Linked cash account or not ?

I don't think I'd characterize the option as simply eliminating the account; more like "moving" all the linked account transactions into the investment account, then deleting the linked account. The ex-linked-checking-account transactions can then be modified in the investment account.

According to Quicken Help, the only things a linked checking account offers that an investment account doesn't are scheduled (cash) transactions and repeating online payments.

Make a backup (I think Quicken will make one too) and try it out. If you're not happy, restore the backup.

Hi, Alan.

John Pollard is the expert on linked cash accounts. I've never used Money, so I don't now how it handled such things.

While I've been investing in securities for about 40 years and got into some fairly sophisticated (for the time) investments decades ago, my recent experiences have been quite mundane. My brokers, at least since I started using Quicken in 1990, have all simply kept any cash in the account's cash balance. Well, they have "swept" larger amounts into money market funds - and back - but I've not bothered to track those; to me and to Quicken it was all just "Cash" in the account balance.

Even for Merrill Lynch's Cash Management Account, I recorded all deposits and checks right in the ML investment account, not as a separate linked account. But I never paid expenses with CMA checks and I never deposited income directly into the CMA; I always deposited the checks into my local bank and then transferred the funds to CMA. To pay expenses, I wrote checks on my local banks, then wrote CMA checks for deposit back into the banks. That way, ALL my "external" dealings, both income and expenses, were through my local banks; CMA transactions were only for moving my own money from one pocket to another.

Today, when I sell a stock, the proceeds stay in the broker's cash balance. When I buy a stock, it is paid from that cash balance. When I need cash, or to pay a bill or buy something other than securities, I still transfer funds (by writing myself a CMA check or by calling my non-ML broker and asking him to send me a check from my cash balance) into my local bank and pay the bill (or cash a personal check) from there. Even when moving money from one broker to another, I first deposit the first broker's check in my bank and then write my own check to the second broker. All this makes for a slightly longer paper trail, but the trail is very easy to follow - for me, for Quicken and, if necessary, for the IRS.

RC

No way for a user to "move" transactions from bank accounts to investment accounts.

Quicken has never allowed linked checking accounts for IRA or 401k accounts; the problem you're seeing was introduced by the brand new built-in Money Converter. Since Quicken wouldn't allow IRA/401k accounts to create linked checking accounts, it never needed to provide a way to unlink them ... until the Money Converter came along - and linked converted checking accounts to converted retirement accounts. I think there is a change to Quicken coming up in the next release (January?) that will allow such unlinking to occur.

I think you'd benefit from reading the posts in the "Converting from Money" topic in the Quicken Live Community. Not only are there some knowledgeable ex-Money users that have posted, and are posting, good responses there; but the fellow (Quicken DanG) that wrote the Converter has posted many times and been very helpful.

RC,

What about recording the interest, such as it is, on the cash account? Not only do I want to record it, but I'd like to see the income it will potentially generate show up on my Portfolio screen. I don't understand how to do that with money market accounts anywhere, either at a bank or a brokerage. The brokerage type I've tried a couple of ways and can do it if I define the money market account as a security and go to thru hassle of mimicing all the transactions into it. If it's not defined as a security, I don't know what approach to use. And let's pretend that the money market rates actually are statistically significant. I actually got my bank to give me 1% recently, which is a lot more than my Fidelity Cash is making.

Thanks,

jo

Hi, jo.

I used to record that from the broker's statement each month. Quicken put it all into _IntInc, along with interest on CDs and any other asset that may be in an Investment Account, rather than a Banking Account, and I had to "comb out" the amounts and add them up to match the several 1099's each year-end.

Now, the daily downloads make those same entries for me each day. But I'll still have to sort out that _IntInc Category at tax time. Quicken simply lumps all the Investment Interest into a single Category, but TurboTax and the IRS want them separated - and so do I.

There must be a better way to match up those 1099's. Maybe I'll have the time - and inclination - to find that way this year.

Like you said, though, interest rates are so low that we may not even get many 1099's this year. :>(

RC

Oh, that's right. The downloads do record a interest payment, but since mine is linked, that's where I see it. If I unlinked it, would it just show in the investment account counterpart? I gather there is no way to get potential/current income from unlinked cash accounts to show on the Portfolio screen.

Your issue with dividing _intinc reminds me why I don't even bother trying to import Quicken's figures into TTax And why I have created some really odd workarounds (for CDs, for instance). I don't get taxed locally for bank and CD interest, so there's a separate category. Then there's totally tax free and federally tax free. And tax free dividends which if I remember correctly end up as interest income... Jeesh, we compulsive types (I prefer to call us "on top of our money management) can keep ourselves busy for ever!

Hmmm, can you "tag" an investment transaction or generate a report on a memo keyword? Maybe that would allow you to effectively mark your different categories of interest for reporting purposes, even if they were dumped into one Quicken category. Maybe equivalent in time to specifically reclassifying. Do you have sub catgories under _intinc for your desired buckets?

fyi I think I'm a frustrated accountant. Or maybe just a frustrated skilled bookkeeper since I only know enough pure accounting to be dangerous. I love putting numbers in their proper boxes and seeing what the reports tell me.

jo