I'm new to Quicken and have managed to get it sucessfully importing my Checking, Credit Card and IRA accounts.
How do I mark that "This $x transaction in Checking was a deposit to American Century account Y". Whenever I set the Checking category to "Transfer To/From: American Century" it adds a new line for it in the American Century transaction list.
I somehow need to be able to say that one transaction on this account is also the same transaction on this other account, but quicken just isn't cooperating.
What exactly does "it adds a new line for it in the American Century transaction list" mean? Do you mean there's another transaction the register for your American Century account? If so that's what it's supposed to do. That's the "linked transaction", known as transfer in Quicken parlance. Just delete the other transaction that you entered by hand in your American Century register as it's no longer needed.
It's never "the same transaction" rather it's the result of a transfer of funds from one account to another.
need to be able to say that one transaction on this account
Ok, that makes sense. However I really need to go the other way.
The transactions I downloaded from American Century have all the detail about the number of shares purchased, price etc... so I really need to be able to mark that those transactions came from my checking account (where I really only care about the dollar amount), yet I can't see a way to let me go the other way.
Obviously I could go ahead and copy all the share information into the transfer from checking, but that seems like a lot of extra work for me.
need to be able to say that one transaction on this account
Graham, Edit the transactions in the American Century account using the little button on that line in the register. On the dialog box that opens there should be a drop-down box to select where the cash came from (if not you may have to change the transaction type to BuyX for older versions of Quicken)
If you can enter those transactions before the import, Quicken should be able to match them correctly. However, you let Quicken enter them, it doesn't 'know' that they're related. You'll have to do as you stated: edit one transaction, which creates a new offset entry, and then delete the now-duplicate downloaded one. (You may need to edit the 'cleared' status of the new one, to match the status of the one you deleted.)
I just read that you want the American Century account info, so start from there and delete the duplicated entry in Checking.
Come on! Really! What's it's like 3 fields per transaction?!? You have hundreds or thousands of transactions happening?!? "A lot of" extra work my ass - a few additional steps.
That said, I understand the desire to automate things.
However I think you should take a moment here to understand and thus attempt to represent what's going on in the real world in Quicken. It's usually your best bet.
What exactly is happening in the real world? Are you sending a check to American Century which they in turn cash and then they purchase shares of some security (which you've not named)? You're American Century account is not a normal account, it's not a credit card account nor a loan nor another bank account. It's an investment account. Investment accounts work differently and sometimes are very specific to the broker involved. You really should be talking to them and truly understanding how they work.
Often your "contribution" is first considered a deposit of $100 in cash and then a purchase at some later time of $100 of some security. IOW two transactions will be downloaded in the future, one for the cash and one for the buy of the security. As such your transfer transaction need to transfer to American Century as cash and then another transaction representing the buy should be entered. You could, as later suggested, change things to a BuyX transaction but what good is that if American Century is gonna download two transactions for this? You'll then need to delete the second downloaded transaction.
BeanSmart website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.