Verify Cash Balance (Schwab)

Patient Zero

This is the same problem as described by @prestonforman in a discussion titled Verify Cash Balance that opened on 5/17 was closed without resolution.

The problem occurs almost daily when I finish accepting or deleting downloaded transactions from Schwab via One Step Update. It shows up in one or some but not necessarily all accounts that have transactions downloaded. It happens in both retirement accounts (with cash balance carried in the same account) and with regular taxable brokerage accounts that have a separate cash/checking account attached.

A screenshot of an instance of this problem seen today is attached. This is for a retirement account. The account has a future transaction recorded, but whether I happen to have entered a future-dated transaction does not seem to influence whether or not this error occurs.

Screenshot 2024-08-08 004640.png

Note that all cash balances agree (today's closing cash balance in the most recent cleared transaction, the predicted cash balance including the future transaction, the Cash Balance at the bottom of the register, as well as both figures shown in the pop-up box, the Last downloaded cash balance and the default Verify or update cash balance amount. If this were a brokerage account with a linked checking account, the balance shown in the Account panel would also agree.

Hitting "Done" in the pop-up box creates a reconciling transaction which changes the (correct!) balance in the register to something incorrect.

This has been happening for several months. This is not related to the incorrect Schwab downloaded transaction date problem, which started much more recently.

How do I (and others) stop this error from recurring?

I am using Windows Quicken Classic Premier desktop (currently Ver. R58.9/Build 27.1.28.9), on either Windows 10 Pro or either Windows 11 Pro (I recently upgraded, but this issue was not affected.)

mshiggins

"This is the same problem as described by @prestonforman in a discussion titled Verify Cash Balance that opened on 5/17 was closed without resolution."

That discussion can be seen here:  

I have a couple of questions.

1.) Have you told Quicken to treat one of the Schwab MM funds (SWVXX, for example) as Cash?

2.) Do the accounts where you're seeing the problem all have real-world holdings of that same MM fund?

3.) When hitting Done "creates a reconciling transaction which changes the correct! balance in the register to something incorrect", is that "reconciling transaction" a Quicken "Placeholder" (a transaction with an Action value of "Entry")? 

4.) Do you delete that "reconciling transaction" (the Placeholder) each time it appears?

5.) If the answer to #4 is Yes; what happens if you leave that "reconciling transaction" in the account thru subsequent downloads?

Following each successful investment account download, you should have access to the account "holdings" downloaded by the financial institution.

To see those holdings: go to Tools > Online Center, select the financial institution and account, then click the "Holdings" tab.

Assuming #1 thru #3 above are true:

6.) On that Quicken Holdings tab; does the downloaded Holdings value of theMM fund (from #1 above) bear any relationship to the difference between what you believe to be the correct cash balance and the amount in the "reconciling transaction" (the Quicken Placeholder transaction). Said another way: does the amount of the Placeholder = the amount of what you believe is the "correct cash balance" + the amount of the downloaded holdings of the MM fund (named in #1 above)? https://tinyurl.com/msfu75ns

-JP

mshiggins

I did some more testing since my previous post (which contained a misleading comment/question about the "reconciling transaction"). 

Assuming you have told Quicken to treat one of the Schwab MM funds as cash, here's what I understand to be happening.

You have told Quicken you want your MM fund holdings treated as cash. And by cash, I mean the same type "cash" as the actual "cash" in the real-world account.

For Quicken to do that, the value of the "cash" in your Quicken account must become the value of the actual cash that was already being reported PLUS the value of your holdings in the MM fund that is now to be treated as cash.

[For some reason, users seem to think that the Quicken "cash balance" will continue to be the "actual cash balance" at the financial institution - which cannot be true.]

It's important to remember that the financial institution is NOT going sell your MM fund holdings to convert your MM fund holdings to cash. As far as the financial institution is concerned, you will continue to hold the same number of shares of the MM fund - and the financial institution will download those MM fund holdings just as it has always done.

So Quicken must take the appropriate actions to insure that you no longer see any MM Fund holdings in the Quicken account. To insure that all your original MM fund holdings are replaced by (thus, treated as) "cash".

Quicken accomplishes this by creating two transactions (that should appear in the Quicken investment account at the conclusion of the download where Quicken first processes the instruction to treat the MM fund as cash.

The first transaction is generated as the response to user's confirmation of the "cash" balance of the account (a balance which Quicken has already computed and presents to the user). That balance should be the total of the real-world cash balance plus the value of the MM fund. The result of the specify cash balance dialog will be an XIn (a "cash transferred into the account") transaction for the cash amount specified in the dialog. That establishes the "new" cash balance in the account

The second transaction is created by Quicken, and is a Placeholder that sets the number of shares of the MM fund to zero. This is necessary since the all shares of the MM fund are now to be reported as "cash".

-JP

Patient Zero

@mshiggins The answer to #1 in your first post is "no." I do in fact have a SWVXX position in every one of my Schwab accounts, but I track it as a purchased security so I can see in Quicken when I need to sell it to avoid creating a margin loan (regular brokerage account) or a negative cash position (retirement account). I actually didn't know (or I don't remember that I used to know) you could tell Quicken to treat a MM fund as cash, although I must have done this in the olden days (before the purchase/integration of what is now Schwab Bank) when cash balances were swept into Schwab Cash Reserves MMF automatically.

Since this problem arises only sporadically, and not in every account every day (or every account with downloaded transactions every day), I don't think the presence of an SWVXX position is the root of the problem. I just ran an update before coming here tonight; one of my accounts had downloaded transaction (as did two other after the close) but none generated this error today.

Thanks for thinking about this, though!

Chris_QPW

Taking a step back from what has been suggested so far, I have certainly seen the "Verify Cash Balance" dialog before, but not in this context.

The context I have seen it in when importing QFX files, in particular ones that don't have the current cash balance in them (and usually when importing into a new test account).

This leads me to believe that this problem really isn't about the securities as much as it is about a missing cash balance in the downloaded transaction information.

The "question" of "Verify Cash Balance" can be stated as "I (Quicken) can't figure out what cash balance the financial institution has because that information is missing."

Why that information would be missing in this case, I have no idea.

I'm not entirely sure if might be sort of like the problem changing of the Opening Balance bug. Where it is something that really is only supposed to be checked with the very first download, but never after that, but for some reason gets done when it shouldn't.

Patient Zero

After not seeing it yesterday, I saw this problem today in one account. Twice, actually, since if Quicken thinks there is a security mismatch**) the Verify Cash Balance pop-up appears immediately after the last downloaded transaction is accepted or deleted, and then (regardless of whether it is dismissed by clicking on the "x" to close the pop-up or it is accepted by clicking on "Done," it always shows up a second time after the security mismatch screen.

Today I took the chance (as I have not done since several months ago, when my recollection is that it generated an adjusting entry that had to be deleted) of clicking on "Done." And . . . nothing happened. (I did this the second time it appeared). The pop-up box just closed, with no new register entry. Maybe if I had clicked Done the first time the second instance would not have occurred, but I can't check that immediately since this issue is sporadic.

** Another issue I haven't posted about, or even looked to see if others are having this one, is that for the past few weeks I frequently (but again sporadically) get random security mismatch warnings telling me that there is a tiny discrepancy in the "share" balance of some security, usually fixed-income. E.g, it will say shares reported 100.02/shares in Quicken 100 (where Schwab.com shows precisely 100) or even shares reported .05/shares in Quicken 0.00 (because I don't hold that security in that account, or possibly in any account). I only mention this here because the time frame is similar and it might be related to the verify cash balance issue.

Leon Pink

For me, the problem began when I set up the SWVXX fund as a new holding in quicken, back in May after the merger with TD Ameritrade. I accidently gave an OK to having the money market fund viewed as cash. I have tried deleting SWVXX from my holdings and then setting it up as a new holding along with rebuilding the activity afterwards. However, I wasn't able to replicate where Quicken asked if the fund should be listed as Cash. To this day, after numerous attempts to get to a qualified IT person to assist I am still receiving the pop-up window asking me to Verify Cash Balance. I have no idea what is causing this to happen, but it is very annoying and causing me to delete placeholder and Xin transactions each time.

Now don't get excited… There was a glimmer of hope last week when a supposed level 2 customer support rep came to the phone and told me to take the following steps, which seemed reasonable. He had me go to Edit > Preferences > Downloaded Transactions > Compare account portfolio after download > Settings > and unchecked the accounts I do not it to verify my positions. This morning his suggestion proved not to work. If there is a Superuser who has found an answer, please advise before I pull out the remaining few hairs I have on my head.

So, I guess the question is there a way to effectively delete the file of SWVXX and rebuild so we can show it is not part of cash or fix this ongoing problem?

Thanks All.

#mshiggins if you could help or add your input it would be helpful.

Forgot to add using Quicken Business & Personal v.R58.9, build 27.1.58.9 on Windows 11.

mshiggins

I have multiple Schwab accounts. I don't recall ever seeing the Verify Cash Balance dialog for Schwab, or any financial institution, except when activating an account for downloading (or just recently, when testing the option to treat a Schwab MM fund as cash).

I just ran a test where I intentionally made the cash balance incorrect in an online activated account, did a download, and got no dialog asking me to confirm the cash balance.

Hitting "Done" in the pop-up box creates a reconciling transaction which changes the (correct!) balance in the register to something incorrect."

Have you checked the Schwab account cash balance on the Balances tab of the Online Center? Does the cash balance in the Quicken account equal the downloaded cash balance?

Have you tried Validating/Super Validating your data?

If nothing else helps, I suggest using Help > Report a problem, to notify the Quicken developers. Be sure to send your sanitized data file and all your log files.

-JP

mshiggins

@Leon Pink

"I accidently gave an OK to having the money market fund [SWVXX} viewed as cash."

" ... is there a way to ... fix this ongoing problem?"

The only time I can definitely recall Quicken offering the option to treat a MM fund as cash is when a Quicken account was being activated for downloading.

I make no guarantees, but here's something you can try:

1.)  Backup

2.)  Deactivate the Quicken problem account

3.)  Use the "Add Account" process to "re-activate" the problem account, making sure to Link the download to the correct existing Quicken account. 

In my limited testing (in R58.9); at this point (when the Add Account dialog had completed), with an account that had been treating SWVXX as cash, I was offered the option to treat that same MM fund as cash - and I chose NO. 

When the downloaded transactions had been accepted, I noticed that an Investing > Portfolio Value report was still reporting the MM fund balance as cash. 

But there was a newly downloaded Div transaction for the MM fund, which indicated that Quicken was now treating the MM fund as a security ...Quicken just didn't seem to have corrected the current MM fund and cash balances..

I was expecting Quicken to create an XOut to reduce the Quicken cash balance to equal the financial institution cash balance, and to create a Placeholder to correct Quicken MM fund balance; but that didn't happen. 

I don't think Quicken's failure to correct the MM fund balance and the cash balance are a serious problem: I think the user can enter those transactions manually. 

Hopefully, from that point forward the Quicken MM fund and cash balances will agree with the financial institution balances.

-JP

Chris_QPW

The only time I can definitely recall Quicken offering the option to treat a MM fund as cash is when a Quicken account was being activated for downloading.

If this works the way my Chase account works, there is another way to do this.

Go to that register and select the gear icon → Update Cash Balance. If it is possible to be changed you will see this:

Clicking on that gets you this:

mshiggins

"Go to that register and select the gear icon → Update Cash Balance."

Good point. 

I saw the Update Cash Balance option, but failed to notice its "Cash Representation" button.

Since I didn't test using the Cash Representation button, I can only guess that the user will still have to take care of correcting the MM fund balance.

-JP