won't handle all the things that Update 401(k) handles—e.g., the creation of transactions in my 401(k) account related to using the contributed funds to buy securities. So it feels like I can't simply use the Paycheck Wizard instead of Update 401(k). Is there some way I can use both of them together to get to where I want to be?
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The Paycheck Wizard will take care of properly categorizing the deductions from your paycheck and the employer match and transferring the money to the 401(k) account. Then you can enter or download the transactions in the 401(k) account to buy the securities, record dividends, etc.
The Update 401(k) Holdings wizard puts Placeholder transactions in your account for the securities you hold and I would not recommend using it.
QWin Premier subscription0 -
Unfortunately, my quarterly 401(k) statements show only the total number of shares (of each security in the 401(k) account) held at the end of the quarter. I guess that entering the "Buy" transactions myself would be possible but it'd be a hassle. Oh well.
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The 401K statement doesn't show the details or transactions for the quarter? Did you say who it's from? Maybe you can log into your account and get the transactions like the buys and expenses.
I'm staying on Quicken 2013 Premier for Windows.
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Yeah, no. It's a large financial institution but not Quicken-friendly—no transaction downloads. The quarterly statements just show my and my employer's total contributions for the quarter, and for each fund, basically just the dollar values at the beginning and end of each quarter and the ending number of shares and the website doesn't have any more details. This is the same format that the statements from the 401(k) plans (also from large financial institutions) for my previous two employers and is presumably why Quicken's Update 401(k) operation is designed the way it is. One of my previous 401(k) plans did support Quicken downloads and so I can see the individual transactions (unlike the placeholder entries that the Update 401(k) operation produces) in it. In short, not a great situation. But at least I'm getting a company match :-)
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