Need help with investment register...

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nzdreamer55

27 Oct, 2013 04:41 PM

Hello everyone,

So I have successfully entered several retirement accounts into MD 2012.5 and used the Starting with a Current Balance method of entry. I have set up online banking that has allow me to d/l transactions back a little bit (10/31/2011) and was able to adjust the account value correctly. The issue I have is how to make the d/l transactions useful. Right now I don't really know what to do with them or what they are really doing with the account on a specific level. I get simple things (dividend reinvestment means the dividend goes to purchase more shares, and money market interest is the money that comes from interest on monies within my money market sweep account ), but don't know what a "Long Term Gains Distribution" is.

I am also not sure how match up my Purchase of securities on 04/11/2013. The D/L line from my broker is negative. It looks like when I transferred funds into this account it is negative. I don't understand this. When I transfer money into my checking is isn't negative. It also says cash account on the transfer account, but this a cash account I use for keeping track of my spending cash that I take from the ATM. Then right below this is the transfer from my checking to this account that I did when I sent the funds over.

It also seems like I cannot tell where these funds went (my money market sweep account? my investments?) Can I tell from what was d/l or do I need to "fix" this so that I tell it what is happening. Can I merge my checking line and the D/L line?

Obvious I really don't understand what is going on here. Any help would be appreciated.

-S

Roth.1.JPG 273 KB
Roth.2.JPG 52 KB

1 -Kevin N. on 27 Oct, 2013 07:52 PM

Hi -S,

I will try to help out here but it is understandably difficult to jump into someone else's account register and try to compile what is going on. So let's start with the simple stuff first.

A 'Long Term Capital Gain' and / or a 'Short Term Capital Gain' is usually paid out by a mutual fund. These gains are generated from sales by the fund manager, of securities within the mutual fund's holdings.

Since we appear to be dealing with a Roth IRA, I don't think that it is really necessary to track LT Cap Gains as LT Cap Gains. The distributions for a Roth are tax-exempt. So the 'term' of the gains do not really play into it.
You can simply track them as Dividends. It's up to you. Since your brokerage is already labeling them as ST and LT Cap Gains you can leave them as such. It doesn't really matter.

Keep in mind though that I'm a retired tractor-trailer driver and not a tax accountant.

As for your account, Lets's start with the Money Market (MM) sweep fund.
Since your holdings include a MM sweep fund, any Cash Balance in the account should be used to purchase shares of the MM fund. That is the general purpose of the MM fund; to manage the Cash in the account.
This is more than likely what is actually going on in 'real world' terms at the brokerage firm.
The Buy and Sell txns involving the MM fund may or may not need to be entered manually by you. This will depend on the data included in your periodic downloads.

Since any Cash generated by Capital Gain and Dividend should be used to purchase shares in the MM fund, generally speaking, for the most part, the 'Cash Balance' column of your Investment account should almost always be $0.00.

With regards to the 'cash account' transfer txn on 04//11 for $3500, This appears to be a client requested transfer to be made from the brokerage to you. It is therefore, correctly entered as a negative value.

Moneydance defaults to the first Bank Account in your data file when Transfers are imported. If this money was supposed to go to an account other than the 'cash account' then select the proper account from the 'Transfer' field drop-down list.

The txn beneath it, on 04/12 appears to have been entered manually by you. Correct?
Was it your intent to transfer funds from your checking account to your investment account or is this a reversal of the 04/11 txn?

I'm going to leave it at that and let you mull over what I've presented. If you have follow up questions, let me know and I'll do my best to answer them.

HTH -Kevin N.
2 nzdreamer55 on 27 Oct, 2013 11:59 PM
Super helpful Kevin. Thanks for "steering" me in the right direction.

So the $3500 was an end of the year contribution to my roth retirement account for the previous year. The money came from my checking. It was manually entered within my checking account. I entered it and then matched it to a d/l from the bank that holds my checking account. So could I think about it like this, Sent funds over from checking to investment account. Investment account needs to put this money some where so it records it as a negative. But where does it go from there? The D/L transaction does not really tell me. Do I need to manually enter a transaction to "buy" some moneymarket shares? What is kind of crazy too is that when I highlight this transaction my moneymarket account is already filled in but I cannot change it! Does this mean that Money dance knows this money is suppose to go into my Money market account? Did it read my mind?!?
- Roth.3.JPG 49.4 KB
3 -Kevin N. on 28 Oct, 2013 03:03 AM
Hi nzdreamer55,

Upon closer examination of you screenshot, I think that I have more questions to ask than I have to answer.

Since the $3500 was a contribution to the IRA, it should be reflected in the Investment account's Cash Balance column as a positive value.
I don't understand why the downloaded txn entered it as a negative value. That makes no sense to me.
The way that you entered it manually, is the correct way to enter a transfer from your Checking account into the investment account.

I'm wondering about the multiple txns described as MONEY MARKET INTEREST.
Each of these txns has a net value of $0.00 and each txn lists the iShares MSCI USA ESG Select ETF as the security.
The iShares EFT is NOT the MM fund so I don't understand the meaning of these entries.

Also, the iShares EFT pays a quarterly dividend. Correct?
The only Div txns entered for the iShares EFT are the one's for $0.00 described as MONEY MARKET INTEREST. Something is missing here.

The 6 txns for the Vanguard fund appear to be correct to me. Each Div txn paid by the fund has a corresponding Buy txn. Essentially a dividend reinvestment.

The Buy txn of 04/04 is funded from the Cash Balance but it has caused a negative balance in the Cash Balance column. This should not be.

I think what you should try to do is to make sure that you show that you own the proper number of shares of each of your securities. Including the MM fund. Then adjust the 'Initial Balance' of the account so that the Cash Balance is $0.00.

To adjust the 'Initial Balance', while viewing the account in question, go to the menu bar > Account > Edit Account. In the resulting form you can adjust the 'Initial Balance'.

Going forward the Cash Balance should, for the most part, remain at $0.00.

If Cash is needed for the purchase of a security, Sell the required number of shares of the MM fund to cover the cost of the purchase.
The proceeds will be reflected in the Cash Balance column.
The purchase of the security will draw down the Cash Balance back to $0.00.

I've attached a screenshot of the register of one of my investment accounts to give you an idea of how I do it. It is only a suggestion and I'm not saying that this is the only right way to do it.

You'll notice that for the most part, the Cash Balance column is always $0.00. The only time that it is not $0.00 is when a dividend is paid.
I then enter a Buy txn for MM shares for the amount of the dividend to draw the Cash back down to $0.00.

BTW, in the Roth.3.jpg screenshot, the 'Security' field is grayed out when performing a transfer so, no, the fact the the MM fund is listed there has no bearing on the txn.

HTH -Kevin N.
- Investment_Account_Register.jpg 326 KB

4 nzdreamer55 on 29 Oct, 2013 06:04 PM

Thanks Kevin again for looking at this.

I just made a small contribution to a different IRA account to see how TD Ameritrade handled it and well I am not totally sure at this point. Is seem that when I contribute Moneydance (and quicken) show a negative (MD shows a Xfr, Quicken shows a withdraw).

I made a $16.45 ACH or ETF what ever you want to call it from my checking to the TD Ameritrade account. The transaction details show the following

(Maybe a developer can look at this and chime in if MD is handling it correctly?)

<PTXN>
 <TXNID>16885</TXNID>
 <ACCTID>220</ACCTID>
 <DESC>CLIENT REQUESTED ELECTRONIC FUNDING RECEIPT (FUNDS NOW)</DESC>
 <STATUS> </STATUS>
 <DATE>2013.10.28</DATE>
 <DTENTERED>2013.10.29 08:12:43:068</DTENTERED>
 <TAXDATE>2013.10.28</TAXDATE>
 <CHECKNUM></CHECKNUM>
 <MEMO>CLIENT REQUESTED ELECTRONIC FUNDING RECEIPT (FUNDS NOW)</MEMO>
 <TAGS>
  <TAG>
   <KEY>xfer_type</KEY>
   <VAL>xfrtp_bank</VAL>
  </TAG>
  <TAG>
   <KEY>ol_fitid_1</KEY>
   <VAL>10683489918</VAL>
  </TAG>
  <TAG>
   <KEY>ol.match-status</KEY>
   <VAL>new</VAL>
  </TAG>
  <TAG>
   <KEY>ol.match-type</KEY>
   <VAL>0</VAL>
  </TAG>
  <TAG>
   <KEY>ol.orig-txn</KEY>
   <VAL>{&#10;  "invst.subaccfund" = "CASH"&#10;  "invst.txntype" = "bank"&#10;  "amt" = "1645"&#10;  "fitxnid" = "10683489918"&#10;  "invst.ofxtxntype" = "INVBANKTRAN"&#10;  "dtpstd-int" = "20131028"&#10;  "fi_id" = "ofx:MDNC:ameritrade.com"&#10;  "memo" = "CLIENT REQUESTED ELECTRONIC FUNDING RECEIPT (FUNDS NOW)"&#10;  "txntype" = "DEBIT"&#10;}&#10;</VAL>
  </TAG>
  <TAG>
   <KEY>ol.orig-payee</KEY>
   <VAL>CLIENT REQUESTED ELECTRONIC FUNDING RECEIPT (FUNDS NOW)</VAL>
  </TAG>
  <TAG>
   <KEY>ol.orig-memo</KEY>
   <VAL>CLIENT REQUESTED ELECTRONIC FUNDING RECEIPT (FUNDS NOW)</VAL>
  </TAG>
  <TAG>
   <KEY>ol_fi_id</KEY>
   <VAL>ofx:MDNC:ameritrade.com</VAL>
  </TAG>
  <TAG>
   <KEY>netsync.txnid</KEY>
   <VAL>a02e25f7-1b75-4b52-957b-47e1eeaf4053</VAL>
  </TAG>
 </TAGS>
 <SPLITS>
  <STXN>
   <TXNID>16884</TXNID>
   <ACCTID>133</ACCTID>
   <DESC>CLIENT REQUESTED ELECTRONIC FUNDING RECEIPT (FUNDS NOW)</DESC>
   <PARENTAMT>-16.45</PARENTAMT>
   <SPLITAMT>16.45</SPLITAMT>
   <RAWRATE>1</RAWRATE>
   <STATUS> </STATUS>
   <TAGS>
    <TAG>
     <KEY>invest.splittype</KEY>
     <VAL>xfr</VAL>
    </TAG>
   </TAGS>
  </STXN>
 </SPLITS>
</PTXN>

So when I look at the Cash Balance it is -16.45. I spoke to a rep at TD Ameritrade and they said that it takes a day to move the money from the cash account into the money market sweep account. I will have to see if there is a buy transaction.
There is something also interesting in that when I D/L the register transactions via the TD ameritrade web site, they come down as a .CSV file. If I open this up it shows the amount as a POSITIVE number and the net cash balance as a POSITIVE number. It seems stupid to think this, but maybe MD and Quicken are handling these .OFX files incorrectly reading

-16.45

when they should be reading

16.45

Hopefully someone from the MD tech support can chime in on this.

Thanks for the screen shot. Do you have one where you purchased funds from say a checking account that you also are tracking in MD?

-S

5 nzdreamer55 on 29 Oct, 2013 06:08 PM
Forgot to escape my code at the bottom. Should read:

It seems stupid to think this, but maybe MD and Quicken are handling these .OFX files incorrectly reading
```
<PARENTAMT>-16.45</PARENTAMT>
```
when they should be reading
```
<SPLITAMT>16.45</SPLITAMT>
```
Hopefully someone from the MD tech support can chime in on this.
6 -Kevin N. on 29 Oct, 2013 06:38 PM

Hi nzdreamer55,

I looked back a few years to when my last contribution to an IRA occurred. The transfer from my Checking account does indeed enter as a positive value in the Cash Balance of the IRA account - as it should.

Ameritrade may be constructing their OFX files improperly. If they are showing a Transfer-In as a negative value, any subsequent Buy of MM shares is only going to add to that negative value.

I will yield to the MD support staff to help you further with that aspect.

-Kevin N.
7 nzdreamer55 on 29 Oct, 2013 06:43 PM
So the IRA contribution that you did, was it d/l from your FI and put into your register or was it manually entered?

If it was d/l can you tell me what the sign (positive or negative) is on the value between the following?
```
<PARENTAMT>    </PARENTAMT>
```
-S
8 nzdreamer55 on 29 Oct, 2013 06:49 PM

Forgot to add that you can find this by right clicking on the d/l transaction and going to Show Transaction Details (but I bet you already knew this)).

-S
9 Tom Freeman on 30 Oct, 2013 07:03 PM

I am wondering if the issue is the institutions holding the moneymarket as a separate account from cash. This refers to " I spoke to a rep at TD Ameritrade and they said that it takes a day to move the money from the cash account into the money market sweep account. I will have to see if there is a buy transaction."

If you downloaded the transaction a day later would there have been a corresponding buy transaction to the MM?

Tom
10 nzdreamer55 on 05 Nov, 2013 10:31 PM

Thanks Tom. I am noticing that the entries that are coming down via .ofx vs what I can d/l via their web site in a .cvs format are not the same. I will be contacting their technical support to trouble shoot this problem. Thanks again.

-S
System closed this discussion on 31 Mar, 2015 04:06 PM.

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