Dividend income and Imputation Credit do not affect account balances in a new Quicken/RA file

Legacy KB ID: 4752

Question

I have just created a new Quicken file and entered all opening balances for my Investment Accounts.  I have entered missing transactions for all Placeholder transactions.  When I enter dividend income, my Investment Account Cash Balance is not affected.  Nor is the Imputation Credit Account.  If I assign the income to a bank account, balances are affected.  Why?

 

Answer

You will experience this problem when entering transactions for securities originally entered with a placeholder entry (opening balance) for a date that precedes the placeholder entry. 

The placeholder entry allows you to alter the securities value, but any Cash Balance is fixed at the amount of the Cash Balance entered when the Investment Account was created.  If you left that field as 0.00, then any transaction for security included in the opening balance, entered before the opening balance date, will not affect the Cash Balance.  Only transactions after the opening balance will affect the Cash Balance. 

This restriction does not affect securities not included in the opening balance. 

 

Workaround

Delete the placeholder entry, associated cash transfers, and transactions before the opening balance date.

 

1.    Open the Investment Transaction Register;

2.    Show hidden transactions:

a.    Edit > Preferences > Program > Investment Transactions

b.    Tick the box:  show hidden transactions;

c.    Click OK.

You should now be able to see Placeholder transactions showing 0 shares and some Balancing Cash Adjustment transactions.  You will not see a transaction for Imputation Credit. 

Care
:  If the placeholder transaction shows a number of shares (a number other than +0 shares), then all missing transactions have not been entered.  You will need to complete the missing transactions before carrying out this and subsequent deletions.

3.    Delete the Placeholder entry:

a.    Highlight the transaction;

    1. Right-click and select Delete.
  2. Highlight the first Balancing Cash Adjustment transaction above the now deleted Placeholder transaction and delete it; 
  3. Repeat Step 4 for all Balancing Cash Adjustments;
  4. Delete purchases, sales, dividends, and other income entries for the shares included in the now placeholder entries;
  5. Re-input purchases, sales, dividends, and other income entries for the shares included in now deleted placeholder entries using normal functions.

 

Best practice for entering existing shareholdings to a new Quicken/ReckonAccounts file

  1. When opening the Investment Account, enter the amount of Dividend and other income held in cash with the broker/manager as the account’s opening cash balance;
  2. Enter the shareholding as a placeholder entry;
  3. Enter missing transactions – the dates, price, and no. of shares for the current shareholding, as well as any dividends and other income incorporated in the opening balance of this Investment Account’s cash balance.  If you wish to record different purchase lots then you will need to add more than one missing transactions entry;
  4. Enter a Miscellaneous Income transaction for Imputation Credit:
    1. If you do not have a Property&Debt account called Imputation Credit, create one now;
    2. In the Transaction Register, select Enter Transaction;
    3. For Transfer Account, select [Imputation Credit];
    4. For Category, select, _DivInc:_ImpInc (you may need to click on Show hidden categories to see this account);
    5. Click Enter/done or Enter/New to complete.

 

Your shareholding and cash transactions are now up to date. 

 

How did we do?

Changes to security Name, No of Shares, Price

Reckon Accounts Personal Range crashes when entering a transaction

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