Issue entering two memorized withdrawal transactions in a row in investment accounts

Steven Latus

I'm running Quicken Classic Deluxe for Windows, version R56.9, build 27.1.56.9 on 64-bit Windows 10 Pro, version 22H2, with 16 GB RAM.

I have memorized transactions set up to record my monthly IRA
distributions (withdrawals) in my IRA accounts. I have two such
memorized transactions set up for each investment account—one for the
net distribution and one for the withholding tax on the gross
distribution (the sum of the two transaction amounts). The first such
transaction I enter works fine; after I click on Payee (me) in the
"Withdraw" window, select the memorized transaction from the list that
pops up and press ENTER, Quicken fills in the payee, amount and the
memo. If I then click on the button "Enter/New" to enter the second
withdrawal in the same investment account and again select the desired
memorized transaction as in the first instance and press ENTER, nothing
gets filled in in any field except for the payee name. I then have to
either (1) enter the info manually, which defeats the purpose of having
memorized transactions, or (2) cancel out of the window and re-enter the
transaction anew as with the first transaction.

I now opt for method #2 as a matter of course, but it bugs me every time
I do it. I now enter the first transaction and then, instead of clicking
on "Enter/New" when I'm finished, I click on "Enter/Done" instead. I
then have to again select "Enter Transactions," enter the type of
transaction, the date and select the desired memorized transaction, etc.

Does anyone else have this issue? It's been happening to me seemingly
forever so it's not some new thing.

NotACPA

The usual method for recording w/d from retirement account (that have Tax withheld) is to transfer the GROSS amount to a taxable account, and edit that txn in the taxable account to split it … showing the Gross amount as a xfer from retirement and then the Tax withheld as a negative number and clicking ADJUST to change the register amount to reflect what you actually received in that acct.

Taxable txn, recorded in non-taxable accounts, won't be seen by Q's tax reports.

Steven Latus

Unfortunately, when I first set up my IRAs in Quicken for DOS almost 40 years ago, I set them up in a separate Quicken file. The only accounts in that file are IRA accounts. All of our other accounts are in a separate Quicken file. Don't ask me why I did it that way because I don't remember. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. 😉

I already do what you suggested when I record the deposits in our personal checking account (split the deposit of the net distribution, recording the gross distribution and the federal withholding tax (FWT) as a negative number). On the IRA end (in the separate Quicken file), I record both the net and the FWT amounts as IRA Distributions so that each pair of transactions adds up to the gross distribution. I have an Excel spreadsheet that ties everything together and reconciles between the Quicken retirement file distribution amounts and the Quicken personal file distribution amounts.

Thanks for your response, but it did not directly address my question about the memorized transactions. 🙂

Steven Latus

For those who may read this thread, I got some help in the Internet newsgroup alt.comp.software.financial.quicken from John Pollard, who is a superstar in that group. Here is part of what John posted:

"I'm not sure I can help but I am sure there is a bug in Quicken's processing of (at least some) investment account transactions that are impacted by a Memorized Transaction. … In your case, I would consider [a] few possible alternatives: using Reminders instead of Memorized Transactions, an approach that only requires one investment account transaction (using split lines) …"

So I set up some split transactions as monthly reminders for each upcoming IRA distribution. I tried entering one of those transactions and it worked fine. Now I won't have to enter two Withdrawal transactions each month for each account, neatly sidestepping the "two transactions in a row" problem, which does appear to me to be a bug.