$10,000 has randomly appeared in an account that hasn't been used since 2006

Question

About 30 days ago, a $10,000 balance appeared in an old 401K account.  There is no  new transaction listed in the account since 2006 and there have never been any transactions in the associated Cash Account. Also, this account was never set up for online downloads.

There appears to be no way to get rid of this incorrect balance.   If I sell phantom shares it puts $10,000 in the Cash Account.  If I delete $10,000, Quicken puts a negative $10,000 in the Cash Account.  .

Maybe there's an entry I can make that will delete the amount.  Until this error is corrected my net worth shows $10,000 too much.

I had not marked the account as closed previously, so I tried to do that and it did not fix the problem. A Quicken rep had me run Validate, which did not help.,

I have had random amounts appear in old, unused accounts before, but do not remember what the solution was.

I have tried Quicken Chat with an AI and spoke with a human with no answer other than to delete the account which will mess up my historical balances.

Thank you very much!

Randeo · Answer

Thanks so much for the quick reply.  I only use that account for historical reporting.

I did a validate with the Quicken Support Rep which didn't fix it.

I closed the account yesterday and it removed the $10,000 but it also removed it from my reporting so I still had a $10,000 difference between the Account Bar and the Net Worth Report.

I will backup the file for a pure copy. Then Run Validate. Then will withdraw the money as you suggest.  I tried something similar and when I did, it impacted the associated Cash Account by $10,000.  The Cash Account was never used, so if nothing else works, I will close the cash account and then when I withdraw the funds, there will be nowhere for the withdrawal to go.

Appreciate the suggestions

Tom Young · Answer

You can get rid of this cash by making a withdrawal in the $10K amount with the "Category" for the transaction being the 401K Account itself: [Name of 401k Account].  That will, presumably, make that money magically disappear, typically.

But I wouldn't do that immediately, I'd first make a backup and the Validate and Repair the file to see if that fixes it.

Do you really use that Account in any way, shape or form?  If not you could try "Closing" the file (which should zero it out) and then hiding that Account.