Investment account balances are double what they should be

Question

I recently transferred all my assets from various investment firms to UBS.

In doing so, some of the firms allowed me to download those closing transactions into Quicken (where I had been tracking them for years), others didn't.  So to simplify things I just deleted all of those accounts, and then setup my UBS accounts in Quicken, and downloaded all the new UBS transactions.

The problem is, the new accounts don't have a Transfer In (Xin) source, and the balances shown in my new UBS accounts on the Accounts menu/tab are double the actual balance.  I have positive cash balances for the full amount of my investments, rather than zero cash balances (which is what they should have).

How do I rectify the cash balances to zero so the left hand Account list matches my actual account balances?

I set up these accounts as Complete rather than Simple.

Boatnmaniac · Answer

@clufster - These pictures are very helpful.

The first picture that on 4/9 your UBS account was opened with a $0.00 initial cash balance.  This is very normal because when financial institutions first create an account the account is created with a $0.00 cash balance.

It also shows the UBS account was funded on 4/10 when the $143K was transferred into the account.

So, far, so good.

But what is missing is the in both pictures is a Buy transaction for the security.  So, I agree with @Jim_Harman that you might have a Placeholder that needs to be resolved.

To help you resolve that I suggest you take a look at your UBS online account to confirm the details of how/when they added the security to the account.  I'm assuming that will be a Buy transaction.  Then duplicate that transaction in the account in Quicken making sure that the source funding for that Buy transaction is the account's cash balance.  This should deplete your cash balance and then show only the value of the security.

FYI:  Roth IRAs are tax free accounts.  That means it is quite likely that TRP liquidated the holdings and then transferred the proceeds to UBS because liquidating a security in this kind of account is not a taxable event and doing a cash transfer is easier and less costly than transferring the shares.  If UBS initiated the transfer of your Roth IRA from TRP, then they would have likely authorized TRP to liquidate and then transfer the cash to save you and/or them some money and time.  You can also confirm what happened at TRP by logging into your online account there.  Even though you no longer have an open account there you should still be able to access it.

Jim_Harman · Answer

I suspect that there is a hidden Placeholder for this security.

Go to Edit > Preferences > Investments and look at the Show hidden transactions setting. If the box is not checked, check it. Click on OK. This should make Placeholders visible in the account's Transaction List (register).

If there is a Placeholder, delete it and enter a transaction to Buy the security with a total cost of $143,423.78.

Once you have that straightened out, we will make sure the transfers from the other accounts are entered correctly, assuming you were tracking them in Quicken.

clufster · Answer

* Yes, both entries were downloaded via Add Account, nothing was manually entered.
* See the screen shots below.  On the Holding tab, it shows the security that I was previously invested in, so I don't think T Rowe Price liquidated it into cash before transferring to UBS, cut I could be wrong.

Q2.jpg