tracking of sweep accounts

Wiley Won

Between my wife and myself, we have 6 investment accounts at Fidelity. All of them have cash automatically invested in SPAXX - Fidelity Government Money Market Fund as a "sweep" account. In Quicken, this balance shows in the last column titled "Cash Bal".

We also have an account at Vanguard where cash is held in an account named "Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund". The difference here, though, is the MM Fund is treated as a security in Holdings with a price that is always $1.00. The Cash Bal column always returns to zero after settlement. I prefer this method because it makes reconciliation easier.

Is there any way to get our Fidelity accounts to behave like the Vanguard account in Quicken?

Boatnmaniac

Fidelity has been doing it this was since at least the early 2000s. I'm not aware of anything we can do to get Fidelity to download the Core Account (in your case, SPAXX) as shares instead of downloading the value of those shares as Cash Balance. Some have tried to do that but it really messes up their portfolio value because some (not all) shares can be downloaded but it will not stop Fidelity from continuing to download the value of the shares as Cash Balance. If someone else knows of a way to do this, I hope they post it here.

NotACPA

Not sure, but I doubt it because, based upon my readings here, the way that Vanguard and Fidelity treat cash in an account vary widely.

In my Fidelity accounts, I just carry the cash (which is really in an MMF) as cash … and simply ignore/delete any downloaded buy/sell transactions unless they're in my taxable accounts (1 mine, 1 wife's) where I "Show Cash in a checking account".

Boatnmaniac

Fidelity has been doing it this was since at least the early 2000s. I'm not aware of anything we can do to get Fidelity to download the Core Account (in your case, SPAXX) as shares instead of downloading the value of those shares as Cash Balance. Some have tried to do that but it really messes up their portfolio value because some (not all) shares can be downloaded but it will not stop Fidelity from continuing to download the value of the shares as Cash Balance. If someone else knows of a way to do this, I hope they post it here.