Assistance Required with 401(k) Transactions and Paycheck Setup in Quicken

GreenGiant

Hello Quicken Community,

I hope this message finds you well. I am reaching out for guidance regarding the proper handling of my 401(k) transactions and paycheck setup within Quicken. My employer contributes pre-tax amounts to my 401(k) account, managed by John Hancock, directly from my paycheck. These transactions do not maintain a cash balance in the account and are immediately applied toward purchases. However, when these transactions are updated in Quicken, they appear in the "All Transactions" section as uncategorized.

I am seeking assistance with the following:

1. Correctly categorizing these 401(k) deposit transactions within Quicken. How should I categorize these transactions to reflect their nature accurately and maintain proper financial tracking?
2. Setting up a paycheck in Quicken that includes my 401(k) contributions (personal and employer match). Should this be done through the Paycheck Wizard, or would a manual income reminder be more appropriate? Please provide guidance or step-by-step instructions for this setup.
3. Match the deposit transactions in the 401(k) account with the "contribution" part of my paycheck, if necessary. How can I ensure these transactions are correctly linked and reflected in my financial reports?

I appreciate any advice, screenshots, or step-by-step guides you could provide to help me navigate these issues within Quicken. Thank you in advance for your time and assistance.

Chris_QPW

You should be using the paycheck wizard. There is a special entry for employee contributions, and it plays some tricks in the background to get this recorded correctly. It should never show up in the All Transactions.

Whether you are going to be "matching" or not in the investment account depends on what is downloaded there.

Both your contribution and your employer's contribution are transfers to the 401K account.

Quicken knows to separate these because of where you entered them in the paycheck wizard and record them properly for taxes and such.

When you download transactions into the checking account you match the exist transaction from this reminder (which should be entered into the register before the downloaded one) for the net amount.

Whether you will be matching the transfers in the investment account depends on if the broker downloads them. In the case of my wife's 401K with Merrill Lynch they don't send these transactions only the buys, sells, … so I end up marking them cleared during the reconcile.

GreenGiant

Thank you for getting back to me. I tried this method previously and ended up with duplicates of the contributions (personal and employer). I had 2 "deposits" (downloaded from JH) and then 2 xln from the paycheck reminder. this led to a cash balance in the 401k account.

401k register looks like this with that method:
1/1/24 deposit some contribution $200

1/1/24 deposit some contribution $200

1/1/24 xln some contribution $200

1/1/24 xln some contribution $200

1/1/24 Bought Security $400

Security value $400 Cash Balance $400

Total Market value $800

Thank you again for your help

Chris_QPW

Did the reminder get entered into the account before the download?

The transfers have to be in the account before the download so that Quicken can match the downloaded transactions to the transfers.

GreenGiant

The reminder was setup and started after the download. Would I be able to manually match them?

Chris_QPW

Once the transactions are in the register when accepted from the Downloaded Transactions tab, you can't manually match them any more. I'm also, not sure how good you can do a manual match in an investment account in the first place. If you right click on a transaction in the Downloaded Transactions tab it might give the option.

For now, I would just delete the downloaded transactions that are duplicates to the transfers.