Stock Purchase Problem

This would seem to be important to your problem, but I can determine what you mean. What does "would not actually save it" mean?

No, there is no special requirement for the source of funds. In fact, you can use the investment account itself as the source of funds ... even if there are no funds in the account. And when you do that, you can avoid having a negative cash balance in the account by using the account itself as the transfer account (make the "From" field equal "[My Investment Account]"). Whether that is what you want to do, is another story.

You can also use "Shares Added" transactions to add the shares to your account: they require no source of cash.

If you truely want your dummy savings account to be the source of the cash to purchase the securities, your post does not make clear why that did not work. It is a fairly straightforward process, where you enter some sort of transfer transaction (either a straight "Cash transferred into account" to be followed by a "Shares Bought using the account itself as the source of cash; or a "Shares Bought" where the source of cash is another account).

Meant to say, "This would seem to be important to your problem, but I can *not* determine what you mean."

Thanks for the quick reply John. I am still feeling my way here. I have a drip account for a single stock that started in 1977. I initially went in and treated all the quartly transactions as a buy and did not even look to see that Q was picking a 'default checking account' to fund the transactions. Then haviing made half or more of the entries I finally realized that I shouldn't be 'buying' but, in fact, reinvesting the dividends. As I was so doing, I decided that I would go the extra step to break down a few of the transactions that also had additional investment money included; ie, dividends + additional money that I sent them.

Thus when you go to edit the buy transaction, there is a drop down menu where you pick your account selection to transfer the funds from. I make the selection I want and save it. However that account does not stay selected. If I edit the transaction again to see if it did save, I find that it defaults to another account.

Bigbear

I tried everything I could to reproduce that behavior but was unable to do so and I can not think of any reason for Quicken to intend those results. I can't remember anyone else reporting it either ... though my memory is not as reliable as it once was.

There is still something I don't understand.

If I enter a buy transaction, Quicken does not assume that the funds come from a different account, Quicken assumes the funds come from the cash balance of the same investment account ... even if it has no positive cash balance. But you say that Quicken was assuming the cash was coming from some other Quicken account? What account would that have been? What type of Quicken account?

The only times I know that Quicken assumes the cash comes from another account: if you have a linked cash account ... but if you have a linked cash account, that is the *only* account the cash can come from, there are no options to select another source of cash. Or if you have a Single Mutual Fund account ... where Quicken does not *assume* any cash account, but absolutely requires you to choose one, and that account choice can be changed without problem.

What type of Quicken investment account is your drip account?

I'm also a bit confused about the steps you are taking. You said you originally entered "buy" transactions but realized they should have been reinvestments. So are you now changing the buys to reinvestments? Presumably those transactions are not part of your problem; there is no source of cash for a reinvestment.

But some of your buy transactions were legitimate buys where you sent money to be used to buy additional shares over and above the reinvested dividend amount. And the only change to the buy transaction you are making is to select a different "From" account for the source of cash?

What happens if you delete those old legitimate buy transactions and re-enter them from scratch using the cash source of your choosing?

You can use a feature of Quicken which interprets an entry of the name of the account into which the security is placed as the source of the funds as if the funds came from an unknown source. So, just enter the name of the active account for the "From" account. Earlier versions required you to type the name, as it was not in the drop down list. This has been changed an it is now in the list.

John B.

Wondering if the OP setup this account as a "Single Mutual Fund Account", then it would need another account to transfer cash from since these accounts hold shares of the security and not cash? Even though the account seems to be holding a single stock instead of a mutual fund.

I tried to cover that in my previous post (further down from your quote);

"Or if you have a Single Mutual Fund account ... where Quicken does not *assume* any cash account, but absolutely requires you to choose one, and that account choice can be changed without problem."

Assuming op used a SMF account, I can't explain how op could not have known all those transactions were using the "wrong account" when Quicken requires a selection to be made for each new Buy transaction; there is nothing automatically filled in for the source of cash in a Single Mutual Fund account.

And I can't explain why the existing choice of account for cash can't be changed.

I tested in a Brokerage account, an IRA account, and a Single Mutual Fund account: I could not get any transactions in any investment account type to act like op's transactions. Quicken permanently accepts any choice of cash source I make from the drop down list, no matter what account was previously selected.

(And yes, SMF accounts can hold pretty much any security in my experience; they aren't limited to mutual funds.)

Yep, I see that now. For some reason I didn't read your post all the way down. I agree with your points below.

John

First, let me say I am an engineer and not an accountant so I may be doing some things that are unorthodox if not downright stupid :) In addition my knowledge of Quicken is very limited. The account is a DRIP for VMC for which my paperwork goes back to 1977. Each quarter there is a stock dividend reinvestment and an opportunity to send them money to invest with that. I set up the account as a mutual fund since the DRIP acts in many ways similar to a fund. When I started I did not look deep enough and the buy transaction was the first I saw and seemed to work At that time I may have without realizing OK'd a BofA checking account. I continued that line without realizing the funding account until a stock split in 1999. Then I started to become aware of what I was doing and dug deeper into the features of the program. I decided to split the reinvestments and new investments as well so I could see how much money I had actually contributed. The change to reinvestment caused no problems. With the new buy transactions however I ran into the locked BofA account appeared. Even deleting the transaction and starting from anew on it would seem to accept the cash account I had set up for it but what was saved was the BofA account?? The cash account I set up had a start date prior to 1977 so that was not the issue.

I did then after posting my message set up a dummy mutual fund account and had no trouble selecting any funding account I wanted. I could even edit that entry and change the funding account. So things seem to be working properly and it's possible I did something dumb without realizing it.

I have a couple of ideas to try with the present account. If they don't work I'm going to print out the data I have now and delete the entire account and start it from scratch which I can see will work based on my dummy account test.

Thanks so much for your help and I'll let you know what I finally do.

Bigbear

I don't see you having done anything stupid ... and I doubt my initial entries in Quicken were any better.

I had a couple of drips for a while; I agree they are similar to mutual funds and I don't know of any good reason why you couldn't/shouldn't use a Single Mutual Fund account to hold your drip. (Well, other than the fact that it seems to me SMF's all too frequently appear to create, or be involved in, problems).

But, if you have your drip in a Quicken Single Mutual Fund account, you can change that easily enough - in fact you can change it to a non-Single Mutual Fund account and back again. The simplest approach I can think of is to try to change it from being a SMF (that should make it a plain "Brokerage" account) and see if you can then modify your transactions.

I am wondering now if perhaps the account was not originally a SMF but you changed it to be one and perhaps something got corrupted in the process.

Another way have unwanted glitches introduced is to convert to a newer version of Quicken with some minor uncorrected corruption in the old version file which becomes a more significant corruption in the newer version file. I don't think you said whether this account went through a Quicken conversion.

Good luck.

I think I have something John - right or wrong it seems to work. If I now start a new transaction for a buy using the cash account I want, it works. My recollection is that it didn't work yesterday but now it does. the difference is that in the transaction list action column it shows up as "boughtx" as opposed to siimply "bought". I have had no Quicken conversions. This is my first use of Q in a serious manner. I have tried to change the type from SMF back to perhaps brokerage but haven't been able to figure out how to do it.

Bigbear

BoughtX just means that the cash for the purchase did not come from the investment account the transaction is recorded in. The "X" is used in a few other "Action" values for investment accounts and has the same general meaning: the cash came from, or went to, a different account.

On the "Summary" tab of the account in the Account Attributes pane should be a field labelled "Single Mutual Fund?" with a value of "yes" (or "no"). Clicking on the value should change the account from one to the other (Quicken will require you to backup before completing the process).

I see now that I probably should have, to be accurate, recorded the dividend income coming into the drip account. However since things work well without it I'll let that go.

Don't know how I missed that one!!

thanks so much for all your help John!!!