Client requested electronic fund distribution

Each month my broker does a " Client requested electronic fund distribution". It is direct deposited into my checking account. When it is downloaded from Ameritrade into Q, it is listed as a "MiscExp". I am thinking it should be a cash withdrawl, or something like that?? They may be thinking it is a MiscExpense to the brokerage account.?

Reply to
Meebers
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Not sure what version of Q you're using, but my version (QD2007) puts "Misc Expense" in the Description box if I leave the Description box blank when entering a transfer. Since I enter transactions in Q manually I always make sure to put "Transfer" in the Description box as it does look odd to label a transfer from one account to another as Misc Expense. However, what really governs the accounting in Q is the Action as shown in the Action column of the register. A transfer out of one account to another will have an Action of XOut.

If this is the situation you're facing then I'd suggest just changing the wording from Misc Expense to Transfer, or learn to live with it.

Tom Young

Q H&B. If I go and try to change the "Action" field, I am presented with

2 types of transaction category's. One is Investment transactions and the other is Cash transactions. Investment transactions are N/A as this is from cash in the account, no shares/stocks are sold etc. The closest one under cash transactions is withdrawl, but I must enter a payee which is N/A since the cash is direct deposited. A transfer is not availiable such as Xout, which will go from one account to the other. It becomes difficult when I D/L the deposit from the checking account, would be a double entry?? One from the transfer and one from the direct deposit. Seems like a simple thing to do, but having a little trouble...nothing that I can't live with. Tx for your comments....
Reply to
Meebers

Hi, Meebers.

I have a similar problem with income tax withholding on dividends and interest in my Merrill Lynch account. (The withholding was required for one year in the early 1990's and just never got shut off; it provides a small estimated tax cushion each year so I've just let it continue.) ML withholds from each income check and sends it to the IRS, just like from a paycheck. So I have to record both the dividend income and the Transfer to the "FIT Prepaid" Asset Account that I've created in Quicken.

Quicken knows very well how to handle the download from ML of the dividend information; that goes into my ML cash balance and into _DivInc. No problem.

But Quicken always wants to put the withheld tax into MiscExp. When I make the entry manually, I can show it as a Transfer Out to [FIT Prepaid]. But when ML downloads the transaction, they always show it as an expense - which it is not - yet. At least, it is not an expense until I file my tax return next April and apply the prepayment to the actual tax; until then, it's still my money being held and protected (and used or wasted) by Uncle Sam.

So I always let ML download the dividend and record the New entry in Quicken. Then I use a Memorized Investment Transaction in my ML account to record the tax withheld as an XOut to my checking account. Then, I Match the downloaded "expense" transaction to my previously-recorded XOut transaction - and everything is correct.

It's a little extra hassle, but not enough to get upset about. But I DO wish Intuit would take a walk in the Real (Investment) World now and then. This goes into my collection of little Quicken hassles, along with the oft-bemoaned failure to understand Certificates of Deposit - and my newest gripe with Q2010's Backup: When I click Backup, I can just press

+, as before, to select the destination folder. But now I have to reach for the mouse to confirm that I want to overwrite yesterday's backup file of the same name. The default, if I just press again - as I did in Q2009 and earlier - is to Cancel! It's only one additional step, but why can't I change the default to Overwrite, since that's ALWAYS what I want?

For your transaction, go ahead and record the transfer manually, using a Memorized Investment Transaction. Then Match it with the MIscExp transaction downloaded from Ameritrade. Schedule the memorized transaction so that it is already recorded, waiting for the Match; otherwise, you'll have to change it after the download, as you probably are doing now. Until Quicken learns how to handle downloaded transfers, we're going to have to deal with this hassle every month, one way or another. :>{

RC

Reply to
R. C. White

Thanks R. C. I just entered a Memorized Investment Transaction set for the

15th of the month. Will have to wait until then and see how it works. I am still using Q2009H&B on my Xp machine but have put Q2010D on my Win7 Machine and I am still getting used to it. I guess from your comments on 2010 backup, that you are not adding the date to the file name?? I append the date without issue unless I happen to do another backup on the same date, then I have to choose overwrite. Ditto on the CD's.
Reply to
Meebers

Hi, Meebers.

Right. I recognize that there are differing valid philosophies on the subject of dated backups, but I - generally - prefer a single backup for my current working file.

There's a distinct difference between a backup and an archive. An archive is something that we should be able to consult a year from now - or decades later - to reconstruct a picture of how things were at some point in historical time. These archives should be created after "milestone" dates, like year-ends or before/after a marriage or other major event; such an archive should be safeguarded for posterity.

A backup, though, has no long-term value. Its use is to assure that the current file is usable and has not been damaged or corrupted in some way, or lost. a recent-but-not-current backup can come in very handy when we realize that we just made a dumb mistake and wish we could roll back the clock to yesterday or this morning and "take a mulligan". Once we are sure that current backup is up to date and functioning correctly, all backups but the most-current one are redundant and can be deleted.

Quicken's automatic backups provide more than adequate protection for all but the worst situations. (At least, they did until Q2010. I'm not fully comfy yet with the new automatic schedule, so my remarks apply mostly to the default 5 weekly backups that were the norm before 2010. These provided "mulligans" for over a month's mistakes.) There is no need to put the date in the filename, since Windows automatically records the date and time that each file was saved. Since I typically make a manual backup several times a day, and since each backup takes a lot of space, I could use up a big hard drive very quickly if I didn't re-use the same space over and over. And the added disk space used would provide almost zero added protection from my mistakes.

What are we protecting ourselves FROM with backups? Nuclear war? Computer theft? Hard drive meltdown? How could date-named backups help protect us from any of those?

As I said, philosophies vary. This is mine. You are entitled to yours. ; Thanks R. C. I just entered a Memorized Investment Transaction set for

Reply to
R. C. White

RC, I worked in software for a long time. Backups saved me several times.

On one occasion, I found that all of my work for the previous year had been deleted by a mainframe computer glitch. The system support team restored the backup, but it turned out to be empty. I knew I had listings that I had dumped into the confidential trash a few days earlier. I grabbed the sealed 50 gallon trash can and locked it in my office just in case. After two days, they finally found a backup from a month earlier that was reasonably good. They also told me they only kept a months worth of backups. If that one had failed, I would have had to resort to the listings or hope that the archive at Iron Mountain could be restored. I would still have had to figure out all of the updates to the source code, and re-write them all.

Quicken does it own automatic backups on the hard drive. I never use them. I consider them worthless.

I backup Quicken daily to a DVD that sits one of my DVD drives all the time. I create a new directory named for the date, and copy the files into it. I use Karen's Replicator to automate the entire operation. Each quarter, I take the DVD to the bank where it sits in my safety deposit box. I start a new DVD at that time. Each one is labeled with the beginning and ending date.

The cost is about $.50 per quarter or $2.00 per year. I always have several backups available in the DVD drive, so if my hard drive or my computer fails, I can load the backup on another computer, and get going immediately with recent data. I've done this on at least three occasions. One was a hard drive failure. One was a computer failure, and one was a catastrophic Quicken failure that re-installing and Quicken support could not resolve. Restoring the backup on the second computer was what convinced Quicken support that is was not a corrupted Quicken database. I later resolved the problem myself, and used the new DVD backup from my laptop to restore to my desktop.

The DVD's at the bank take almost no room, so that is not a concern. They protect me against burglary, flood, fire, or almost any other catastrophe that could occur. Having multiple DVD's at the bank also insures that a defective DVD will not compound the problem. I have had DVD's fail, so that is a real possibility.

The cost is minimal. The effort is minimal, and the security seems fool proof. One of my responsibilities along the way was disaster planning. I gained an appreciation of what it took, and how important it is. If my computer failed, that would be a pain in the neck. If my home burned down, that would be horrible, but I would rebuild and recover. Losing my financial record my financial records could take months to recover, and much of the history could never be restored.

That is my philosophy; maybe overkill, but at a reasonable expense and effort.

-- Jim

Reply to
JimH

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