Manually entering Brokerage transactions with a money market sweep fund

Question

After 10 years of procrastination, I am entering my brokerage account into Quicken Classic Deluxe subscription.  I used my January, 2024 statement to enter holdings and then reconciled all the place holders. At this point my holdings and all historical transactions are correct as shown on my statement.

As I entered all these transactions, I used the default setting: "From this accounts cash balance". Each register entry has a matching XIn entry, Balancing Cash Adjustment, for the buy transaction and my cash balance is zero.  So far so good.

Now I want to enter the brokerage's money market sweep fund and have my future transactions reflected there automatically. I entered the fund as a holding using the beginning balance for Jan and did the transaction as a buy at $1 a share, it shows up correctly on my holdings.

Now I want to start entering transactions from Jan 1 going forward, how do I get Quicken to recognize that money market fund as my cash account? I tried some suggestions on the forum but ended up restoring backups as the register balances got messed up.

I see from other discussions that if I were able to download transactions from the brokerage, Quicken would recognize that MMF fund as the cash account and use it as such. I don't have much choice but to continue entering all transactions manually, how do I enter them so that dividends and buys go into and come out of the MMF?

Thanks

Jim_Harman · Answer

Well yes, if you haven't been recording cash transfers into and out of the account, the cash balance will be off.

If you want the account balance over time to be reasonably accurate, you might enter a balance adjustment at the end of each year or each quarter rather than one big one.

eshoaff · Answer

I followed Jim_Harmon's instructions and they didn't have the desired effect.  I think I grasp why.  To enter the historical trades, I used the brokerages website where I found in the tax reporting section, each transaction for each security going back 15 years when I opened the account. As I entered all those transactions, Quicken made a "Balancing Cash adjustment". Those are positive numbers and when I deleted them Quicken' negative cash calculation rose and my holdings fell. So now I have a huge negative cash balance.

I think I understand why. All the securities except the MMF had historical transactions. The MMF just has the dollar value, it doesn't have any history of my deposits and withdrawals.  So I haven't entered any.  I'm guessing that the negative cash value that Quicken displays reflects my deposits over the years and I can make a cash adjustment and zero it out. I'll be back to where I started with a zero cash balance.  The register certainly looks a lot cleaner without all those Xin transactions.

[Deleted User] · Answer

@eshoaff some brokers like Wells Fargo Advisors have sweep funds that need to be set up on Quicken, but no trading is necessary.  The sweep interest transactions have the sweep fund attached to them, but there are no buys or sells, and therefore no shares or units.