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How to Reconcile a Schawb Acccount on Mac

beneisenstein

I've recently switched from Quicken Windows to Mac. I am trying to reconcile my Schwab accounts to statements. I can never get them to balance and it is driving me crazy. My cash is always off.

I have SWVXX and there is a sweep account. Through the forum I have discovered that you need to manually enter SWVXX transactions. Even with that the cash balance is not affected.

So does it have to do with the sweep account which I don't have a separate account set up for? Also some of the advice on the forum seems to have one set up MMs as Cash Representation, but I don't see this option on the Mac.

What is your methodology to balance the account?

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Comments

Jon

I haven't had a Schwab account in many years so I don't recall specifically how they are set up, but some investment accounts don't show a cash balance if you have it set up to sweep uninvested cash to a money market fund. Instead the MMF shows up as one of the investments. With my Fidelity IRA, it used to show a cash balance when I had it set to sweep to a FDIC bank account but once I switched it over to a MMF the cash balance is always zero.

As for how to reconcile, with that type of account I first look at the portfolio and match the number of shares of each investment to the monthly statement. If that is correct then I just reconcile to a zero balance each month so all the transactions are marked as reconciled; since the portfolio is correct I have high confidence that the transactions are also correct, though I suppose you could go through and compare each one individually to the statement as well.

Also, Quicken Mac doesn't have the feature Quicken Windows has where you can have a cash account attached to a brokerage account - everything is in the brokerage account.

clinc

Yes, reconciling SWVXX is a challenge. As you said, you have to manually enter buy/sell transactions. Plus, SWVXX dividends are reinvested by default but are downloaded as regular (non-reinvested) dividend transactions. I manually change these to Dividend Reinvestment transactions. In the transaction window, adjust the number of shares and the amount invested so that the price per share is exactly $1.00.

This has worked for me to keep the number of shares and cash balance in sync with Schwab statements, but others may have better suggestions.

MontanaKarl

Schwab has not had cash sweeping for some years in normal accounts…requiring manual buys and sells by customers, but maybe they still sweep into SWVXX in certain types like yours?

In any case, it has seemed inconsistent in how different people see their money market funds transactions in Quicken. For me, all buys and sells of SWVXX and SNSXX download properly and the share balance shows properly in Quicken Mac. The cash balance matches exactly the balance shown in the bordered box near the end of each Schwab statement. I use detailed tracking…which might be why it all works for me. In QMac, are your Schwab accounts set up for detailed tracking?

beneisenstein

MontanaKarl, y Mac account is set up for detailed tracking. There are definitely sweeps going into and out of Schwab Bank.

Clinc, I will try marking them as reinvestments. That idea never occurred to me!

jacobs

There are definitely sweeps going into and out of Schwab Bank.

@beneisenstein I think it depends on the specifics of the type of Schwab account you have. I have a few Schwab accounts, both retirement and non-retirement, and when there is a sale or cash dividend, it sits as cash in Schwab Bank; it is not automatically swept into SWVXX unless I/my financial advisor make a buy. but I imagine there are other Schwab accounts which are set up for auto-sweep into SWVXX.

MontanaKarl

Nothing helpful to add, but wanted to clarify where I had seen that cash sweep was eliminated for “most” accounts (which included all of ours, regular or retirement)…

https://www.schwab.com/money-market-funds

Schwab Sweep Money Funds

Schwab has eliminated sweep money market funds as a cash feature for most new and existing accounts. Limited accounts and account types may be eligible to have a money market fund as the designated cash feature. More complete information about all of Schwab’s available cash features can be found in the Cash Features Disclosure Statement.