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How to handle Investment Auto-withdrawl, direct deposit

I suspect questions like this have come up before, but I can't seem to find any, so here goes:

Right now I'm unemployed and running a bit financially challenged. So I a monthly automatic withdrawal from a mutual fund that is direct deposited into my checking account. The problem is that the deposit takes 2-3 business days to go through the Automated Clearing House.

As a result, When I download the investment account history, it enters a SellX with the funds going into my checking account. (makes sense). But then when I d/l my checking account, the deposit is 2 days later. Both matter, because The sell date affects the price and the investment transaction, and, since I'm cash poor, I wait for that deposit to hit before spending it. I found out I can't have different dates in the investment and checking registers. Change one and they both change.

Two ideas have occurred to me, both less than elegant:

  1. Create an asset account called [ACH] and park the money there till the deposit hits and takes it out.
  2. Tell Quicken that it's a cash balance in the Brokerage account until the deposit hits and takes it out.

Others? Thanks,

Reply to
JJ
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It's not a property of the account types, it's a property of transfers: both halves of a transfer transaction must have the same date.

I'm not sure what the real problem is though. You know that the money is not available in your checking account until the deposit "clears". You say you are downloading transactions, so when the deposit "clears" you will have a downloaded transaction and when you accept that transaction, the transaction already in your register will be marked "c" for "cleared ... and you can spend the money.

If I had to choose one, I think #2 is closer to what happens in the real world. I presume that you intend to categorize the downloaded bank transaction as a transfer FROM the investment account. If you are downloading transactions from your investment fi, there is a reasonably possibility that the date the funds are deposited in your checking account will not be the date they are removed from your investment account, so you may still end up with a similar problem.

Reply to
John Pollard

That is exactly what I am doing. I have already download the investment "SoldX" transaction which was dated on the 6/24/05. The deposit will appear in my checking account (and download with web connect most likely on the

27th or 28th. I believe that when I downloaded it, I was given the option to transfer it or leave it as cash in the investment account, I chose the former; now it won't let me change my mind when I edit the transaction.

It's not a big problem because I can look at the deposit and remember that the money's not really there yet. Next time, I'll just leave it as cash in the investment account and transfer it when the deposit downloads.

BTW, I do still have the qfx file. If there were some way to make Q "forget" that it had downloaded that transaction I could "download" it again and set it right. Is there such a way?

-- Jim

Reply to
JJ

On Sun 26 Jun 2005 07:53:29a, JJ wrote in news:dzxve.23$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com:

My idea is not so much Quicken related. Most would say that your cash needs should be taken care of in a situation like this by selling investment assets well in advance of the need for its cash value.

This is what I do. I only transfer cash (MM funds) from investment accounts to bank accounts, so the date that I use is the date that cash will appear at the bank.

One of my brokers allows scheduled transfers (ad-hoc or periodic). The date I specify on their transfer function is the date it arrives at the target account. I wish more would do it this way.

Reply to
Mike L

Well, "exactly" isn't quite right. Your choice #2 had to assume a "Sold" transaction, not a "SoldX" transaction, to make it a "solution"; and that's what I assumed. Obviously a SoldX dated when the security was sold is what you described as the problem, not what you offered as a solution.

You don't exactly have to "remember" that the money is not there; if you look at the transaction and it is not marked "cleared", the money's not there. Thinking about what the underlying conditions are, it seems like most account "balances" can be misleading if you just assume they represent what the account is worth at the moment you are looking at the balance. There will always be uncleared withdrawals and deposits, assets with estimated market values, etc.

You could create a register report for your checking account, customized to include only reconciled and cleared transactions (even to show only totals), save that report and add an icon to create it to your Quicken toolbar. One click could then show you the balance you can actually spend.

I think you can just delete the SoldX transaction and replace it with a Sold transaction. Frankly though, I think the "solution" is more work and no more accurate than the "problem"; you will be showing a balance in your investment account to which you do not have access, instead of showing a balance in your checking account to which you do not have access ... and having to do more work in the bargain.

Reply to
John Pollard

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