How to record transactions from a Charles Schwab account

@Rainflurry 

Excellent solution.  The NFP balance sheet does not need a lot of detail.  I created a bank sub-account (savings) for one of the US Treasury investments and funded it with the transfer function.  Super easy.  I will continue this going forward for all the fixed income investments.

If I could expand a little on the same question:  The NFP invests the interest earned from fixed deposits into Schwab Money Market shares until this balance is large enough to re-invest in another fixed income product.  At this point, the Money Market shares are sold.  This weekly or monthly cycle of transactions will appear in the bank detail as:

>Spent column:  when purchasing MM shares

>Received column:  when MM shares are sold

>Received column:  interest earned from the MM shares

The interest earned could be recorded as Non-Profit Revenue.  For the purchase and sale of Money Market shares, should I create a bank sub-account for the Money Market fund, and list these transactions as transfers back and forth to the Schwab parent bank account?

@m501c3 

"For the purchase and sale of Money Market shares, should I create a bank sub-account for the Money Market fund, and list these transactions as transfers back and forth to the Schwab parent bank account?"

Based on the fact that your NFP does not require a lot of detail on the balance sheet and because these are all fixed-income securities, I would just have a Schwab parent account with no sub-accounts.  That way, you can just create deposits when interest is earned and there are no entries needed for transfers.  That's my personal preference.  The more detail you have on the balance sheet, the more work to record individual transactions (transfers) that just offset (CD maturing, etc.).  Your Schwab statements will always suffice for detailed balances.  Just my $.02  

Just to make sure I understand, with this approach, we are basically just categorizing the Schwab linked account transactions, and not much more than that.

I have been keeping the books manually in Excel for many years (as it may be obvious).  Having QB linked accounts is great, albeit a huge learning curve.  Your recommendation not to use sub-accounts presents a few problems I cannot figure out, which is that (1) securities purchased from the Schwab account show up as Expenses in reports such as Statement of Financial Position, and (2) money markets sold show up as Profit, even though it's just the principle.  

All interest earned shows up as a separate Received transaction that I can categorize as nonprofit revenue/interest income.

@m501c3 

"Your recommendation not to use sub-accounts presents a few problems I cannot figure out, which is that (1) securities purchased from the Schwab account show up as Expenses in reports such as Statement of Financial Position, and (2) money markets sold show up as Profit, even though it's just the principle." 

After the transactions have been downloaded, you can select them and then 'Update' them.  Select the Schwab parent account under the 'Category' drop-down menu.  That will record two offsetting transactions under the Schwab parent account.  Or, you can 'Exclude' these transactions.  Since these types of transactions are offsetting to the parent account, there's no need to make an entry for them if you're not keeping sub-accounts. 

Hello Rainflurry,

Thank you for sharing your input to help address the issue. We love to see members supporting one another! Have a great day.

I tried both methods.  The 'Update' method works best for us.  Appreciate your "keep it simple and accurate" guidance.