moving dividends

Unknown
Unknown Member
edited November 2018 in Investing (Windows)
Windows 2017 - Can't find a way to move dividends to Money mkt fund,only to "Vanguard cash".

Comments

  • UKR
    UKR SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2018

    Is this a cash dividend (or interest) received on a Money Market Fund that's used to receive idle cash from your investment account? Some brokers call it a Sweep Account.
    Do you get transactions downloaded for each roll - in and roll - out of cash to / from the MMF Fund?
    If not, don't bother with entering these transactions and just keep idle cash + any MMF balance as your account's Cash balance.

    If you're trying to record dividend received for the MMF Fund ... did you set up a Mutual Fund - type Security (doesn't need to be an actual one with a Ticker Symbol)? I call mine "XYZ Sweep Account" (where XYZ is the broker name). It's just something you can use to correctly record a cash interest or dividend received

  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November 2018
    It sounds like you have a "new style" Vanguard brokerage account, i.e. one that can hold Vanguard and other mutual funds, ETFs, and individual stocks.

    In these accounts, dividends are paid to a cash account and then swept automatically to the settlement account, the Vanguard Federal Money Market fund. If you download the transactions from Vanguard you will see two transactions - a Div which goes to the cash balance and a Bought which buys the same amount of the money market fund.

    If you are entering the transactions manually, you can enter both transactions or you can ignore the money market fund and leave the money in the account's cash balance. In this case, you can manually create a holding for the money market fund (with zero shares) and enter the money market fund dividends with this holding.
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  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2017

    It sounds like you have a "new style" Vanguard brokerage account, i.e. one that can hold Vanguard and other mutual funds, ETFs, and individual stocks.

    In these accounts, dividends are paid to a cash account and then swept automatically to the settlement account, the Vanguard Federal Money Market fund. If you download the transactions from Vanguard you will see two transactions - a Div which goes to the cash balance and a Bought which buys the same amount of the money market fund.

    If you are entering the transactions manually, you can enter both transactions or you can ignore the money market fund and leave the money in the account's cash balance. In this case, you can manually create a holding for the money market fund (with zero shares) and enter the money market fund dividends with this holding.

    Sorry for the almost-duplicate response - UKR beat me to it!

    I should note also that Reinvested dividends in Vanguard mutual funds are handled differently in the downloaded data. They come directly as ReinvestDiv transactions, and you should enter them as such if you are entering them manually.
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  • Unknown
    Unknown Member
    edited October 2018
    Vanguard uses a fund for cash (VMFXX), and it sends all the needed
    transactions to move between the funds.  Those transactions can be
    delayed by a few days because of the Vanguard sends Quicken the
    transactions when they have "cleared" as in after the 3 (now 2 day)
    settlement period.  Also it sends the buys/sells/dividend transactions
    before it sends the one moving the money in and out of VMFXX.

    But
    it does send all of the transactions, so if a person was to do it the
    way UKR is suggesting they will have to be deleting all transactions
    that involve VMFXX.

    Now on Fidelity it is a completely different
    story.  They don't send the transactions for "cash" even though they do
    have it in a fund too.  So for Fidelity you just leave it as cash in the
    account.

    You need to tailor your transactions to what the financial institution is sending.
    If you are manually entering transactions it is up to you.  If I was doing it manually I probably wouldn't use a fund for cash, but it does have the advantage of the dividend/interest earned by that "cash fund" can be connected to it if you do put in the transactions.

    Also note that since switching to VMFXX they (Vanguard) has been
    coding the transactions wrong.  They have put in number of shares, but
    not the price of $1 per share in their buys/sells.  So the result is everyone of these
    transactions have to edited to avoid getting placeholders. 

    But of course this a completely different problem than "Can't find a way to move dividends"

    You
    don't "move dividends", you put in an income transaction (set to Div)
    it goes to the cash balance in the register, and then there is a buy
    transaction for VMFXX which takes the cash out of the cash balance.

    Here is an example of what Vanguard sent for my transactions.  (You can ignore the reinvest, but it is an example where there isn't any kind of transfer to "cash/VMFXX", it is strickly a stock transaction)
    image

    Editing the two transactions so that you can see them:
    image
    image
  • UKR
    UKR SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2017
    QPW said:

    Vanguard uses a fund for cash (VMFXX), and it sends all the needed
    transactions to move between the funds.  Those transactions can be
    delayed by a few days because of the Vanguard sends Quicken the
    transactions when they have "cleared" as in after the 3 (now 2 day)
    settlement period.  Also it sends the buys/sells/dividend transactions
    before it sends the one moving the money in and out of VMFXX.

    But
    it does send all of the transactions, so if a person was to do it the
    way UKR is suggesting they will have to be deleting all transactions
    that involve VMFXX.

    Now on Fidelity it is a completely different
    story.  They don't send the transactions for "cash" even though they do
    have it in a fund too.  So for Fidelity you just leave it as cash in the
    account.

    You need to tailor your transactions to what the financial institution is sending.
    If you are manually entering transactions it is up to you.  If I was doing it manually I probably wouldn't use a fund for cash, but it does have the advantage of the dividend/interest earned by that "cash fund" can be connected to it if you do put in the transactions.

    Also note that since switching to VMFXX they (Vanguard) has been
    coding the transactions wrong.  They have put in number of shares, but
    not the price of $1 per share in their buys/sells.  So the result is everyone of these
    transactions have to edited to avoid getting placeholders. 

    But of course this a completely different problem than "Can't find a way to move dividends"

    You
    don't "move dividends", you put in an income transaction (set to Div)
    it goes to the cash balance in the register, and then there is a buy
    transaction for VMFXX which takes the cash out of the cash balance.

    Here is an example of what Vanguard sent for my transactions.  (You can ignore the reinvest, but it is an example where there isn't any kind of transfer to "cash/VMFXX", it is strickly a stock transaction)
    image

    Editing the two transactions so that you can see them:
    image
    image

    Jim and QPW,

    thanks for the explanations. They are much better than mine. Not being a Vanguard customer I can only stumble thru this in generic terms.

  • Unknown
    Unknown Member
    edited September 2017
    Thank you all for your advice. Jake35
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