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Handling Covered calls in QM 16

Concordman

Sold many Covered Calls in the day using QW..I understood from this community that QM & covered calls were going to be an issue but decided to sell some calls yesterday in spite of this. The call downloaded in to my account, no cost basis downloaded with the call. No download into the transaction register which in Qw downloaded the premium into the cash account. So therefore no record of this in the tax report. Just wondering how QM will handle this after the call is bought back or goes to 0..

is this something that the folks at QM are working on? From what I have read it appears this issue has been reported on for several yrs.

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Concordman

From my initial review it appears that QM16 has no use for covered calls

. Was able to get the download into the portfolio from my Fi but no cost basis or cash balance update from the sale of the call. Fortunatley ( or maybe not..wont know for a while) QM allows for a cost basis entry so got this from my Fi website and the resultant cash balance now reflects the sale. However no cost basis shown in Portfolio view so the only way to track the up/dn's of the option is to go to the Fi website:(.

Summary, as I learned here months ago before switching to QM16..QM16 is not good when dealing with options.

Concordman

Got the call into QM 16..In the report it is shown unknown acquisition data; I believe this should be reported under Schedule D , short term capital gains

SedonaRider

I enter the covered call as misc income on the stock. I give it a category named Covered Call. This provides the income for covered calls and does not tie up Quicken with the actual option. Quicken needs to track covered calls on stocks. It should report the market value as the covered call value if the price of the stock exceeds the call.

Concordman

The way this works is the following; when you sell the call enter it as a short sell, when the call goes to zero value or you buy it back for say < 10% of its original value the transaction is entered as a buy to cover.

allenboyle

QM 17 does now work for covered calls either. Has anyone come up with a easy way to record the sale as a transaction? If I manually enter the transaction, the cost is not calculated correctly.

SedonaRider

What do you do for expired or called options? I have one account where I try using the shortsell option from Fidelity, but the options never go away and still show in my holdings.

Concordman

Enter a buy to cover transaction for either $0.00 or what ever dollar amount the call was bought back..

Eva Anne Carman

how do you enter a buy to cover?

Concordman

on the sell transaction change to short sell, enter to buy transaction with by to cover

Eva Anne Carman

When I sold the option I used the short sell.  When the option expired I used cvrstsell

i used the cvrshsel and that cancelled the transaction of the covered call. But i still had to added the option premium to my account.

Eva Anne Carman

I think I have figured it out for now. Just have to see how my investment account downloads. for the first two options I sold I ended up deleting the sale and adding cash to my account equal to the premium since they expired worthless. But this seemed an awkward way around the option. surely there is a way to directly enter an expired option.

Concordman

When you enter the buy to cover with whatever the buy back price is the transaction will show up correctly in the tax schedule under schedule D

SedonaRider

I agree Quicken does not track Covered Calls correctly. I use Misc Income for the equity the call was issued on to track stock and options together. I use Misc Expense to track buy to cover. The second problem is Quicken is tracking the full value of the stock when the stock price exceeds the call. I gave up on tracking my covered calls on quicken and developed a spreadsheet to track the calls. I can then track the calls with more accuracy.

Eva Anne Carman

There is no Buy to Cover in my software choices

Concordman

As we all agree QM is very much difficient is the investment areas & until the QM folks update the investment module dealing with options or for that matter selling individual lots there will be an issues. Regardless of the present situation option trades calls/puts can be made to work such that they will be correct in the Tax Schedule under Schedule D Short term. No matter what you try the options will not show correctly in the Portfolio view.

As a general rule always be mindful that whenever you download an option from your Fi Qm will create a placeholder which can either be deleted or edited with the correct info. Until Quicken upgrades the investment aspects of the program this is all that can be done.

Concordman

Not clear to me why it would be an option in QM for me but not available for your needs

Eva Anne Carman

Thank you so much for the reply. I was so sure that it was my program and got the update for 2017 and then when that did not fix anything I went to quicken help and was informed that I had numerous errors that could be corrected for $199. I know that there were errors since I have been using quicken since 1986 but have bought the new program every other year. Spending that did not change anything.I do not use quicken to update taxes but download from FI to turbo tax at tax time.

Concordman

Eva, like you I download from my Fi directly into TT. Since I am vey meticulous with my schedule A transactions I do export them from the tax schedule into TT.. My comments about options in the tax schedule were meant to let folks know that while QM has issues with options in the end they can be made to work out as an accurate transaction

unknown

My transactions are accurate but not the way QM reports the holding. I have a short call that is way under water but is listed as a holding that is up 1000%

Quicken Harold

Hi Stephen,

You've posted your issue in an old post.

Please post your question in a new thread so that we can best help you.

Respectfully,
~ Quicken Harold.