symbol for corporate bonds

Lauren Babus

The symbol box for a security can be used for the stock symbol, a mutual fund symbol and the CUSIP for a municipal bond but the screen won't let me enter a CUSIP number for a corporate bond.  I don't see any logic to this.  Is there a way around this?  Thanks. 

miklk

I do not know why it is like that BUT if you really want to add it:

Tools: Security List
Find the Bond you want to edit
Click Edit to the right of the name
Click the TYPE to change to Other (instead of bond to allow edit of Symbol field as you want)
Enter the  CUSIP 
Change the Type Back to Bond
Click OK

I have not seen any situation where this needs to be done as even where you don't see the CUSIP , it is actually stored elsewhere when matched as you can see if you click Other in the edit security screen. 
Also, I have done the above and have not seen any negative results either as security stayed matched etc..

Lauren Babus

The symbol box for a security can be used for the stock symbol, a mutual fund symbol and the CUSIP for a municipal bond but the screen won't let me enter a CUSIP number for a corporate bond.  I don't see any logic to this.  Is there a way around this?  Thanks

miklk

I do not know why it is like that BUT if you really want to add it:

Tools: Security List
Find the Bond you want to edit
Click Edit to the right of the name
Click the TYPE to change to Other (instead of bond to allow edit of Symbol field as you want)
Enter the  CUSIP 
Change the Type Back to Bond
Click OK

I have not seen any situation where this needs to be done as even where you don't see the CUSIP , it is actually stored elsewhere when matched as you can see if you click Other in the edit security screen. 
Also, I have done the above and have not seen any negative results either as security stayed matched etc..

Lauren Babus

Thanks for that work around.  I could understand if it wouldn't let me enter the CUSIP for any type of bond but this really defies logic!

mshiggins

Lauren Babus said:

I could understand if it wouldn't let me enter the CUSIP for any type of bond but this really defies logic!

From C. D. Bales:

You are not being prevented from entering the CUSIP; you are being prevented from entering the Ticker "Symbol". 

A CUSIP is NOT a ticker symbol. The value you enter in the "Symbol" field of a bond is not a CUSIP to Quicken ... it's just a ticker symbol ... and not a valid ticker symbol at that, since bonds do not have ticker symbols.

[Still, in my opinion, you should not be prevented from putting a value in the ticker Symbol for any Quicken security (see below).]

As I noted earlier, a user can never enter a true CUSIP in Quicken; only Quicken can do that. While Quicken can store CUSIP numbers, the Quicken CUSIP field is read-only.

If you download investment account data, and any of the securities you download have CUSIP numbers, you can see their CUSIP ID's (as suggested earlier in this discussion) by Editing the security in the Security List and clicking the "Other Info" button in the Edit Security Details dialog. There - if the security has a CUSIP and you have downloaded that security from your financial institution - you will see the value of the "CUSIP ID" for your security ... not the value of the ticker "Symbol".

[As I recall, there is one reason to want to enter a value in the Quicken security "Symbol" field, even for securities that have no ticker symbol: it has to do with the ability to recover security prices and needing a ticker symbol to insure that the prices for a given security can be identified. But you certainly did not say that was your interest; and even if it was, you would not need a CUSIP ID to accomplish that - any unique value in ticker symbol would do the trick.]

Lauren Babus

Thanks!