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Need Cost Basis column in Investment Transaction Reports

Jerry4

The current Investment Transaction Reports in Quicken Deluxe and Premier do not include a Cost Basis column at the transaction/lot level, and two different Chats with tech support confirm there is no way currently to add a Cost Basis column. Apparently, none of the other investing reports include cost basis at a transaction level. I have asked for this to be submitted as a requirement for a future release. Does anyone else see a need for this information? Does anyone know of a work around?

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mshiggins

Have you considered using the Investing tab's Portfolio view? It's fully customizable to show accounts, securities, and security data at the lot level and includes lot cost basis.

You can print to PDF or paper or "print" to a tab or comma delimited file that can be imported to Excel.

Sherlock

The cost basis in the Investment Transaction report at the transaction/lot level is provided in the Amount Invested column.

Rocket J Squirrel

Sherlock said:

The cost basis in the Investment Transaction report at the transaction/lot level is provided in the Amount Invested column.

Cost Basis is not the same as Amount Invested.

Sherlock

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Sherlock said:

The cost basis in the Investment Transaction report at the transaction/lot level is provided in the Amount Invested column.

Cost Basis is not the same as Amount Invested.

True. The Amount Invested will exclude any additional costs such as commissions. Note: Commission is also a column available in the report.

Rocket J Squirrel

Also, dividend reinvestments contribute to Cost Basis but do not affect Amount Invested. Those show blank entries for Amount Invested in that report.

Sherlock

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Also, dividend reinvestments contribute to Cost Basis but do not affect Amount Invested. Those show blank entries for Amount Invested in that report.

That appears to be a bug to me. The reinvestment should affect the amount invested.

Rocket J Squirrel

Sherlock said:

That appears to be a bug to me. The reinvestment should affect the amount invested.

No. The intent of Amount Invested is to account for the dollars the investor took out of his wallet and put into a security. It has always been this way if you take a look at the online help page.

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Sherlock

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Sherlock said:

That appears to be a bug to me. The reinvestment should affect the amount invested.

No. The intent of Amount Invested is to account for the dollars the investor took out of his wallet and put into a security. It has always been this way if you take a look at the online help page.

I think the help documentation may be being taken out of context.

A dividend reinvestment transaction is taking money out your wallet and putting it into a new lot. It should be equivalent to receiving a dividend and purchasing shares. The short and long reinvested capital gain distributions do appear to contribute to the Amount Invested in the report. I haven't checked the other reinvest actions.

Rocket J Squirrel

A dividend reinvestment is taking money out your wallet and putting it into a new lot. It should be equivalent to receiving a dividend and purchasing shares.

You are entitled to your opinion, but this is not the Quicken Way. If it were, there would be no need for ReinvDiv transactions. We'd all use Div+Buy. Reinvestment transactions allow the user to specify that the dollars used to purchase more shares came from free dividend or other distributed money and did not come from the user's wallet. If your opinion were correct, Amount Invested would always equal Cost Basis. There is a reason they are different, and that is to allow proper calculation of Returns. Free money in the form of dividends and gain distributions contribute to Returns. Wallet money does not. Both contribute to Cost Basis, but free money does not contribute to Amount Invested.

I can't help but think a developer may have read help documentation and thought they were fixing a bug.

I strongly doubt this is the case. The investment quantities have not changed in years, probably not in decades. This is documented, intended behavior which I believe to be correct.

q_lurker

The other aspect I see missing in this discussion is "which Amount Invested". The cited help file information seems to be referring to Amount Invested as presented in portfolio views. This discussion specifically cited Amount Invested in the Investment Transaction report.

Now while one might reasonably expect all the Amount Invested for the report (or available to the report) to add up to Amount Invested presented in the portfolio view, I am not sure anyone has ever tried to apply that logic. I certainly have not. Seems to me, they may be two different calculations and (unfortunately) share the same name.

From day one (or some similar early time), Quicken has always differentiated the purchases from reinvestment (Amount Reinvested) separate from the purchases from independent sources (Amount Invested) in the portfolio views.