Support corporate acquisitions/mergers and divestitures/spin-offs in Quicken (Mac) (4 Merged Votes)

M C Crockett

The Capital Gains/Losses reported by Quicken (Mac) in its Tax Schedule Report and investment account Portfolio pages are incorrect. This is the result of not supporting the Corporate Acquisition (Merger) and Corporate Divestiture (Spin Off, Split Off) investment transactions that have been present in Quicken (Win) for years.

As an example, Dow and DuPont merged last year to form DowDuPont. As a result of Quicken (Mac) not supporting corporate acquisitions and the OFX Specification not providing a way for a brokerage to report the merger that would preserve existing lots and adjust their cost basis, I have lost all information about my prior holdings. This also changes my holdings from long term to short term.

This year DowDupont spun off new Dow and Corteva businesses and renamed DowDupont to DuPont. Information regarding the 12 lots and their cost basis that I now hold in each of these businesses has disappeared from Quicken due to the lack of support for corporate acquisitions and divestitures.

I know that the absence of support for corporate acquisition and divestiture transactions is not an issue for Quicken users that invest only in mutual funds. However, there are "Old Fogies" like me that still buy and sell individual stocks that need support for these transactions.

I will grant that without support for corporate acquisition and divestiture transactions does accurately report investment account balances. The Tax Schedule Report, however, is totally useless without support for the transactions.

When will support for corporate acquisitions and divestitures be available in Quicken (Mac)?

jz

Well said. I have the same question. Quicken for MAC needs better support for investments; this is a good example.

jsp

Actually, two PIMCO bond funds recently merged, so yes - even Mutual Fund holders have this issue. *Please* quicken, trying to manually manage this by lots to track capital gains is killing me.

Gabrielle

Months later....I have the same question. I just got off a chat with support and was told that this was an important feature but no timeline yet when this might be added. When I asked for a workaround I was told 'sorry, can't help you'. Come on this is basic stuff - get this done already!

Mike H

Contacted Quicken Support today (11/12/2019) for help with this topic (how to record corporate buyout) and was told that this feature is [still] not available in Mac version (but IS in Windows version). Support could not provide any help with any sort of workaround either...
I reiterated that this is a pretty basic function and this capability should be incorporated into a future Quicken Mac version. (Support suggested that I submit this feature request via the Quicken Community...)

Snowhound

Just called and they still have no information on this. They can't even confirm if it's being looked into. Like others have said, this is basic stuff. Love my Mac but I'm really missing my old Quicken for Windows. I know I could virtualize, but I don't really want to do that for only a single program.

Concordman

merged from Would it not be Nice if QM could Process Stock Spin Offs

First I would like to say that there has been a substantial improvement in QM over the past few years. It would be nice if the development team could focus on updating the investment module in QM. 

I bemoan this limitation today as I had to deal with a spin off in one of my Stocks. There was no option to select Spin off under actions so I had to do the manual thing.  

I downloaded the transaction from the Fi , in my case  WFA, the transaction with the security name change worked but was unable to recapture any cost basis info. What I decided to do in order to maintain the Cost basis for each lot was to update the name of the previous security to the new one. This maintained the cost basis info in the portfolio view but alas all the lots in the register  understandably now show the new security. I made a note under the Account setting showing    the dates of the original lots & the date when the new Stock began trading. 

This is one of those few instances where a placeholder showing up might have provided an opportunity to enter the lots manually, but not  sure if it would have impacted the original security history in the register.

Any way that is my short opine for the day.

jeremysard

As of April 2020, "Corporate Acquisition" is still not an option in the transaction list. Is this outright discrimination against Mac users at this point?

TLFinGA

Agreed. The UTX/RTX/OTIS/CARR spinoff is another recent transaction that a lot of users are going to have to deal with recording.

Concordman

Fortunately , in my case I purchased TRX after the spin off so no issues on this security

jhealer

As of May 2020, neither "Corporate Acquistion" nor "Mutual Fund Merger" are options in the transaction type list. Is this going to ever be fixed?

The product should be platform agnostic now, it /is/ 2020 you know.

Snowhound

It's now been a year since we asked for this feature to be added.....crickets. This feature has been part of Windows for (dare I say) decades! As jhealer said, "the product should be platoform agnostic now," and I couldn't agree more.

jacobs

@Snowhound  Unfortunately there are probably several hundred (maybe more) feature requests/enhancements that differentiate Quicken Mac from Quicken Windows. Some have been on the wishlist for nearly six years now since modern Quicken Mac debuted; many have been crossed off as the developers make progress. There's no way for anyone to snap their fingers and just add all these capabilities; they took many years to develop on the Windows platform, and although that creates a map of sorts, it doesn't make the work go much faster. It will still be quite a while until all the features people have asked for will be added.

Chris_QPW

Snowhound said:

"the product should be platform agnostic now," and I couldn't agree more.

That was never a design goal for Quicken Mac.

"Feature parity" is, but certainly Quicken Mac was designed to run on a Mac and only a Mac.
And it is impossible to run Quicken Windows on a Mac because the old third party software it uses for its database and such isn't available on the Mac.

And if the original design goal was to create an "Quicken to replace them all", that would be even farther back in getting new features because it is harder to make an application that runs on multiple platforms.

jz

I thought it would help if I describe more precisely what I am looking for. As M C Crockett said, I would like Quicken for Mac to handle Corporate Acquisition (Merger) and Corporate Divestiture (Spin Off, Split Off) better than it does now. I can handle these events manually with Quicken today, but it very involved and error prone, especially if multiple lots are involved. I'd like Quicken for Mac to help.

Currently, I use "Add Shares" and "Remove Shares" to handle these types of events. For all of these events, I first use a single transaction to remove all my holdings in the original investment.
- if there is only a single new investment remaining: I add shares of the new investment to preserve my cost basis: I specify the date acquired and cost of the original investment but with the corresponding number of shares in the new investment. I add shares separately for each lot of the original investment.
- if the the event ends with are are multiple investments outstanding: I add shares of the new and/or old investments to preserve my cost basis. I allocate the original cost basis proportionally to each of the remaining investments. I add shares for each original lot for each investment outstanding: I specify specify the date acquired, the proportion of the original cost, and the corresponding number of outstanding investment shares. This even works for spin offs: you add back the original investment but with a reduced cost basis; the remainder of the cost basis goes to the spin off investments..

This approach is a nightmare if you use dollar cost averaging, employee stock purchase plan, dividend reinvestment, or you rebalance your portfolio regularly. You can easily end up with dozens of lots of the same investment. Quicken provides absolutely no help allocating the cost basis or number of shares to a particular transaction. I see mergers and spinoffs in my investments a couple times a year and they take an inordinate amount of my time to handle. Please give me some help here.

There is some precedent: Quicken for Mac already handles multiple lots when transferring an investment from one account to another. A similar approach would be great for mergers/spinoffs. The user could enter the before and after investments and the corresponding share ratios, quicken would handle the different lots and the allocations.

I pay yearly for Quicken Premier for Mac. Investment tracking and analysis is a key feature to me (there are plenty of other packages out there that will handle banking). I much prefer Quicken for Mac over Quicken for Windows; its far easier to use. It's sad that Quicken for Windows can handle this type of transaction but Quicken for Mac cannot. This lack is one of the reasons I cannot whole heartedly recommend quicken for Mac to other investors.

jacobs

@jz  That all makes good sense to me, and I wish I could tell you the developers will get to it in time, but it's hard to know whether they're even aware of the issue. Topics like this, which get a fairly low number of votes on this forum -- and this platform generates far less user voting than previous forum platforms Quicken has used in the past -- seem unlikely to achieve the critical mass to be passed on to be read by members of the development team. I hope I'm wrong about that.

Susan Alinsangan

@jz I'm really interested in what you said here:
"I add shares of the new investment to preserve my cost basis: I specify the date acquired and cost of the original investment but with the corresponding number of shares in the new investment. I add shares separately for each lot of the original investment.
- if the the event ends with are are multiple investments outstanding: I add shares of the new and/or old investments to preserve my cost basis. I allocate the original cost basis proportionally to each of the remaining investments. I add shares for each original lot for each investment outstanding: I specify specify the date acquired, the proportion of the original cost, and the corresponding number of outstanding investment shares. This even works for spin offs: you add back the original investment but with a reduced cost basis; the remainder of the cost basis goes to the spin off investments.."

I'd love to try it, but I'm having a hard time following it. Would you mind posting an example using simple numbers? Like if the Acquired Fund is $2/share and Acquiring Fund is $3/share. And what about reinvested dividends over the time you owned the asset?

Thank you!

jz

> @Susan Alinsangan said:
>
> I'd love to try it, but I'm having a hard time following it. Would you mind posting an example using simple numbers? Like if the Acquired Fund is $2/share and Acquiring Fund is $3/share. And what about reinvested dividends over the time you owned the asset?

Unless Corporate Acquisition (Merger) and Corporate Divestiture (Spin Off, Split Off) investment transactions are manually entered, Capital Gains/Losses reported by Quicken (Mac) in its Tax Schedule Report and investment account Portfolio pages will be incorrect.

This example shows how to enter merger transactions in Quicken for MAC and preserve cost basis and lot information for investments. It can be adapted to other transaction types. The example takes advantage of the the “transfer” transaction built into quicken to minimize typing and hand calculation. This greatly simplifies data entry and minimizes mistakes.

Quicken for Windows has support for merger and divestiture transactions built in. Based on experience with the Quicken for Mac Investment “transfer” function, it shouldn’t be a big stretch to provide comparable function for the Mac.

Meanwhile, the procedure in this example should facilitate correctly entry of merger and divestiture transactions as quickly and efficiently as possible.

One2go

@jz Terrific write-up. Thanks for the details!

rvc

The lack of corporate spin-off functionality is extremely annoying. I have used Quicken for many years and the Windows version handled this kind of transaction satisfactory. In the last few years I have switched to a Mac platform and Quicken was the last remaining app that I converted. I hung onto a PC for several years purely to handle Quicken. In 2020 I went so far as to run parallel Quicken/Mac versions to compare. In 2021 I finally went 100% with the Mac version. I was aware of the shortcomings but that does not make it any less frustrating when these transactions do occur. Because they are relatively infrequent I still have to go back and figure out the process every time and check that I am making all the correct entries.
I for one would like to keep this issue alive and continue to push Quicken to commit to this enhancement.

Concordman

Total agreement with rvc,had to deal with spine offs on two occasions, Gardner Denver (GDI) merged with Ingersoll rand (IR) & Arconic (ARNC) spun off into two separate companies , ARNC & HWM..I was able to do the cost basis manipulations manually but it would have been so nice if QM allowed it from a simple drop down as in QW.

jacobs

Thanks to the recent comments in this thread, I see the status of this thread has now been changed to "Under Consideration". That means it will be/has been submitted to the product development team to be evaluated for future implementation. That process can take awhile; they don't mark it as a "Planned" feature until they have not only agreed in concept, but put it on their development schedule for future implementation. But this is progress, nonetheless.

Other Mac users should continue to add examples to this thread of why this functionality would help/would have helped, to give the developers as much understanding of the issue as possible. 

SuperTomcat

I think Quicken is supposed to make keeping track of one's finances easier. Leaving the CORPORATE SECURITY SPINOFF tool out of the mac version either wastes users time or results in inaccurate downloaded data. Why is this just under consideration and not done yesterday? Time to call the ball and get this "WINDOWS EXCLUSIVE" basic accounting feature added for the mac.

JimontheSun

I know nothing about programming but why would having a corporate name change/spin-off feature be so difficult? This lack may eventually make me look for an alternative to Quicken.

slips

I was referred to this thread because I posted the following:
Quicken for Mac has no transaction for a corporate spinoff (apparently available in Windows version--no surprise there). The corporation spinning off typically provides information on the allocation of basis between the spin off and the parent. In a recent transaction, IAC did a spinoff of Vimeo and allocated 68% (rounded off) of the total basis to IAC and 32% to Vimeo. The amount of the Vimeo basis is deducted from the IAC basis and is therefore entered as a Return of Capital. Ordinarily, the Vimeo shares received would be entered as Add Shares. But if you follow this procedure, your cash balance will be screwed up. Unfortunately, Quicken for Mac adds RofC to your cash balance (even though it is not income--see the note on the side of the RofC transaction). Therefore, in order to maintain the correct cash balance in your account, you have to record the spun off stock (in this case, Vimeo) as a Buy rather than Add Shares. Technically, the Buy date should be the original purchase of the IAC stock if you want to be precise for capital gains purposes.
Quicken should fix this. It's not as if stock spin offs do not occur with some frequency, and I assume that other Q for Mac users might have investment portfolios.

And it should be noted that this thread has been going on for more than three years with no action by Quicken.

mtimkovich

I want to add my voice to the above chorus. With all the SPAC mergers happening, this missing functionality is becoming a frequent pain [removed - profanity] for a lot of users!

qknmac

Another vote for adding "Spinoff" as a corporate action type for tax-free spinoffs. The algorithm is straightforward, the code is already implemented in Q/Win, and there's no good workaround available in Q/Mac. I've used the Remove Shares/Add Shares method to preserve basis date; @jz's refinement (outlined in his August 2020 post) is a notable time-saver if you have multiple lots.

K.

I have a stock-for-stock exchange transaction (more precisely, it's the exchange of mutual fund shares to a different share class). I like jz's idea, but this is a long term holding over many years with dozens of lots - it'll take too long to rebuild, so I've come up with another workaround: I treated this exchange as a stock split, entered the exchange ratio, then subsequently changed the name and ticker to the new holding. It appears that all of the historical lots have been properly adjusted so my cost basis history is correct. All I need is a memo on the date of the exchange reminding me when the name of the holding changed. So I believe I can recommend this for a stock merger but not a spin-off.

jz

> @K. said:
> I like jz's idea, but this is a long term holding over many years with dozens of lots - it'll take too long to rebuild

I like your idea for the situations it works for.

Where it doesn't see my second comment; the one with the attached document that shows a detailed example with the transfer function and a dummy (temporary) account. No rebuilding required.

jokitusky

Why wouldn't K's idea work for a spin-off? Seems it would get the cost basis correct for the stock that is spinning off.

K.

I don't know how it would work for a spin-off. In my situation, I had a single security, pre and post transaction. By using the stock split approach, I retroactively adjusted the share numbers and price of every lot. The only flaw is the name of the security if I look historically, but that's unimportant, since I know what it was and what it is now. But in a spin-off, you go from owning one security to owning two - I do not believe treating that as a split would work.

Let's face it: Quicken for Mac is a great for many things, but as an investment management tool, it's quite limited