Adjust cash balance in investment account.

Hank Mack

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Oct 12, 2008, 1:46:25 PM10/12/08

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I have a linked cash account with my broker. I need to adjust the cash
balance. Help menu says go to the account which I assume is the
investment account, >enter transactions> update cash balance. I do not
see in the drop down menu that option. What am I missing?

Thanks

John Pollard

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Oct 12, 2008, 3:29:00 PM10/12/08

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I assume you have setup your Quicken investment account with a
linked Quicken cash account.

First: The "Update cash balance" option for investment accounts
is not itself a transaction type: it's a menu choice. It is
found in Investing > Investing Activities > Update Cash Balance.
Completing that menu choice for an investment account will
generate a MiscExp transaction for the account ... which you
could do directly without using the Update Cash Balance option.

But ...

Second: You can not use "Update Cash Balance" in a Quicken
investment account with a linked cash account, because that
investment account can never have a cash balance. Whatever
adjusting you do needs to be done in the Quicken linked cash
account.

[Technically, you could enter a MiscExp (which would
automatically become a MiscExpX) in the investment account. But
that would still adjust the cash balance in the linked cash
account.]

--

John Pollard
First initial underscore Last name at mchsi dot com
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Hank Mack

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Oct 12, 2008, 8:34:21 PM10/12/08

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Can I just put in a misc adjustment directly in the cash account without
effecting the investment account?

John Pollard

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Oct 12, 2008, 9:10:51 PM10/12/08

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No offense intended, but I think you are misunderstanding what
is happening.

Yes, you can enter a transaction in the linked cash account and
it will not "appear" in the investment account. But it will
affect the cash balance that Quicken associates to the
investment account. Presumably that is what you want to happen;
presumably that is what happened in the real world.

Quicken's "linked cash account" was (I believe) intended to
handle a situation that was occurring in the real world that
Quicken could not, otherwise, have easily handled: namely,
writing checks from investment accounts. I think it is a sort
of "gimmick" to allow users to enter "checking account type
transactions" whose impact would ultimately fall on the
associated investment account.

Newer versions of Quicken allow you to write checks, and make
other "bank account" type transactions directly in your Quicken
investment accounts ... without the need for a "linked cash
account". A much better approach, in my opinion.

If that does not describe what happened in your real world, you
would need to supply more information.

Hank Mack

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Oct 13, 2008, 8:45:44 AM10/13/08

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Thank you. So I guess it would be better to unlink the accounts and
then and then debit or credit investment cash events in the cash account
as they occure,

John Pollard

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Oct 13, 2008, 10:06:24 AM10/13/08

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I'm not sure why you would need to adjust the cash account, but
you can enter an adjustment transaction directly in your linked
checking account (without unlinking the accounts); just use the
account itself in square brackets as the category. Or put a
MiscExpX transaction in the investment account.