How to keep idle cash in your trading accounts at quarterly settlement

Your broker must send the unused cash in your trading account back to your bank on fixed settlement dates. This happens once a month or once a quarter, whichever you chose with your broker.

Units of an ETF that you hold are not cash, so they are not sent back. If you want the money to stay in your accounts, you can buy a liquid ETF with it before the settlement date, and sell the units later when you need the cash. Whether you do this is your choice.

Doing this one account at a time means logging in to every account. AutoTrader Web does it for all your accounts from one screen.

Steps

1. Open Trading → Quarterly Settlement. The top of the screen shows the next settlement date.
2. On the Buy tab, choose the ETF and check the live price.
3. Set Park % of cash (100 by default), or type a rupee amount for each account.
4. Tick the accounts, click Buy, and then Yes, place orders.
5. Check the Orders tab of the Portfolio to confirm every order was filled.

Buy before the market closes on the Friday of the settlement date.

Getting the cash back

When you need the cash again, open the Sell tab on the same screen. Choose All units, a Percentage, or a Value (₹) per account, tick the accounts, and click Sell. Units bought today show on the Sell tab from the next trading day.

This screen never buys or sells on its own.

Pledged collateral

The cash shown for each account is its available margin minus any pledged collateral. Brokers usually do not let pledged collateral pay for a delivery buy, so it is left out by default. You can include it for one account or for all of them if you know your broker allows it.

Full details of every column and option: Quarterly Settlement.