Cash balance and money funds not matching in Schwab brokerage accounts

Question

I have an IRA brokerage account with Charles Schwab with a sweep feature that sweeps cash into the Schwab Government Money Market fund. I also hold some cash in the Schwab Value Advantage fund inside this account.

After a download several months ago a window popped up in Quicken stating that Quicken would like to track these money funds as cash rather than tracking the buys and sells within the funds. I agreed to the suggestion and now the cash balance in Quicken does not match the actual cash balance in the accounts. I've also noticed that the money market funds show up as holdings in the account but the account holdings don't match balance in the funds. I'm also getting the dreaded placeholder transactions added to the account because the fund balances don't match the downloaded balances.

Any idea what happened and how I can fix it?

Thanks for your help!

Tom Young · Answer

It probably is time to pick up the phone and call Official Quicken Support as it seems that Quicken has been remarkably non-informative when it comes to switching back and forth between "security" and "cash."

You might try this:

but it seems like some people have had success and others aren't seeing this option, and you want to switch from "cash" to "security" in any case.

I think that a good part of this problem arose because Quicken didn't understand at the time of the change in downloading methods the the government fund was handled differently at Schwab than their non-government fund,  If Official Quicken Support can help you make the change on the goverment fund within Quicken from security to cash then, since it does appear that the government has the correct "share balance", simply selling the government fund (at no gain or loss) would be easier than trying to go back and delete all those old Buys and Sells.

jeff.schmitz · Answer

Hi Tom, thanks for getting back to me. You are correct about the GMM being swept by Schwab. I don't see the buys/sells in my Schwab account, I see them in the Quicken transaction registers. I have a couple of IRAs with Schwab, one IRA has several buy/sells for GMM and the other has only 1 from last week.

Regarding the placeholder transactions, I'm seeing them for both funds. I've been trying to sort this out for a couple of weeks, when I couldn't figure out what was happening I reset the account. Could that have caused the buys/sells to download?

I'm OK with the GMM being represented as cash or but I would like to get the Quicken accounts to match the cash/GMM balance in my Schwab account. Since the Value Advantage is not being swept (thanks for pointing that out) I can go back and clean that one up. What's the best way to fix cash/GMM issue?

Thanks again for your help.

Jeff

Tom Young · Answer

"Hi Jim, thanks for your message. The buys/sells for both the GMM and Schwab Value Advantage seemed to stop for a while and then restarted."

One of the worst things Quicken and/or Schwab did (it's unclear who is the actor here) with the changeover from Direct Connect to EWC+ was to offer to treat "as cash" MMFs that actually need to be bought and sold with a settlement date separate from the transaction date.   But from that sentence it sounds like at some point you were able to make the switch back to having the two MMFs be treated as securities instead of cash?

(I've never owned the GMM MMF in my accounts at Schwab but I thought that the GMM MMF actually DID get "swept" back ad forth automatically?  Are you really seeing Buys and Sells of that fund, or is that a misstatement?)

"When I look at "Positions" in the Schwab account online the Value Advantage fund shows up but the GMM does not and I see a cash balance. When I click on "Balances" in the Schwab account I can see the GMM balance which matches the cash balance in the "Positions" view."

Because I believe the GMM actually is a "sweep" situation that makes sense.  In the "Positions" view at Schwab the GMM is NOT considered a "security", it's just "cash."  In the "Balances" view, in the area titled "Cash & Cash Investments" it appears that Schwab IS showing the GMM as a line item and a "Cash Balance" of $0, for a total that's the same as the "cash" shown in the Positions view.

This seems to be an idiosyncrasy on the part of Schwab's presentation and if the Schwab Value Advantage Fund is being presented with distinct Buys and Sells within Quicken then it seems that's working correctly and consistent with your "buys/sells… restarted" statement.

Could you be clearer about the "dreaded placeholder transactions" statement?  Is this for both funds, or just one fund, and if so, which fund?