Employee / Employer Retirement Plan Setup Problem

Hopefully someone out there can assist me with the problem I have.

I am running Quicken XG 2005 Canadian Version and it all works fine. The only problem is the one piece of investment I have not included in my portfolio is the Retirement Plan I have with my work, which is with Standard Life. The plan at work is: we pay 50% as employees and the company pays the other 50% that goes into our RRSPs.

Now I only get a semi annual report in the mail on how the investments are doing. Standard Life does not have a way for Quicken to hook into their system either to get updates.

My problem is how do I set this up on my system. When I create this new account for Standard Life, it wants to know what stocks or mutual funds I am buying and how much they cost with commission. With the semi annual report (and with minimual details on what has happened during that time on the report) I don't have all this information, like I do with my personal trading accounts.

Also, if I set it up this way, it wants to know where the money is coming from. I have set up my bi-monthly pay checks in the system and in that transaction, it shows my payment towards the Retirement Plan, but that cash doesn't go anywhere right now in Quicken (well at least towards a RRSP account). That is also only half of the payment, so where would the company part come from in the program?

I know this sounds really confusing as I describe it, but hopefully someone out there knows what I am trying to describe.

Thanks Carl

Reply to
T
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What you appear to be describing is an "Employer Match" of your retirement contribution ... not all that different that a 401k plan here in the states.

Record a transfer from your paycheck for your side of the contribution, and record an "Employer Match" income amount in the investment register.

It's not apparent from your description if you're holding securities in the account or if your Employer just provides a semi-annual total dollar amount.

If individual securities are involved, they can be bought the same as with any other investment account.

If you only have the "total dollar" amount, just post an Interest Income transaction whenever you get the semi-annual reports.

Reply to
danbrown

You haven't provided enough information to receive detailed advice. But you are not *required* to tell Quicken what securities you hold when you setup an account (at least not in the US version). And the basic principle when you do not have complete detail is to create transactions that account for the difference in number of shares owned from one period to the next, as closely as possible to what actually occurred - and don't forget to capture prices for all securities as of the dates of your statements.

If XG works like the US version, the Setup Paycheck Wizard offers the ability to enter pre-tax deductions, among which are retirement account deductions, which include both the employee contribution and the employer contribution. If XG doesn't offer a field to enter the employer's contribution, you may have to setup your paycheck manually; make it look just like the Quicken paycheck (see a transaction report to see the splits) except, add the splits for the employer contribution.

If you looked at a report of your paycheck with splits showing, the employer contribution would increase the gross amount by the amount of the employer contribution, categorized to a Quicken retirement account category (beginning with an underscore: in the US, _401EmployerContrib); then there would be a second split line reducing the gross amount by the amount of the employer contribution, with its category being the [retirement account], ie, a transfer to the retirement account.

Reply to
John Pollard

Thank you to both Dan and John for the assistance. I think I am on the right track, but want to double check with you or others to make sure I am doing this correctly.

I went into one of my previous paycheck entries on Quicken XG and I did find the Pre-Tax section with the "Employer Match" section. I was able to enter my Retirement Plan Contribution and then the equal amount that the company paid into the Standard Life Account I created.

What I have been doing up till now when I entered my paychecks into Quicken was only enter my half (since that is all that shows up on my Paycheck Statement) and it was entered under the Tax section of Quicken Paycheck (where I have all my deductions). On my Paycheck statement, my pension plan payment shows up as a deduction. Here is my question to you guys now. When I entered this new "Employer Match" contribution, I had to erase the deduction I had under the tax section of my original entry to bring the final amount out correctly. When I did this though, I notice the Gross Employment Income down at the bottom of the entry is now different than what my paycheck statement shows.

Now maybe this doesn't matter and maybe it is something different, but my paycheck statement shows at the bottom of the Earnings Column the Total Gross Pay. As explained above, Quicken now shows at the bottom of the entry the Gross Employment Income which is now different than the Total Gross Pay from the Paycheck. Is this okay that they are different? The Net Pay is correct on both.

Just so I explain myself a little better (from my first post) about what I receive on my semi-annual report from Standard Life. A 7 page document arrives that shows the opening, closing and contributions amounts. There is

1 page of the 7 that gives a rough outline of what funds they have in the category the company money is in and it shows ours is in the Diversified Global Fund with the number of units I have. I am not told how many units I have bought over the past 6 months, they just give dollar figures on how the past 6 months have done. This means I would say, the Employer Match contribution is the way to go, since the details are so rough. Would you guys not agree?

I see Dan, that you say I will just need to add "Interest Income" transaction whenever I get the semi-annual report. What would I do if the fund lost money over the 6 month period? Which category do I choose then?

Thanks again for the help. Terry

Reply to
T

Oh, one other question.

Since I started using Quicken 2 or 3 years after I started paying into the company pension plan, is there a way to make a lump sum payment into the Standard Life account I created without causing problems somewhere else in Quicken? How would you suggest I do this, since I don't want to go back and start entering old paychecks, but I don't want to screw up other accounts I have as it wants to know where the money came from.

Thanks Terry

Reply to
T

I can't really help you with the Canadian way of doing things.

Here in the US, if you put your retirement plan contribution as a regular (after-tax) deduction as you say you did originally, you would be incorrect because your contribution is not taxable, so it should be a "pre-tax" deduction. Definitely, switching your retirement contribution from a taxable to a non-taxable deduction would have an affect on your "taxable gross" (called "W2 Gross" in the US version).

And as for the employer contribution; it should have zero affect on your Gross, your taxable Gross, or your Net (again, that's in the US).

But if you know how many units you had in the previous statement and how many units you have on this statement, you know how many units you "bought" (or sold). You can enter a Buy transaction for that number of units; and you can make the cost equal to the amount of cash you had available in the account during the period.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. Your Employer Match contribution is one of the sources of the funds (cash) for your retirement account (the other being *your* contribution). Once the "contributions" have been "transferred" to the retirement account, they produce a cash balance in the retirement account which is then used to purchase the securities you own in that account ... hence the suggestion to "buy" the number of units that your account gained between the last statement and the current statement.

Alternatively (in the US), you could use the "Update 401k Holdings" (think of it as "Update retirement account holdings) Wizard. This allows you to enter data that more closely resembles what you see on your statement, and uses "placeholders" to "adjust" your "share balance" to match your statement. It also takes care of removing the cash generated by yours/your-employer's contributions, to simulate the "purchase" of the securities ... though no actual purchase is recorded.

If the administrator of your retirement account does not furnish you with the actual purchases/reinvestments/sales of the securities in your retirement account, you are never going to be able to get the sort of accuracy that you could if you had those transactions; some of Quicken's reported amounts (things like "returns") won't be valid for an account like yours. But there is no way around that, so you should just choose the technique that you feel the most comfortable with.

Reply to
John Pollard

You can adjust the balance of most accounts if you use a transaction that allows either a "source of funds" option or a "category" option. If you enter the account itself, in square brackets, in the "source of funds" or "category" field, you can adjust the cash balance. Once you have cash in the account, you can "buy" shares of the securities you owned before you started using Quicken. Doing this without even the accuracy of statements will make your pre-Quicken history really meaningless, but is still a good idea.

I think there was also an option to enter a starting cash balance, and starting share balances for securities, when the account was created ... for future reference.

Reply to
John Pollard

I meant to add that in the US, you could use the Income (miscellaneous income) transaction for the purpose of adjusting the cash balance of an investment account.

Reply to
John Pollard

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