TD Ameritrade - Money Market account

[tony]

When I download my transactions from TD Ameritrade, FM doesn't seem to handle some of the money market transactions correctly.

1. The interest adjustments to the cash account doesn't seem to be adjusted properly. In my TD Ameritrade account, at the end of every month, starting from Nov 2007, I got these in my transactions:

MONEY MARKET DIVIDENDS (ZTD82)

Now, I see these in the data register as dividends, but with price = 0.00, shrs reinv 0.000, value = (valid non zero value, e.g., 1.50), fee = 0.00, dist/shr = 0.000. I would have expected a purchase in the cash account of 1.50, but I don't see it (I'm guessing it's because the price is set at 0.00). Everything else seems to be updating correctly.

2. In my 401k account with TD Ameritrade, I have this item:

FREE BALANCE INTEREST ADJUSTMENT

Which doesn't get picked up by FM at all.

3. In the same 401k account, my rollover transactions listed as

CASH RECEIPTS THIRD PARTY

also don't get picked up by FM.


I've been trying out many other port folio programs, and this one was attractive to me because of its ability to import from a text file, but I want to make sure the transaction download works correctly.


Also, a general question: TD Ameritrade has been changing the way they record transactions, particularly with shares in the money market stuff. For example, in my regular account, the money market account used to be called ZZZ00, but as of Nov 2007, they started calling it ZTD82. If they make any further changes in the future, will FM support those changes so that the transaction download will function properly?

Thanks!

[Mark]

Hi Tony,

1) These are 'distributed' dividends. That means they weren't marked as reinvested in the OFX transaction retrieve. If you edit one of these, you'll see it is distributed, and not reinvested. I believe this is some sweep account for money market dividends. If you're using a default cash account, the proceeds will be deposited into the default cash account.

2 & 3) Do you see any sign of this transaction in the OFX log? Please see the bottom of this page for info on finding the log files:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/tintrtv.html

If you'd like help examining them, you can email me your log files after you've retrieved a date range covering this transaction. It may simply not be included in the data provided, or FM may not be understanding it.

The OFX retrieve is a public and standardized format (www.ofx.net) used by many brokers and mutual fund companies. TD Ameritrade can't change the format of the communications. They can change their investment names, etc, but you can always adjust the values in Fund Manager to match. The key property is the CUSIP. This is how the OFX format specifies which investment a particular transaction applies to.

[tony]

Thanks, those log files are a great help. For whatever reason, when I downloaded transactions again, it picked up the items in 2) and 3). But I'll know what to check if I see this again.

As for 1), I am using a default cash account, and I have it associated with that symbol (for my 401k it's called MMDA1). I expected it to show up these transactions to be included in the total value of MMDA1, but it's not. Anything I can check for this?

[Mark]

Hi Tony,

Glad #2 and #3 got fixed. For #1, a 'distributed' distribution does not increase the value of the underlying investment. Is this same investment marked as your default cash account? If so, Fund Manager won't record a corresponding entry in the default cash account, when the original transaction is in the default cash account itself.

[SDS]

This problem is likely to get worse as brokerages shuffle between different money market vehicles. While it really isn't Fund Manager's fault, it would be much easier to address the issue if users could shift ALL PRIOR money market transactions to the newest default money market vehicle, on a monthly basis. Is that possible to incorporate sometime soon? So far as I can tell, it is not feasible to perform this feat now with FM.

[Mark]

Hi SDS,

If you wanted to do this, you could use the new copy/paste transaction feature in version 9. You can copy/paste as many transactions as you want across investments. You do this from within the Data Register.