How can I manually fix ‘Cost Basis’ for downloaded transactions? Everything appears correct but the

RCinNJ

QM2017 4.4.3. The Account is at TD Ameritrade. The cost basis for all mutual funds is shown as $0.00 in the “Portfolio” view even though there are Buy transactions for each mutual fund shown in “Transactions” view. The account is new and I have never done anything but set up and download transactions. I found this problem when I went to enter “Cost Basis” assuming there would be Placeholder transactions waiting to be entered. The Portfolio view shows Cost Basis as $0.00 for all the mutual funds, while stocks have a correct Cost Basis. In Transactions view all the Buys of these mutual funds have a correct ‘Total Cost’, ‘Number of shares’, and ‘Price per share’, so there is nothing I see to change to have this cost basis applied to “Portfolio” view.

All of the initial transactions were downloaded as “Type>Buy". I tried changing the transaction type to “Add shares” but this didn’t change anything on the Portfolio view.

Interestingly, this is a brokerage account. I also have a TDA IRA account set up at the same time which I just realized did set up the mutual funds correctly! I don't know if this is coincidence or a difference in account types. As far as I can see, the Buy transactions in both the Brokerage and the IRA accounts have all the same information so I don’t see a reason that in one account it would work as expected while failing to work in another account.

I have attached two screen shots, for one mutual fund, showing the ‘Buy’ transaction in the “Transactions” view and the matching holding in the “Portfolio” view. I blocked out the ‘Total Cost’ and ‘Value’ of the fund, but they did match as expected.

Concordman

When you click the little arrow in the portfolio view do you see the lot ?

RCinNJ

If I understand what you mean by the "little arrow" then yes. The lot is shown in my second screen shot (click on it to enlarge). There is one lot for the original purchase on 1/9/17.

John_in_NC

Simple question: do you have every lot accounted for? If not, the total Cost Basis will show up as zero.

I have a hunch that might you have newer buys in your register/portfolio view, but also a have placeholder transactions with a $0 cost basis as an opening balance adjustment and that is giving the behavior your are seeing. 

RCinNJ

Thanks John, your hunch is (basically) correct!

I dug deeper and see there is more than one transaction for each fund. Looking at the fund in my screen shots, I now realize that within a few days there is a Buy, an Add Shares and a Remove Shares. The Buy and Add Shares are for the same number of shares and the Remove Shares is for double the number of shares. Also, I did a search for the fund name to get all the transactions in one place and after a few minutes a 4th placeholder appeared-- and the correct cost basis appeared in the Portfolio view!!! I tried replicating this behavior with a 2nd fund, but no luck.

In any case, I removed the Add Shares and the Remove Shares (saying yes to the question of deleting downloaded transactions) and the Cost Basis is now correct. I hope this will stick. I did this for each fund.

So far so good!

Unfortunately, none of these changes changed the Cash Balance for this account which is way off. I'm still trying to find a way to adjust the Cash value on brokerage accounts without making an arbitrary adjustment that will be off again the next time I do a download. Any ideas for this problem?

Concordman

Thanks John, your hunch is (basically) correct!

I dug deeper and see there is more than one transaction for each fund. Looking at the fund in my screen shots, I now realize that within a few days there is a Buy, an Add Shares and a Remove Shares. The Buy and Add Shares are for the same number of shares and the Remove Shares is for double the number of shares. Also, I did a search for the fund name to get all the transactions in one place and after a few minutes a 4th placeholder appeared-- and the correct cost basis appeared in the Portfolio view!!! I tried replicating this behavior with a 2nd fund, but no luck.

In any case, I removed the Add Shares and the Remove Shares (saying yes to the question of deleting downloaded transactions) and the Cost Basis is now correct. I hope this will stick. I did this for each fund.

So far so good!

Unfortunately, none of these changes changed the Cash Balance for this account which is way off. I'm still trying to find a way to adjust the Cash value on brokerage accounts without making an arbitrary adjustment that will be off again the next time I do a download. Any ideas for this problem?

Review your investment registers for placeholders which may be the culprit; They are in gray towards the bottom of the registers

John_in_NC

Thanks John, your hunch is (basically) correct!

I dug deeper and see there is more than one transaction for each fund. Looking at the fund in my screen shots, I now realize that within a few days there is a Buy, an Add Shares and a Remove Shares. The Buy and Add Shares are for the same number of shares and the Remove Shares is for double the number of shares. Also, I did a search for the fund name to get all the transactions in one place and after a few minutes a 4th placeholder appeared-- and the correct cost basis appeared in the Portfolio view!!! I tried replicating this behavior with a 2nd fund, but no luck.

In any case, I removed the Add Shares and the Remove Shares (saying yes to the question of deleting downloaded transactions) and the Cost Basis is now correct. I hope this will stick. I did this for each fund.

So far so good!

Unfortunately, none of these changes changed the Cash Balance for this account which is way off. I'm still trying to find a way to adjust the Cash value on brokerage accounts without making an arbitrary adjustment that will be off again the next time I do a download. Any ideas for this problem?

Since TD Ameritrade prepares the transactions for download, I suspect you will be having to always babysit this account. Who knows why it has an Add and Buy for the same lots, and then a remove which would, in essence, zero everything out. But, at least you are figuring out what is going on.

As for Cash Balance-normally there is a placeholder that balances things out, but, here again, you have to figure out what Toronto Dominion is doing. Some brokerages do all sorts of odd things like reporting cash available, but also sending the same cash funds held in a MM as security Buy/sell transactions (doubling things) You will have to figure this out.

Money obviously has to get into the account to purchase your securities, so that should be pretty simple to figure out. With a freshly setup account, the placeholder should take care of this. But, don't be so adverse to the concept of making a cash adjustment-there are valid times you have to-just be aware of why you are versus blindly entering one.

Here is a good example: I transfer my bi-weekly paycheck contributions over via a transfer to my 401k account, and this matches all the buys so the balance is $0. But, what about the annual company match that suddenly pops in? There is no cash to cover the buys, so the balance goes negative. In this case, manually entering a cash adjustment to $0 things out is the correct way to do things.

BTW-your blanking things out in your screenshots didn't really help in this example ;-) In all reality, it doesn't matter.

cbarnold

Quicken for Mac 2020. I have a count with TD Ameritrade and on buy and sales of securities the cost bases are not include that gives the sale as all income. I have contacted Quicken and the tec could not give an answer as a way to take account of the cost.

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Value of shares is incorrect on Capital Gains and Tax Summary reports (updated title).