How can I get Quicken to treat two mutual funds in a brokerage account as cash?

MarioP

I'm running Quicken Classic: Business and Personal version R63.21 on a Windows PC.

My brokerage account includes two money market mutual funds that the investment firm treats/reports as cash when reporting to Quicken. The sweep fund where any cash inflows go to plus a second optional money market that gets a slightly higher interest rate. Outflows are drawn from the sweep account first, and If/when the sweep account is depleted, the second mutual fund is used to settle any remaining amounts. How can I get Quicken to treat both mutual funds as cash accounts so that the total cash balance in Quicken matches what is reported by the investment firm?

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @MarioP,

Thanks for reaching out to the community!

I want to make sure I understand how your brokerage is reporting these funds to Quicken. A couple of quick questions:

• When the transactions download, does Quicken list the sweep fund in the Cash Balance field automatically, or is it showing up as a regular mutual fund holding?
• For the second money market fund, is Quicken downloading it as a separate security with shares/price, or is it coming through as “Cash” in the download?
• In your Portfolio view, do both of these funds appear under “Investments,” or is one showing in the cash section?
• Are you mainly wanting the account register to reflect both as cash, or are you more concerned about reports/net worth lining up with what your brokerage shows?
• Which financial institution are you experiencing this issue with?

Let me know!

MarioP

Hi Jasmine,

Quicken is tracking the sweep fund as cash and does not record shares/price for it - but does tag those cash entries with the fund name. The second mutual fund is recorded as a security with shares/price and it is not coming through as cash. However, when I click on the cash balance at the bottom of the register or try to reconcile the account, I see a discrepancy between the Quicken cash balance and the cash balance reported by the investment firm. The cash reported by the investment firm is the sum of the two mutual funds. Quicken only counts the sweep account as cash. I tried to re-categorize the second mutual fund as cash, but that'd didn't change anything. I also clicked the option for Quicken to change cash tracking for the account when the prompt came up (chose the "recommended" option), but that didn't work either.

The main objective to get the Quicken cash balance to match the cash balance reported by the brokerage firm so I can cleanly reconcile and track the account activity.

The issue is with my Fidelity accounts that hold the second optional "premium" money market fund.

Thanks. - Mario

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

Since you mentioned this is happening with Fidelity, you are most likely being impacted by the known issue with Money Market Funds/Sweep Funds being handled inconsistently (CTP-13955).

Typically, when you first add your account(s), if the financial institution supports it, you should be offered a choice of how to represent the cash balance in your account. See this help article for more information: https://info.quicken.com/win/your-brokerage-may-use-a-money-market-fund-to-repr

Thank you!

MarioP

I did follow the prompts but didn't see any choice to make any selections other than those pre-set by Quicken. I also tried to use the option when Quicken offered it to change how cash is treated. But it only appears when Quicken decides to show it and doesn't allow any choices other than whatever Quicken wants to do.

I am now seeing different behavior between the two accounts:

1. Account 1: The cash balance reported by Fidelity to Quicken includes the amount in the secondary money market mutual fund only (excludes the cash in the core/sweep money market mutual fund). The Quicken cash balance shows only the amount in the core/sweep fund. However, the Fidelity account online does show the core/sweep fund as cash with the combined amount across both funds as cash available for trading. So, there are basically three different cash amounts depending on where I look: Cash balance in Quicken (A), Cash balance reported by Fidelity to Quicken (B), Cash available for trades on Fidelity.com (A + B).
2. Account 2: The cash balance reported by Fidelity to Quicken is the combined cash balance across the core mutual fund and second optional mutual fund (A + B). The Quicken cash balance only shows the amount in the core/sweep fund (A). The Fidelity online account shows the core sweep account as cash (A) with the combined amount from both funds as cash available for trading (A + B: matching the amount reported to Quicken - but not reflected in the Quicken cash balance).

There is no obvious way to make any changes to either account's cash treatment.

Chris_QPW

You can't currently do this in Quicken (well not automatically, you could do it manually by deleting transactions and such). At best Quicken will only treat one mutual fund as cash. And it will only do that when the financial institution sends something that triggers Quicken to ask the user if they want to do that, which not all financial institutions do.

You want what is suggested in this idea (and note that the original idea doesn't mention multiple securities, but I do in the comments, be sure to leave a comment that you need that too, and vote for the idea):

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7943516/let-users-choose-how-money-market-transactions-are-treated

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

Since there is currently a known issue with the way cash and money market funds are being handled with Fidelity, I recommend that you bookmark this Community Alert to be notified of any updates, once available, and know when the issues are resolved:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7965464/new-8-29-25-fidelity-updates

Additionally, I see that you added a comment on the Idea thread that @Chris_QPW linked, but forgot to add your vote. To add your vote, click on the little arrow icon below the counter showing how many votes have been cast.

Thank you!

MarioP

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20506853#Comment_20506853

@Quicken Kristina - Thanks for the reminder to vote. Done! Also, that link to the update that's in progress is very good to see. I'm having almost all of those issues and will be happy to see them resolved. I appreciate your helpful replies here.