Possible to track investment account balances without all of the details?

Unknown

I am running U.S. version of Quicken Deluxe 2016 for Windows on Windows 7 Enterprise.  I would like to continue tracking my investment account balances for the purpose of net worth calculations, but I do not want to deal with all of the placeholder entries, cost per share info, reinvesting dividends, etc.  I know I could delete the accounts, create new manual accounts not connected to my banks, and update the balances manually - but I already have to do a lot of that (Quicken doesn't connect to several of my accounts).  Is there any other way to track the investment account balances only?

K.O. (Win-Premier)

I don't have a solution for you but replying to agree that I wish Quicken had a summary download option for investment accounts that would just download the open positions and balances for investment accounts.  Many problems with transaction downloads and transaction details that I'm almost ready to give up on them and just update the balance manually.

NotACPA

Sure it's possible.
Create a dummy security with a constant $1 value.  And adjust the nbr of shares as needed.

Unknown

The point for me would be to get the adjusted daily value of the account to show without it having to download each of the transactions.  A managed account might have 50 to 100 trades per month and Quicken gets hung up with specific identification or avg price.  If you have several of these accounts that's a lot of clicking.  And it often simply hangs.  The investment features become useless.  There's got to be a better way.

Unknown

The point for me would be to get the adjusted daily value of the account
to show without it having to download each of the transactions.  A
managed account might have 50 to 100 trades per month and Quicken gets
hung up with specific identification or avg price.  If you have several
of these accounts that's a lot of clicking to even get them to load.  And it often simply hangs. 
The investment features become useless.  There's got to be a better
way.

q_lurker

Marcus5 said:

The point for me would be to get the adjusted daily value of the account
to show without it having to download each of the transactions.  A
managed account might have 50 to 100 trades per month and Quicken gets
hung up with specific identification or avg price.  If you have several
of these accounts that's a lot of clicking to even get them to load.  And it often simply hangs. 
The investment features become useless.  There's got to be a better
way.

@Marcus5:  If your current methods have no use (useless) to you, what 'use'
are you expecting Quicken to provide?  What are your needs and expectations?  Bear in mind that while too often (IMO) Quicken tries to be all things for all users, the program cannot really do that.  So your needs may not be achievable within your expectations.  An expectation that the program serve as a black box with no user intervention is not realistic (again, IMO).  

Unknown

Marcus5 said:

The point for me would be to get the adjusted daily value of the account
to show without it having to download each of the transactions.  A
managed account might have 50 to 100 trades per month and Quicken gets
hung up with specific identification or avg price.  If you have several
of these accounts that's a lot of clicking to even get them to load.  And it often simply hangs. 
The investment features become useless.  There's got to be a better
way.

First expectation would be that the system doesn't crash due to the high number of trades and would allow for a default method of determining cost basis to avoid having to enter that for most of the trades.  So, in that case, I'm only asking Quicken to do what it has set out to do - no black box request.
I am asking for the "balance only" option as a workaround frankly.  One of my larger accounts is "stuck" and cannot be cleared. Deleting and reloading means going through hundreds of trades manually to get them each to load.
It looks to me like the program has the balance info AND the detail info at all times so offering a balance only option for display purposes would seem possible.  I suppose, if it could handle it, the detail could be in the background to deliver security by security gain/loss and performance data when requested.

K.O. (Win-Premier)

Marcus5 said:

The point for me would be to get the adjusted daily value of the account
to show without it having to download each of the transactions.  A
managed account might have 50 to 100 trades per month and Quicken gets
hung up with specific identification or avg price.  If you have several
of these accounts that's a lot of clicking to even get them to load.  And it often simply hangs. 
The investment features become useless.  There's got to be a better
way.

@Marcus5 ... I note you say one of your accounts is stuck.  I have a large volume of trades and securities in my Quicken file.  Not sure if this will work or not but check your securities list and change any security that you're not actively trading is not marked to download prices and if you have any options past their expiration date set them to not download and hidden.

Unknown

Marcus5 said:

The point for me would be to get the adjusted daily value of the account
to show without it having to download each of the transactions.  A
managed account might have 50 to 100 trades per month and Quicken gets
hung up with specific identification or avg price.  If you have several
of these accounts that's a lot of clicking to even get them to load.  And it often simply hangs. 
The investment features become useless.  There's got to be a better
way.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will give that a try.

Unknown

Marcus5 said:

The point for me would be to get the adjusted daily value of the account
to show without it having to download each of the transactions.  A
managed account might have 50 to 100 trades per month and Quicken gets
hung up with specific identification or avg price.  If you have several
of these accounts that's a lot of clicking to even get them to load.  And it often simply hangs. 
The investment features become useless.  There's got to be a better
way.

I do a lot of trading as well and Quicken just can't handle it.  As you approach 15,000 transactions in an account, it gets very unstable.   I have been able to mitigate the problem by creating a new account and doing a share transfer of the open positions, however it will just happen again.   Additionally, if you do a lot of day trading, downloading and matching each transaction is very time consuming and of limited value.   I've started to just not download transaction detail and do the single fake security approach to just track the total balance.   Quicken is still useful for me overall tracking my more stable investment accounts, checking accounts, credit cards and loans.  For high volume transaction accounts, I've given up.

Jim_Harman

Or let your "main" FI do the consolidation for you, linking to your other accounts, updating daily, and showing combined balances. Usually they use Yodlee to aggregate.

Unknown

I use Edward Jones and they do a great job of tracking all of the details of my investments. I really don't need to do this in Quicken. What I would like is to have one (1) summary account in the Investments category and manually input the Net Present Value of all of my investments  from time to time. (Not even on line.) How can I do this????   TIA

mikeweberatl

Chuck Esserwein said:

I use Edward Jones and they do a great job of tracking all of the details of my investments. I really don't need to do this in Quicken. What I would like is to have one (1) summary account in the Investments category and manually input the Net Present Value of all of my investments  from time to time. (Not even on line.) How can I do this????   TIA

You can create a fake security for each account, buy one share , and update the price to reflect current account balance. You can also do multiple shares and keep the share price at $1

Jim_Harman

 I really don't need to do this in Quicken. What I would like is to have one (1) summary account in the Investments category and manually input the Net Present Value of all of my investments  from time to time. (Not even on line.) 

Are you making deposits and withdrawals from this account? If not or if you are only withdrawing the income, one way to do this is to create a manual investment account, and a Security called "Edward Jones Investments" or whatever. If your current balance is $12,345 for example, you could set the starting balance to $12,345 and buy 1,000 shares at $12.345. Then each month adjust the share price to match your current balance. When you receive income from the account, call it a Dividend from Edward Jones Investments and transfer it to the appropriate Quicken account.

You will not be tracking capital gains and losses accurately for tax purposes, but at least your net worth and the overall performance for the account will be accurate.

NotACPA

Chuck Esserwein said:

I use Edward Jones and they do a great job of tracking all of the details of my investments. I really don't need to do this in Quicken. What I would like is to have one (1) summary account in the Investments category and manually input the Net Present Value of all of my investments  from time to time. (Not even on line.) How can I do this????   TIA

Do multiple shares at $1.  Q can handle that better than prices in the itsy tiny fractions of a penny.

James Stroh

Marcus5 said:

The point for me would be to get the adjusted daily value of the account
to show without it having to download each of the transactions.  A
managed account might have 50 to 100 trades per month and Quicken gets
hung up with specific identification or avg price.  If you have several
of these accounts that's a lot of clicking to even get them to load.  And it often simply hangs. 
The investment features become useless.  There's got to be a better
way.

I started with Quicken many years ago and laboriously input all my investment info. from many mutual funds, brokerage houses, etc.  Then, I consolidated all my holdings into Chas. Schwab.  I get all the detail I want in Schwab as far as history, basis, dividends, etc.  So, I no longer need the detail in Quicken.  BUT, as mentioned by others, I would like to track my investment balances only in the six accounts that I have in Schwab.  So, how do I get rid of all that detail that is sitting in my Quicken and simply track it by on of the methods mentioned above?

mikeweberatl

Marcus5 said:

The point for me would be to get the adjusted daily value of the account
to show without it having to download each of the transactions.  A
managed account might have 50 to 100 trades per month and Quicken gets
hung up with specific identification or avg price.  If you have several
of these accounts that's a lot of clicking to even get them to load.  And it often simply hangs. 
The investment features become useless.  There's got to be a better
way.

To track an account with a balance only, I enter it as an "Other Asset" account type and then you can use the "Update Balance" option to just manually update the balance as often as you like.  It will not give the you individual securities in the Brokerage account - just the balance.

To remove an existing Schwab Account from Quicken, you can use the "Remove Shares" option until you have no shares left in the account.   If there's a cash balance when you're done, you can do a Cash Transfer to the manual account you created (per my direction above.)

James Stroh

Marcus5 said:

The point for me would be to get the adjusted daily value of the account
to show without it having to download each of the transactions.  A
managed account might have 50 to 100 trades per month and Quicken gets
hung up with specific identification or avg price.  If you have several
of these accounts that's a lot of clicking to even get them to load.  And it often simply hangs. 
The investment features become useless.  There's got to be a better
way.

Great idea.  I will try it.  I simply want to enter balances to track new worth ore than anything.  Seems like that would work. Thanks.

James Stroh

Marcus5 said:

The point for me would be to get the adjusted daily value of the account
to show without it having to download each of the transactions.  A
managed account might have 50 to 100 trades per month and Quicken gets
hung up with specific identification or avg price.  If you have several
of these accounts that's a lot of clicking to even get them to load.  And it often simply hangs. 
The investment features become useless.  There's got to be a better
way.

When I go into Quicken, I do see an option to "Remove Shares".  

hpllc

I also have reached the point where it really is no longer necessary to track investment account transaction detail in Quicken due to the complexity of matching downloaded data transaction type to the way Quicken handles each transaction.  My biggest issue has been with Vanguard accounts within a 401K as there is added complexity with the Cash Source determination.  My current plan is to eliminate the automatic download of transaction data, but keep the security price downloads.  Then periodically update the held securities using buy, sell transactions to match statement share counts.  If this is done say quarterly or at a time of significant re-balance there would be one transaction to shore up share balances, I can live with this.  For the accounts that have a lot of securities I will simply update the account balance using previously noted suggestion with a fake security as the name of the account and update the balance using $1 and changing the number of shares.

Unknown

Seems like Quicken could solve this with a user option to pull current account balances vs. all transactions. Also seems like they should have commented on this thread long ago. Did I miss their explanation? I also keep thinking back to the root cause...Quicken can’t handle the complexity of accounts with lots of securities and lots of trades. I am actually removing the investment accounts from Quicken since the brokerage company provides everything on their site.

tebetorbes

"The point for me would be to get the adjusted daily value of the account to show without it having to download each of the transactions."

I couldn't agree more with "Seems like Quicken could solve this with a user option to pull current account balances vs. all transactions.".  Particularly a problem with option trading downloads and constant need to reconcile shares / Securities Comparison Mismatch problems.

This feature needs to be added.  Maybe some of the new subscription revenue could be used to add this feature.