Structure of My Accounts.

[aviator]

Hi Mark,

As mentioned in previous posts, I'm transitioning my accounts from Broker A to Broker B. I'm having a small problem with my cash account recording transactions properly. Please review my structure and help me figure out this problem.

My structure is as follows:

Me
-- My IRA
----My IRA Broker B (Currently holds cash transferred from Broker A)
----My IRA Broker A (Holds transferred securities from Broker A)
--My Trust
----My Trust Broker B
------Tax Exempt Money Market Fund (Currently holds cash transferred from Broker A.)
------Money Market Fund (Holds cash from liquidated securities from My Trust Broker A. Hold dividends paid from securities in My Trust Broker A.)
----My Trust Broker A (Holds transferred securities from Broker A)
------(Holds transferred securities from Broker A, numbering in the hundreds)

Here are some comments and questions:

1. The accounts holding securities transferred from Broker A are temporary. Individual securities will be sold and mutual funds bought.

2. The securities in My Trust Broker A generate dividends. My problem is to properly record the cash in the proper account.

3. Today, when a dividend is paid in My Trust Broker A, the brokerage house does the following:
A) The appropriate security in My Trust Broker A has a transaction that shows the amount and date of paid dividend.
B) The cash is transferred to the Money Market Fund.

When I go to download transactions into FM, however, here's what I get.
A) I see the transaction for the individual security and the dividend paid.
B) I also see a transaction in the Money Market Fund for the amount of the dividend.
C) But I also receive a negative transaction for the Money Market Fund, which offsets the transaction that transferred the cash there, which is the crux of this problem.
D) My only option is to manually delete the negative transaction.

The default cash account for My Trust Broker A is the Money Market Fund.

When I download transactions, all Import Options are checked (Skip Transactions Already in FM, etc.).

On the Preview Importing Transactions screen, the option to Automatically Record Corresponding Entries In Default Cash Account is NOT checked. (Should it be?)

Obviously I'm doing something wrong. Please review my structure and tell me what I should be doing differently. Sorry for the lengthy post, and thanks in advance for your help.

[Mark]

Hi aviator,

It isn't clear to me either where a negative cash transaction would come from in this situation. If you do not check the option to "Automatically Record Corresponding Entry in Default Cash", then it doesn't matter what is assigned as your default cash account. Typically you would leave this option on if you need FM to transfer the money for you. The "Preview" window shows the exact transactions read in from the retrieve. If you already see both the dividend and cash side of the transaction, then it isn't necessary to check this option, since your broker is already specifically reporting the cash deposit. Do you see the negative cash transaction listed in the Preview window?

To test it out, you can temporarily turn off the option to "Skip Transactions Already in Fund Manager", so you can see the transactions coming down. Just cancel the retrieve at the preview stage, so you don't import duplicates.

If you do see the negative cash transaction listed in the Preview dialog, then it is in your data feed for some reason. Maybe it is being swept out into another cash account? If so, it sounds like you'd need to set up this cash account that the money is being swept into.

[aviator]

Thanks, Mark, I think I've figured it out. After making copious backups, I played around with different scenarios. The one that works is having the cash account set to none.

What I think is happening (but don't know for sure because I don't have enough data to test with) is that the cash account is actually a money market fund in a separate account. By setting the default cash account to None (in the account that's receiving the dividends), the money is getting transferred to the cash account (set up in a separate account). The negative transaction is there to remove the dividend proceeds from the account where the security lives.

I think.

This is somewhat confusing to me. But I'll play with it more next weekend when, hopefully, I'll have more data to work with. I've taken copious notes of what I've changed so, if needed, I can reset or restore to where I was before discovering this problem.

Thanks for your help.