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Dividend Reinvestment: share price not enter-able

unknown

In older versions of Quicken, I could correct the share price. Now, I have to enter shares and total dividend when entering dividend reinvestment transactions and they never match the price (I guess companies report to the third decimal place, but it may actually be more precise. In any case, I am prompted for total dividend and number of shares. How can I edit the share price and let Quicken tweak the price or commission? Thanks.

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Comments

Sherlock

I suggest that you allow Quicken to calculate the share price from the total dividend and the number of shares received. If you insist on setting the share price, I suggest that you record an "Inc - Income (Div, Int, etc.)" transaction for the dividend and a "Buy - Shares Bought" transaction for the reinvestment.

unknown

Thanks, Sherlock. I want the numbers to match what the brokerage reports, though, and I used to be able to do that in older Quicken versions.

unknown

dilip:

If you think about it, I believe you will agree with the way Quicken is doing this. You said, "In older versions of Quicken, I could correct the share price." What you forgot to add is that while Quicken did allow this, it was NOT their suggested course of action. You don't have to listen to anyone on this forum, just call your brokerage and ask them which is more important, the share price or the total dividend and number of shares? I'm sure you will find that they ROUND the share price which is why it doesn't mathematically work, but the number of shares is never rounded.

The share price is completely meaningless as long as the total dividend and the number of shares are correct. This is true for every brokerage transaction, not just a dividend reinvestment transaction. If you change the share price you are almost certainly going to change the number of shares and that becomes very important when you decide to sell your entire position. The brokerage won't have any trouble because they know how many shares you own, but you will have trouble with Quicken because the number of shares won't be the same.

What's more important to control in your records, how many shares you own or the share price (the brokerage used) for each transaction dating back to when you purchased the first share of this stock?

If you do a little searching of the history on this forum you will find that users have been asking your question for years.

splasher

The two things about a stock/mutual fund/bond transaction that have to be correct are:
cost basis and quantity
The share price times quantity will not always be the cost basis as there might be a commission, so entering the Total Cost and Quantity is what is important. Share price is inconsequential.

unknown

For
all those still seeing this question and for Quicken support: THIS IS
A PROBLEM and a limitation with the current Quicken releases! I have
not upgraded since Quicken 98 because it didn't need to be upgraded
and I wanted to avoid this sort thing.
It is not what the brokers
think is most important in reporting. It is that Quicken's new method
of entering transaction does not and cannot be made to match what is
reported by financial institutions. It is also not as accurate.
Previously I could enter the dollar amt and share price of a
reinvestment (short and long cap gains, dividends). Quicken would
calculate the number of shares out to 6 decimal points even though it
would only show 3. The next month, those extra decimal points are
accounted for. This is the way financial institution report, shares
are taken to 6 or even more decimal places, NOT THE SHARE PRICE! Sure
the share price is not as important from a tax standpoint but, it is
from an accuracy and balancing stand point. Why the change to a less
accurate, more restrictive way of accounting?

mshiggins

Hogwash! Your 1099-B will report the total sale and the number of shares sold. Those are the numbers that matter - price per share is not relevant for tax reporting.

unknown

Agree with your "for tax reporting" reply. For accounting, it does not and cannot be made to match what I am receiving from financial institutions. They are taking the shares out to the tenth decimal place, not the price. What Quicken is doing is less accurate and does not match what the financial institutions are doing. AND, Quicken is so rigid as to not allow it to be done THE WAY IT SHOULD BE!

unknown

What really bites is that Quicken doesn't allow the USER to decide which method to use. My brokerage reports a long-term cap gain and dividend in separate amounts, but then proceeds to purchase the reinvested shares using the total amount. When I enter the values in the Reinvest window, I have to manually calculate the number of shares for each amount. It would be simpler to enter a share price and the amount earned and let Quicken determine the shares. Bottom line: Quicken doesn't care about the users having the option - they basically don't care about their customers.

splasher

If Quicken used the amount and share price and calculated the # of shares, the share balance would likely NEVER be the same as the share balance reported by the FI and then it would be always suggesting that a placeholder is needed.

There are only two numbers that are important, the cost basis which is determined by the amount and the # of shares, the share price is incidental.

q_lurker

You can do the same thing. Enter the Div and the LTGain on the Income form, then enter a Buy Shares for the total buying the same number of shares your brokerage reports and the same total cost they used. There is nothing terribly magical about the Reinv___ transactions.

unknown

So, I have to enter two different transactions instead of having the option of entering a price. Still not user friendly, which was the point of my post. Thanks for the advice, though. That will keep me from manually calculating the number of shares.

unknown

I compute the fund shares using the formula amount / Price Quote in the calculator, to many places (six is the max Quicken will support).
If you COPY from calculator you can PASTE that calculator value into Quicken (CTL-V).
The share price will be exact or very close. If you are fastidious you may have to adjust the Shares by a tiny amount to get the total VALUE to match your financial institution. the share price will then deviate but you will have to live with that.
I am fastidious, but in my experience, once I am "in sync", most of the time an adjustment is not necessary.
Since it is so rarely needed, I can continue to be fastidious.

volvogirl

The share price changes every day. In the overall scheme of things the share price does not matter. What matters is the total cost and the sales price. Even the number of shares really doesn't matter when you sell. You only need to match the number of shares and total paid.

volvogirl

unknown

VolvoGirl you are missing the point.
The share price may not matter but we are trying to keep the dollar value of the holding as shown in Quicken to match the dollar value of the holding shown on the Financial Institution monthly statement ( or daily statement if you are online a lot).
For that to happen the "shares * Price Quote" must come to the dollar value

NotACPA

There's an additional issue that your price-focus is missing.

Q uses 4/5 rounding on it's security value calculations

Some brokerages, Fidelity specifically, use truncation. So, I'm frequently off by a penny on a particular security and a few pennies in the account.

DON'T SWEAT THE PENNIES!!!

volvogirl

I match to my statements. Well mostly. It may be off by under a dollar for rounding. I put in the actual price per share for the statement ending date. But the price per share when you BUY doesn't matter.

unknown

Yes, it it still a problem. There is simply no good reason not to permit direct entry of share price for DRIP transactions. E-Trade reports share price to much higher precision than share qty. This means the running total of share qty will be off by a greater amount with the current price imputing system that only permits share qty entry. Though the overall discrepancy is not large in the absolute, with long stretches of reinvestment of small dollar value dividends, the relative error becomes much larger than it need be. In addition, necessitating entry via a pop-up box rather than directly in the register becomes very laborious compared to the old method.

Jim_Harman

The issue here is that Quicken (correctly IMO) insists that the math be correct: Shares * price per share = total amount

Often, due to rounding, truncation, or whatever, the numbers reported on your statement do not honor this.

So what to do about this? The most important things to keep track of IMO are the number of shares and the cost basis for each tax lot, because you need this information to compute your capital gain or loss when you sell.

The price you paid per share is less important. That's why, when you try to enter all 3 numbers (or 4 if there is a commission), it asks you which one to change and recommends adjusting the share price.

You don't have to accept Quicken's recommendation, you can have it change one of the other values, but it insists that the math be correct.

Also note that in QWin 2018 R10.4, if you are entering a Bought or Sold directly in the transaction list (register) you can enter the number of shares, tab over the share price and commission (or enter a commission if there is one), to the total amount and enter that. Hit Enter and it will calculate the actual share price and accept the transaction. If you have entered the other numbers correctly, this should be very close to the share price shown on your statement. If not, check your entries. This is a change from earlier releases of QWin 2018, which did not permit this. Thanks, Quicken!