nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Mutual Fund Cash Balance Adjustment

Dom1

I have a mutual fund that has a negative cash balance. Is there a way to get this to $0 without impacting reports? I've used the cash balance adjustment (Xin) but the adjustment amount inflates my report. My mutual fund register is accurate however.

Thanks

Find more posts tagged with

Accepted answers

Dom1

Do you know of a way to delete and re-import prior transactions from Vanguard? Currently importing .QFX files. The removing of the MiscExp lines didn't work as I had thought.

All comments

Tom Young

"I have a mutual fund that has a negative cash balance."

I assume you're talking about a money market fund that has a negative balance in Quicken, not in "real life?" I'm a bit confused though about the last sentence "My mutual fund register is accurate however." Is that after you made the Xin action? And I don't see how moving cash into an Investment Account would affect an MMF (a security), other than by mathematically zeroing out the two balances.

Something would appear to be wrong in the series of transactions in that mutual fund to bring it to a negative balance and those transactions have been reflected in earlier reports.. Can you research those transactions to identify the error, or errors, and correct it that way?

I'm not sure what "reports" your referring to since most transactions end up one way or another in some sort of report. What specific reports do you have in mind here?

NotACPA

Also, when was the last time that the cash/MMF balance agreed between Q and the statements from your fund company? What has happened since then?

And, are you making regular deposits into this brokerage account, say like Payroll deductions? Could a deposit be missing?

Because, in general, it's better to correct issues rather than "papering over" them with adjustments.

Boatnmaniac

Go to Account Register > upper right Gear icon > Edit Account Details > Online Services tab: Do you see a message like what is highlighted in yellow in this picture? If so, what is the ticker of that is listed there?

Go to Account Register > upper right Gear icon > Reconcile Shares: What does the resulting popup show?

Below the Account Register toward the right: Click on the blue font Cash Balance dollar amount. What does the resulting popup show?

Dom1

😊Yes, the negative balance pertains to the cash balance on the mutual fund and is the amount of taxes withheld from a distribution. There were a couple of transactions downloaded at the same time and either Quicken or me were confused by the import. There weren't duplicate entries but taxes were reflected twice on the mutual fund side showing a negative cash balance. When I did an Xin transaction it cleared up the balance discrepancy between the mutual fund in Quicken and the brokerage but in doing so this Xin inflated the balance of the account by this amount. The report is probably a custom report that I use for overall account balances.

In addition, I can't say I do this correctly but here is my process.

1 - Download transaction from brokerage example:

$3,000 sold
$300 Fed Tax
$30 State Tax
$2,670 Net cash withdrawal hitting checking

2 - I copy a similar distribution transaction from my checking account and alter the date and figures and Vanguard will ask if this pertains to the download I just did where I respond in the affirmative. This typically works but I'm wondering if my process while working in the past screwed something up.

I've done it this way for a while but I guess I should double check the "correct" procedure.

Dom1

Actually it was this last download where things went off. Everything was fine until then. I would redo the download but I haven't been successful in getting transactions to import again once done in Quicken (even if deleted).

Dom1

The message MM as cash does not exist. I have this setting turned off.

Reconcile shares shows it off by 5 cents but it's been like that forever. All share and value balances equal the brokerage info.

I this (adjust cash balance) initially to get the balance to zero. It accomplished this by the Xin transaction. This transaction inflates the value of the account however.

Dom1

To be clear the cash amount it was off by was the tax withheld for some reason. After numerous efforts I disconnected the mutual fund transactions from the checking account deposit and deleted the tax entries on the mutual fund side that typically get imported as miscexp. I now have the sold $3,000 and withdrawal $3,000 without the tax transactions and no Xin transaction. The check deposit entry still shows the tax breakout and that is what I refer to anyway.

In the scope of things this will probably suffice but don't like the feel of it. And I'm I going about the import correctly and deposit correctly?

NotACPA

I suspect that this all happened in a Retirement type account, since you referenced taxes withheld on the xfer to your checking account.

I also suspect that your fund company downloaded multiple transactions for this … the Net w/d to your checking account and 1 or more "tax withheld" transactions.

In Q, NO tax-related transaction can be recorded in a non-taxable account.

Before you do any of the below … take a backup, just in case.

SO, the proper way to handle the transaction, in Q, is to change that Net w/d to reflect the full $3,000 as a transfer to your checking account and delete, in the retirement account any tax-related transactions.

Then, in the checking account, split the deposit for $3,000 and leave that amount as the transfer from the retirement account, record the tax w/h transactions as Negative amounts in the split and then click the Adjust button in the split to change the deposit amount in your register from the gross amount to the net amount.

Do that for any/every such w/d that you've got … and that should correct both your account balance and your (doesn't look like you've found it yet) tax reporting issue.

Dom1

Yes, I agree with this. Since the last download is the one that went wrong I ended up accomplishing what you are stating (by different route). On the mutual fund side, the sold and the withdrawal at $3,000 each remain and the tax (Miscexp) transactions were deleted. The tax breakout will be reflected on the checking deposit transaction.

Thanks

Dom1

Do you know of a way to delete and re-import prior transactions from Vanguard? Currently importing .QFX files. The removing of the MiscExp lines didn't work as I had thought.

NotACPA

You can't re-import. Every downloaded transaction contains a "Financial Institution Transaction ID" (FITID) which Q remembers in order to prevent that FITID from being used again … even if the initial transaction is deleted. So any re-imported transactions would be rejected as dupes.

SO, in what way did the deletion of the MiscExp not work?

Did you go thru each step that I laid out?

Boatnmaniac

You can't re-import. Every downloaded transaction contains a "Financial Institution Transaction ID" (FITID) which Q remembers in order to prevent that FITID from being used again … even if the initial transaction is deleted. So any re-imported transactions would be rejected as dupes.

Wouldn't it be possible to do the following?:

Deactivate the investment account.
Download and save the desired date range of transactions (and as supported by the brokerage) from the brokerage website in a QFX formatted file.
Import that QFX file into Quicken and when prompted on how to handle that imported data Add it as a new account instead of Linking it to the original account.
Then move the transactions in the new account into the original account.
When done, delete the new account.
For the next download in the future: Repeat #2 followed by #3 but, instead of Adding it as a new account, Link it to the original account. Future QFX file imports would then automatically be linked to the original account.

I'm thinking this will get around the FITID restriction because it would be imported into a new account.

Or what am I getting wrong about this process?

Dom1

I tried numerous test dbs and various iterations of the fix but was never able to get it correct. There was always one element that was inaccurate, whether Cash Balance, Tax Withheld or Overstated Balance in my report.

I’m not sure if it was the sequence I tried but felt I tried numerous scenarios. It felt like there was something in the background that wouldn’t “let go” and it turned into a whack a mole scenario. I never discount the possibility of operator error.

Anyway, I had exported the same transaction for April and May of this year below. I compared April's to prior distributions so I know April has followed the norm for me and everything was fine until May. To be clear the May transactions are the edited result of removing the tax transactions. I've put them back in as well without success.

The end result, I redid the import with a backup db and everything is A-OK, similar to the April entries above. I greatly appreciate you taking the time on this.

pdmcmanus30

You can adjust your cash balance in any investment account by clicking on the cash value shown at the bottom of the transactions window. A window will pop up to allow you to adjust the cash balance. I would recommend you do this the day you reconcile your account to be sure no other errors are introduced.

pdmcmanus30

You can adjust your mutual fund cash balance by clicking on the cash amount shown in your transactions window for your mutual fund account. A window will pop up, allowing you to adjust the amount. I highly recommend that you do this the day you reconcile the account to make sure no other error is introduced with you account balance.

q_lurker

Not exactly clear what the problem is but …

You can edit the QFX file and alter the FITID identifier for each transaction you want to re-import. A process like appending an “a” or similar can be effective. The program compares current FITID identifiers against prior import records and ignores those that are duplicates.