Investment account -- changed brokerages now how to "clean up" old account

Andy Pulkowski

I recently moved an IRA that I have been tracking in Quicken from my bank to a online based investment mgmt firm.  I want to be able to keep all of the history for the OLD account (so Net Worth over time will still work).  New Firm moved the assets in-kind and then sold it so when I link the New Firm account all of the transactions are matching fine in Quicken.  BUT Old Firm immediately closed the account with the transfer so Quicken still shows all of my holdings in the old account.  So I have two accounts now with about the same $$ but I need to "zero out" the OLD account but maintain all of the history.  

What's the best approach to handle this????

John_in_NC

In the old account, you can simply manually add a "Remove Shares" transaction for each security to bring the share balance to zero. You also would have to manually add an Adjustment transaction if you had a cash balance. Doing this for all your securities and cash would zero out the account. (Note: depending on your particular situation, adding such a transaction might create a placeholder that offsets your transaction-post back if you see adding the transaction doesn't zero out the balance.)

This will preserve the cost basis and lots in the old account, but keep the balance zero. (I don't know how much history the new online firm provided and if that will conflict with your older data-you will have to determine that.)

NotACPA

One more piece of info needed ... is the old account in Q still connected to the old Firm?
If NOT, then just
1) take a backup2) rename that old account to the new name,3) delete the newly created account4) connect the old account (now, the only account) to the new firm.
By doing this, all of  your account info stays in one place.  After all, to you it's all one account ... it's just the brokerage that changed.

Andy Pulkowski

NotACPA - QW HBRP 2019 said:

One more piece of info needed ... is the old account in Q still connected to the old Firm?
If NOT, then just
1) take a backup2) rename that old account to the new name,3) delete the newly created account4) connect the old account (now, the only account) to the new firm.
By doing this, all of  your account info stays in one place.  After all, to you it's all one account ... it's just the brokerage that changed.

Thanks!!  This makes sense.....seems like it should work fine....walked thru the steps but must be something going on -- looks like it worked until the end when it shows the new balance about 50% higher.  Wish that was the case...but it didn't handle the portfolio rebalance right that the new firm did.  Restored the backup -- might look at the remove shares option but with at least 50 holdings that's going to be fun.  Really want to keep that historical Net Worth so gotta figure something out.  Using Quicken for Mac -- not sure if that makes a difference

Andy Pulkowski

John in NC said:

In the old account, you can simply manually add a "Remove Shares" transaction for each security to bring the share balance to zero. You also would have to manually add an Adjustment transaction if you had a cash balance. Doing this for all your securities and cash would zero out the account. (Note: depending on your particular situation, adding such a transaction might create a placeholder that offsets your transaction-post back if you see adding the transaction doesn't zero out the balance.)

This will preserve the cost basis and lots in the old account, but keep the balance zero. (I don't know how much history the new online firm provided and if that will conflict with your older data-you will have to determine that.)

Looks like this is going to work the best....just painful since I have about 75 securities in the portfolio.  Thanks much.  

NotACPA

NotACPA - QW HBRP 2019 said:

One more piece of info needed ... is the old account in Q still connected to the old Firm?
If NOT, then just
1) take a backup2) rename that old account to the new name,3) delete the newly created account4) connect the old account (now, the only account) to the new firm.
By doing this, all of  your account info stays in one place.  After all, to you it's all one account ... it's just the brokerage that changed.

Do you have any transfers between the 2 accounts?  That could screw things up.
Or, do you have any transfers into either account from "not these 2" accounts.  Might want to look at those also.
Because if you deleted that "new firm" account in Q, I'm at a loss as to how your holdings (now only reflected in the Old account) can be 50% higher.

Andy Pulkowski

NotACPA - QW HBRP 2019 said:

One more piece of info needed ... is the old account in Q still connected to the old Firm?
If NOT, then just
1) take a backup2) rename that old account to the new name,3) delete the newly created account4) connect the old account (now, the only account) to the new firm.
By doing this, all of  your account info stays in one place.  After all, to you it's all one account ... it's just the brokerage that changed.

Not sure....ended up doing the manual approach and did the remove shares for each.  Took about an hour but it's done.  Hopefully it's not something I'll have to do again for at least a few years....Thanks for your feedback.