IRA Account - Help Please

One possible reason for your problem is that the Quicken account may be defined (directly, or indirectly) as a "Single Mutual Fund" account. Such Quicken accounts can never hold more than one security, and can never have a cash balance.

If the account is defined as a Quicken IRA account, I think you are out of luck for using that same account to hold more than one security (and the Single Mutual Fund characteristic is probably a carryover from an account originally created as a SMF account, which was not a Quicken tax-deferred account, then later converted to a Quicken IRA account). You would have to create a new Quicken IRA account, transfer the security from the old Quicken account to the new ("Shares transferred between accounts"), then acquire the new securities in the new account.

If the account is currently defined as a Single Mutual Account, you should be able to modify that characteristic in the Account Attributes pane of the Summary tab of the account. One line in that pane would be labelled "Single Mutual Fund?" followed by a clickable value of "Yes". If you click on "Yes", Quicken should offer to alter the account to allow it to hold multiple securities (and change the clickable value from "Yes" to "No").

John -

Thanks very much for your response. You were dead-on, and I got lucky. Your response reminded me that I had only recently converted this account to an IRA account within Quicken. I found an older back-up file, prior to this conversion. When I restored it, the "Single Mutual Fund?" attribute magically returned to the Summary tab. I was able to change it from "yes" to "no", allowing me to add the new securities. For some reason, the Quicken function to convert the account to an IRA account eliminated the "SMF" attribute, which probably makes sense to somebody, but not to me. I had some back data to enter, but nothing like re-creating the account. Without your response, it would have never occurred to me to check that old back-up. You saved me a ton of work. Tonite's first drink is on me. Thanks again, JW

I don't think Intuit ever intended to allow IRA accounts to be SMF accounts. I think it was a bug when it occurred ... you had to first designate the account as tax-deferred, then you got the option to convert to an IRA, which should have removed the SMF characteristics. They have eliminated the possibility in newer versions.