Aha! So that's how it works! Because I used the cheat while I was already playing a lot. I had moved out 2 of the teens into the Uni simbin, waitin to be shuffled off to a dorm.
Something got botched with a hot tub and I was forced to burninate it with the stuck object remover. Well, I didn't want to penalize the family for their hard earned cash because somethin got stuckified, so I wanted to adjust their funds appropriately. I was hoping that, since I was PLAYING the family that I wanted to change, it would add the funds appropriately to the current house. It didn't.
I tried:
familyfunds +$ (nothing happened that I could see, at least not on the current lot)
familyfunds <last name> +$ (nothing happened that I could see, at least not on the current lot)
I think I even did:
familyfunds $ and that didn't work either...
It must have not worked properly, because ultimately I was forced to use kaching multiple times instead. Not exactly precise, but I remember that was what I had to resort to.
I went and checked the Uni simbin, and sure enough, the first sim (first meaning the one at the leftmost position in the bin, he was actually the second teen that I moved out) had his funds adjusted to what I had tried to set it to. I tried asking about it in chat, and there didn't seem to be a consensus as to how it worked or where the funds went with multiple sims of the same last name. It was thought to be random.
I was then forced to summon the child back home so he could call up and check out what his scholarships actually were so I could set his starting out money properly. I then went to the main Uni screen with him in the sim bin, and the familyfunds cheat worked properly this time.
I guess the lesson is, only use the familyfunds cheat from the neighborhood screen, especially if you have multiple households with the same last name. Otherwise it will be a pain in the ass to track down where the funds actually got sent to.
Ste