Re: Bank of America - Master Relationship Account

Posted by jgrimmond on November 16, 2008, 8:00 pm

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>I have been working on consolidating my finances and recently completed

>the process of moving my brokerage accounts to Banc of America

>Investments and checking and savings to Bank of America. I am in the

>process of eliminating the Quicken Bill Payment service to save the

>monthly fee (there is no problem with the service).

>The benefit of this consolidation is that I can establish a Master

>Relationship Account (MRA) with them which will give me direct connect

>to Quicken for 1) Bill Payment and 2) Credit Card, Checking and Savings

>downloads for free. I also qualify for the $0 commissions at the

>brokerage.

>They have completed their work in implementing the MRA, however I can't

>figure out what is going on with the transactions in my checking and

>brokerage account. Here is what happened this last week:

>Brokerage (Banc of America Website)

>11/03 - Sold MMF A $215

>11/03 - Bough MMF B (215)

>(This was a change in investments on where to park my un-invested cash)

>11/05 - Bought MMF B (35)

>11/05 - TXFR 35

>(Other Credit Brokerage FROM Bank DDA Date - I think this might be an

>expense report refund - I will investigate)

>11/06 - Sold MMF B 34

>11/06 - TXFR (34)

>(The dollar amount is a payment to my VISA)

>Balance Today in MMF B - 216 Shares @ $1

>Checking (Bank of America Website)

>I see some transactions during this time period, however the only one

>where the dollars match is the bill payment to the VISA. In other words

>the two transfer entries do no show as transactions in the checking

>ledger.

I do not fully understand about your account set up, but I have a
similar problem with Banc of America Securities. I do NOT use
(praise the lord!) Quicken for investment matters, but in the
software I do use, I see the same "matching" transactions for buys,
sells, dividends, etc. For some reason there are three, or more,
plus/minus entries for "one" transaction. I guess that it is BofA's
internal bookwork showing up: a dividend declaration, the cash
deposited, the cash moved to the MMF and then a purchase of
the MMF shares .... and god knows what else. It took me time
to figure out which entries to keep (you, after all, need just
one!) and ignore the rest, which, luckily, my (intelligently
designed) software allows and simply dumps all the "unaccepted"
transactions into its black hole.

Maybe, your problem is similar. Try to track the balancing,
self cancelling transactions and identify the the ones that
matter.

Hope this helps.

jg

Posted by Oilcan on November 16, 2008, 9:24 pm

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Hi JG

Thanks for the replay. I think I have figured everything out - not that
I like the answer. With my MRA I have tied my checking with my
brokerage. I also had made an election to sweep my funds from checking
into my brokerage MMF. Bank of America / Banc of America reports it as
follows:

Checking (Bank of America)

No entry for sweep. Available funds include any funds that have not be
invested on the brokerage side in the MMF PLUS the value of my sweep
MMF. Therefore, to look at it simply - the available funds therefore
must be adjusted downward to get to the cash balance in my checking. So
if I have $100.00 in checking (non MMF) and $500 in Sweep MMF, Bank of
America shows online that I have $600.00 and reports to me that I have
$600.00 when I download. Therefore I can't reconcile to their number as
reported as so I need to resort to "paper recon" and figure out my
balance.

Brokerage (Banc of America)

As far as I am concerned, this is being handled okay. I have a transfer
from Checking (a one-sided transfer mind you!!! As they don't show it on
the checking side) that is invested in the sweep fund. Same holds true
when the sell the MMF and transfer the money back to the checking
account. My sweep account balance is reported to me okay. Using the
above numbers, I would see 500 shares @ $1.00 in my MMF.

What I am doing...

If I look at these accounts separately, they report that I have $500
more then I ready do - showing up on the Banking side.

I will not see my first statement under the MRA until December. So for
right now, I take the transfer in the brokerage account the offset to
the checking account. Basically, this means my Checking account should
pretty much balance to ZERO if I ignore some timing differences (like
the numbers I originally reported).

I can avoid some of this by having them pay interest on my checking
verses the MMF sweep I signed up for. I could avoid all of this be
delinking my checking account from the MRA. However, one objective was
to avoid DIRECT CONNECT fees for downloading into Quicken on the banking
side and I don't know if I do the second options if I would negate what
I was originally trying to accomplish.

I can live this for now.

Again, thanks for your insight.

Oilcan

-----Original Message-----
From: jgrimmond@yahoo.com [mailto:jgrimmond@yahoo.com]
Posted At: Sunday, November 16, 2008 5:00 PM
Posted To: alt.comp.software.financial.quicken
Conversation: Bank of America - Master Relationship Account
Subject: Re: Bank of America - Master Relationship Account

>I have been working on consolidating my finances and recently completed

>the process of moving my brokerage accounts to Banc of America

>Investments and checking and savings to Bank of America. I am in the

>process of eliminating the Quicken Bill Payment service to save the

>monthly fee (there is no problem with the service).

>The benefit of this consolidation is that I can establish a Master

>Relationship Account (MRA) with them which will give me direct connect

>to Quicken for 1) Bill Payment and 2) Credit Card, Checking and Savings

>downloads for free. I also qualify for the $0 commissions at the

>brokerage.

>They have completed their work in implementing the MRA, however I can't

>figure out what is going on with the transactions in my checking and

>brokerage account. Here is what happened this last week:

>Brokerage (Banc of America Website)

>11/03 - Sold MMF A $215

>11/03 - Bough MMF B (215)

>(This was a change in investments on where to park my un-invested cash)

>11/05 - Bought MMF B (35)

>11/05 - TXFR 35

>(Other Credit Brokerage FROM Bank DDA Date - I think this might be an

>expense report refund - I will investigate)

>11/06 - Sold MMF B 34

>11/06 - TXFR (34)

>(The dollar amount is a payment to my VISA)

>Balance Today in MMF B - 216 Shares @ $1

>Checking (Bank of America Website)

>I see some transactions during this time period, however the only one

>where the dollars match is the bill payment to the VISA. In other

words

>the two transfer entries do no show as transactions in the checking

>ledger.

Posted by jgrimmond on November 17, 2008, 7:19 pm

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wrote:

>I can live this for now.

Good! I came to the same thing vis a vis
reconciliation -- some hand work is required, but
it is not onerous and things work.
I think that it is the best we can do.

>Again, thanks for your insight.

No problem.

jg