In microsoft.public.money, Elwood P. Dow wrote:

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That second sentence describes what I would consider the most common
normal way to run things, although it is not the only good way.


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How does your Vanguard downloaded data differ from your
expectations? Does it omit the Buy and Sell transactions for the
MMF, and that is the only anomaly?



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Yes, I do have a cash transactions register for the account. It should read
zero because as cash flows into this account it is used to 'buy' money market
funds, then when I purchase the next stock, the corresponding amount in the
money market fund would be 'sold', transferred as cash, then purchase the
stock, and after the stock purchase, the funds would be again held in the
'investment transaction' side. There is no 'cash' per se in this account, it
is kept as money market funds and therefore listed in the 'investment
transaction' side. The two accounts are linked. If I delete the downloads
that transfer the funds to the 'investment transaction' side, so that the
cash transaction register looks like a checkbook register, won't that skew my
income reports, ie, when I want to see the return on each investment?

"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

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In microsoft.public.money, "Elwood P. Dow" <Elwood P.
Dow[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

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Do you have a cash transactions register for the account? I suggest
one.


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I am using Vanguard and I'm having the same trouble. My money market account
is the sweep account and I can download everything ok, but it doesn't give me
the total of the account like a checkbook register or even like my Vanguard
statement. I can't go line by line or date by date to see what the balance
is or where it became inaccurate. I don't want to change how the items that
download are listed in the register, for example a dividend from a particular
company, because I want to keep track of the income from each investment. If
I start messing around with the source of the income, then my reports will
become inaccurate. (as if they are accurate now..) sigh. The only solution
that I can see at this time is to create an additional fake checking style
account that I copy the dollar amounts into, without using it in the budget
or reports. Then I will know exactly how much I have at any given time.

"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

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I'll give this a quick shot: ( I agree I don't like it either)

Also keep in mind that I do have brokerage and mutal accounts at Fidelity
with a common cash account FCASH - they list as such online.) So if your "
sweep account " is different , then may not be as mine is.
(In which case, I'd call them - they have a Money support group / number at
Fidelity. From my Money 2004 setup , shows: If you need assistance
importing your Fidelity account information into Microsoft Money, please
contact a Fidelity Electronic Channel Support Representative at
800-544-7931. )

A few years ago ( when they went from T accounts to combined accounts ),
they started treating everything as a double-entry purchase/sale.

The entry used to be simply

Cash Reserves - Reinvested Dividend $50 qty 50 [at] $1.00

Now it shows as
INTEREST EARNED $50.
and then a BUY FCASH Qty 50 , price = $1
Leaving the Money account showing $0 in Cash

If you go online, and log onto your account , view history, you'll see the
2 entries and FCASH = $50.


I download mine each month and it downloads this way OK.



"Anonymous" <anonymous[at]comcast.net> wrote in message
news:drmdncNHId4gQaDfRVn-oA[at]comcast.com...
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As it turns out, I was mistaken about the download. The sweep account is
not matched, so using the cash portion works perfectly. I just renamed it
appropriately and it all makes sense now.

thank you for your help. MS Money is slowly becoming clearer to me.


"Cal Learner-- MVP" <via_newsgroup[at]please.tnx> wrote in message
newsonr31dfiang1bcidlcp4f83liopp2102p[at]4ax.com...
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I have the identical problem and have struggled with it for some time.
I wish there was a better solution than Cal suggests, but I do thank
him for his insight.

John

On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 14:39:32 -0600, via_newsgroup[at]please.tnx(Cal
Learner-- MVP) wrote:

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In microsoft.public.money, Anonymous wrote:

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Fidelity Investments does a pretty good job on Direct Download of
OFX to Microsoft Money. The server is quick and reliable. There
is one potential quirk, however.

When you have free cash in your account it is usual to have it
swept into a money market fund (MMF), called your core account by
Fidelity. There is more than one proper way for a financial
institution to handle this swept money:

1. Download Buy, Sell, Dividend/ReinvestDividend transactions into
the OFX transactions. Then normally the cash balance will indicate
zero in Money, except when some transaction is waiting to clear.
The shares in the MMF will represent available funds.

2. Do not download the swept MMF transactions. Let the Cash
Transactions balance reflect the sweep MMF balance also. Do not
download MMF position data. This method is described in 13.5.2 of
the OFX specs. It is not prescribed how the interest/dividend
information should be entered. A deposit transaction seems best,
although an Interest transaction seems reasonable.

Fidelity does a hybrid in some cases. They do not download Buy or
Sell transactions, but they may present position data. Money would
offer to adjust the balance of the MMF holding with an AddShares or
RemoveShares. If you let that happen, the funds are
double-counted: once as cash, and once as MMF shares.

To deal with this, there is more than one way that seems useful:

1. Do not let Money do the adjustment. If you let one slip by,
delete or void that transaction.

2. Let Money create the adjustment. Then manually change each
AddShares into a Buy, and change each RemoveShares into a Sell.
That will cause the cash balance to adjust accordingly.

I do not understand how to get my Fidelity brokerage sweep account downloads
to make sense in Money 2004. I have a money market fund that is used as the
sweep account. However, the download tries to put all the dividends and
other activity into the phantom cash account. The money market account
doesn't seem to get updated. I get a dialogue box for each transaction as I
read it. I think I should put these into the money market investment, but I
can't (it's not given to me as a choice). The only place I can put them is
into another account's "cash" bin, but that isn't where they belong.

I'm not sure I can delete the money market investment; if I could, I might
be able to consider the cash account the real money market fund, but this
seems less than ideal.

I must be missing something obvious. How is this supposed to be set up?

Thanks