Trouble with Investing Names in Portfolio

Ron

I have set up two separate IRA accounts for my wife and me at one Investment house - TR Price.  Under each account we both have the same security with the same ticker symbol, although they are different with different dollar values under different accounts.  I set up accounts and down loaded holdings, etc from the website.  These are single mutual funds - not brokerage accounts.

After downloading I renamed the security accounts to distinguish the two accounts, lets say A and B.  Problem - when I update securities, or try to assign Investment Categories, the A and B names are no longer A and B, they both revert to one name - say A.  If I try and edit the incorrect name, say A to B in Security Details, both security names revert to B.  Likewise both names revert to the same name that was changed by editing.

Only the security names are incorrect - the values and transactions under the account and security are OK and unchanged.  I have deleted the accounts and securities and re-installed, but no impact.  The only common denominator between the 2 accounts, I can see, is the ticker symbol. 

This has been a very frustrating problem, so any help would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Bob_L

@Ron What you are seeking is something I have done for many, many years, i.e. have the same real world security assigned to two different securities in Quicken in order to assign different goals to each one.  Doing reports is much simpler in that I typically can select all securities, all accounts, etc. and then filter based on goals. Portfolio view group by goals also works perfectly.

FWIW,  my guess is that the goals by security feature pre-dated downloading which is how things have gotten to where they are now.

Downloading is doable, though it does require manual intervention. The downloaded security will always be the one that is “linked to online security”.  When it comes down, I simply select it in the downloaded tab  to put it in the register.  Then I edit that transaction and change the security to the name I want, save it, and then delete the transaction in the downloaded transactions tab. After hitting done, I then get the confirmation that my holdings match those of the FI. (To make the Edit really easy I
Include the account number at the end of my security name.  The search function in the edit security dialog will find the number string anywhere in the name so it only brings up those securities I have named for that account.)

From to time I get a warning about security name changes ,etc. and I choose the option to do nothing.

UKR

You do not need to keep a single security held in separate accounts separate by creating new security names.

Quicken can very well handle the number of shares you own in each account and keep it separate from the other.

As far as Portfolio views are concerned: If your view shows the holdings for both accounts mixed together ... simply change the selection of "Group by:" to Accounts. That will show you how much you have grouped for each account.
Looking at printable reports, the same sort / group by account selection needs to be made.

Ron

I understand the Group by Accounts option, but I want to group by Investing Goal so that I can see the different securities broken out by Roth IRA and IRA for both my wife and me. 

I am at a loss as to why Quicken would not allow this breakout when downloading security actions. 

I can do this with manual setup and input of transactions without setting up online transaction updates and using only price updates. In this case the securities remain separated under their assigned accounts and Investing Goal.  But I don't want to download transactions manually.

It seems that Quicken should allow the online downloads to work with Investing Goals and keep the securities separated as when first set up.  Also it seems that unique security names could be set up for the same security in different accounts. 

Thanks for responding.

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:
"I understand the Group by Accounts option, but I want to group by Investing Goal so that I can see the different securities broken out by Roth IRA and IRA for both my wife and me."

You say you "understand the Group by Accounts option", but the remainder of your sentence suggests that you don't.

When you subtotal by (group by) account, you will see your " ... different securities broken out by Roth IRA and IRA for both [your] wife and [you]." If the securities in your IRA account have one "Goal" and the securities in your spouse's IRA account have a different "Goal"; subtotaling by account will show each account, therefore each goal, separately.

"I am at a loss as to why Quicken would not allow this breakout when downloading security actions."

It's simple: Your financial institution gives each downloaded security a name of their choosing. The financial institution will use the same security name for that security for every account that security is held in. A given downloaded security name can only be linked to one Quicken security name. 

Likewise:
Quicken does not allow Renaming Rules to give the same downloaded payee a different name depending on which account the download is for. Quicken does not allow the same Memorized Payee name to have a different category depending on which account the payee is used in.

I think the following approaches are unlikely to be available, but:

If your financial institution offers you the ability to choose the security name to be downloaded for each of your holdings (to use a different security name than the one the financial institution assigns), you could use the financial institution's name for the securities in one IRA account and unique security names of your choice for the other spouses' IRA account.

A workaround might be possible, if your financial institution allows Web Connect downloads. You could Save the Web Connect downloads to a file (or a couple of files) on your hard drive; then use something like Notepad to alter the name of the securities for one spouses' account. Then - when you imported the Web Connect file(s) you would be able to link the altered security name to a different Quicken security.

If your financial institution doesn't offer Web Connect downloads, but does offer QIF file downloads, you could deactivate downloads for one of the IRA accounts, and download a QIF file for that account instead. You could then use Notepad to modify the downloaded security name in that file so it would be unique (as above).

Ron

I understand the Accounts view and can live with the security name being the same for all the same security regardless of which account it is under.  Assigning a goal has no impact on the Account view as far as I can tell.   My problem is with the Investing Goal view in which I would like to see all securities with the same goal listed separately under a particular specified goal.  So if I have 4 goals: Wife IRA, Wife Roth, Husband IRA and Husband Roth, assigned to the securities I would expect to see the securities broken out and totaled under each goal. However, Quicken lumps all the transactions for the same security associated with different goals under a single goal.  For example if I have a Security A with Goal of "Wife IRA" and the same Security A (different account)  with goal of "Husband IRA", the two securities get totaled under one of the Goals - either "Wife or Husband IRA".  I don't know how Quicken determines which Goal to total under but that really does not matter. The way I have worked around this for years is to enter the investments manually without downloading transactions.  I can download prices without affecting the position of the securities under their assigned goals.  This is time consuming. I see the Goals designation as not very useful if one wants to download transactions.  Thanks for commenting.

q_lurker

Each security has one and only one investing goal attributed to it.  The goal is user-assigned and remains independent of account.  Because His IRA and Her IRA and the similar Roth accounts are in different accounts (as they should be), I see no value to having goals similarly named as His IRA and Her IRA, etc 

Investing Goals have been in Quicken for decades, but in my view have never quite lived up to the expectations of the user base.  They were originally conceived more along the lines of whether a security was income-producing, a growth play, a value play, or similar.  Using investing  goals for things like College Fund, Retirement, etc. just does work well when the user might want to own the same security for different purposes. 

I would recommend not spending a lot of effort to try to use them in the way you are.  

Jim_Harman

One way to handle the situation you are describing where there are goals associated with accounts rather than securities is to set up an Investing > Portfolio view for each goal and customize each view to include just the appropriate accounts.

For example I have views that I call "Holdings taxable", "Holdings deferred", and "Holdings Roth". Unfortunately there is a limited number of these views.

Another way to do it would be to create and save a customized Account Balances report for each goal and in each report include just the appropriate accounts. You can set up and save as many of these reports as you want.  

There is an Idea post on this topic that you can vote on if you would like to see quicken improved in this area.
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/19704720#Comment_19704720

Bob_L

@Ron What you are seeking is something I have done for many, many years, i.e. have the same real world security assigned to two different securities in Quicken in order to assign different goals to each one.  Doing reports is much simpler in that I typically can select all securities, all accounts, etc. and then filter based on goals. Portfolio view group by goals also works perfectly.

FWIW,  my guess is that the goals by security feature pre-dated downloading which is how things have gotten to where they are now.

Downloading is doable, though it does require manual intervention. The downloaded security will always be the one that is “linked to online security”.  When it comes down, I simply select it in the downloaded tab  to put it in the register.  Then I edit that transaction and change the security to the name I want, save it, and then delete the transaction in the downloaded transactions tab. After hitting done, I then get the confirmation that my holdings match those of the FI. (To make the Edit really easy I
Include the account number at the end of my security name.  The search function in the edit security dialog will find the number string anywhere in the name so it only brings up those securities I have named for that account.)

From to time I get a warning about security name changes ,etc. and I choose the option to do nothing.