Downloading Investment Transactions Involving Exchanges between Two Accounts

GarySeven

When I made an exchange between two IRA investment accounts, following the Download, the SoldX and BoughtX accounts do not correspond.

When I try to change the Sold account to enter the account name that the transfer of shares go, I get a ContribX with no information on shares or prices, etc.

Also, the account I am using for the SoldX does not show up on the account exchange list, yet it is a valid account and I can type in the account name, but then the other side does not make the adjustment and incorporate the exchange.

Very frustrating.

This is definitely a BIG weakness of Quicken for Windows right now. I cannot reconcile the two sides of the exchange, the share amounts are all off, and I have a set of ContribX activities that are not correct.

What can I do?

Tom Young

I'm not really following along with you here. 

Did you actually sell all the securities in one account and then move the cash to a different account, where you purchased new securities?  Or did you transfer shares between two accounts?  A "SoldX" and "BoughtX" suggests the former, but your second sentence refers to a "transfer of shares", and the word "exchange" is frequently associated with some sort of "share" event that doesn't involve cash.  I guess I also don't understand the use of both a SoldX in one Account and a BoughtX in the other.  IF you sold securities in Account #1 using a SoldX action and naming Account #2 as the Account receiving the cash, THEN you should be doing a simple "Bought" action in Account #2; the money is already there in the Account.

I'm also confused about the "following the Download" statement.  Are you making your own manual entries in your Quicken Accounts, or relying entirely on downloads from the Financial Institutions to make entries "for you"?  If it's the latter, understand that it's the Financial Institutions that actually create those entries and Quicken merely accepts them; there's no guarantee that the Financial Institutions actually has made a correct entry.   "Best practices" is to make your own manual entries and, hopefully, the later download of transactions - which you review in the "Download Transactions" area - confirms your entries.  If the Financials Institutions state the transactions incorrectly, you delete the download and go with your own, correct, entries.

If this really was a situation where you sold securities in one account, transferred the cash to a different account and made new purchases in the receiving account, I'd advise opening a backup just before the Download and simply making correct manual entries.

Perhaps posting some pictures of what you're seeing in Quicken would also help to clear things up.

GarySeven

Tom,

What I am describing is a "’share’ event that doesn't involve cash, where I am exchanging shares in one investment for shares in another investment, as a sell/buy set of transactions, both within the same financial institution.

 No cash is involved. I download the transaction from my financial institution (BTW, I always check the shares and amounts afterwards to verify they match what I have in both Quicken and in the institution’s accounts and, as explained below, I always have to “accept” the download but then do extensive manual work to ensure that the transaction is correctly recorded for both sides).

Two entries appear in Quicken, one for the account from which shares were sold, and the other into the account where shares were bought, for the same dollar amount. In prior versions of Quicken (I have been a user for over 20 years), Quicken classifies these, correctly I think, as SoldX/BoughtX transactions except that the account from which the exchange occurred for each has to be renamed because Quicken always gives the name of the same account in which a given buy/sell transaction is recorded in the account transfer box, which contains a very incomplete list of all my accounts.

That is, not all of my accounts are named in the account transfer box (the box in a transaction bounded by square [..] brackets, such as “[Short-Term Bond]”) so one has to manually write-in the account.

 But if a SoldX is modified to indicate the account into which the shares were transferred, it does not appear in the other account, as a corresponding BoughtX transaction (similar to what happens in cash transfers between accounts in Quicken). Instead, that transaction, for some odd reason, is listed as a Contribution for a given tax year, with no information about shares bought or price.

This began only recently with one of the more recent upgrades, because previously I was able to create manual SoldX/BoughtX transactions, which were still very clunky and have been that way for a long time in Quicken (they've never really been addressed even when Intuit still owned it).

By essentially bludgeoning Quicken into submission by manually changing the entries, I ended up removing these Contribution transactions and instead imposed the BoughtX transaction, and then I had to go back into the SoldX account to make sure it is recorded there (and changing the transfer account name manually if it is not in the drop-down list, which it usually is not).

 Extremely clunky, and I do not understand why it does not treat transfers of shares (and amounts) the same as if they were cash transfers in other Quicken accounts (e.g. bank accounts) and why not all accounts are listed in the account transfer drop-down menu.

Any illumination you could provide would be appreciated.

Gary

[Edited for Readability]

Jim_Harman

@GarySeven,

I sounds like the accounts where you you hold these funds are set up in Quicken as Single Mutual Fund (SMF) accounts, i.e. each account in Quicken can only hold one mutual fund, there is no cash balance, and if you look at the Account Details, Yes is selected next to Single Mutual Fund.

If so, is this necessary? I don't see how you could directly perform an exchange like you describe if both accounts are SMF accounts, because there is no way to send the Sale proceeds to the receiving account. If possible I would recommend that you convert at least one of them to a normal account. Be sure to back up your data file before selecting No to Single Mutual Fund, in case it causes some problem.

If the receiving account is a normal account, the SoldX will send the cash to the receiving account and you will do an ordinary Bought there.

Or if the funds are really all in the same account at the financial institution, set up Quicken the same way, with no SMF accounts.

If for some reason you must keep both of them as SMF accounts, I think you should send the sale proceeds to the receiving account via a dummy account that can hold cash.

q_lurker

The comments from @Jim_Harman are exactly in line with my thoughts -- the root of the issue is Single Mutual Fund accounts.

FWIW:  In non-retirement accounts, if you send 'cash' to the SMF account, Quicken has historically translated that "cash in" as a BoughtX transaction.  Perhaps it operated that way also for retirement accounts and IRA accounts in particular.  I have not used SMF accounts so I cannot confirm that supposition. 

Following that line of thought, it is also possible that a recent change to Quicken may have altered that behavior for IRA accounts (or retirement accounts in general).  Perhaps something to do with tracking "cash-in" as contributions was amiss for tax planner purposes (again, only a guess on my part). 

I think @GarySeven has been making extra work for himself for many years though if the FI 'forced' SMF accounts on the user, that is not all his doing.  

I do believe that if the FI does require one Quicken account per fund, that Quicken account does not have to be a SMF account.  By changing the designation, the cash can transfer such that Bought and Sold transactions can be used rather than BoughtX and SoldX.  However, that will not eliminate "contribution to the IRA" aspect.

To avoid that aspect and still keep the one account per fund setup, the user would need to transfer the security from one account to the other, then sell the transferred security and buy the desired security in that receiving account.

Overall, I concur with the recommendation of @Jim_Harman to use a single account for this FI and IRA account if at all possible.

GarySeven

I greatly appreciate the comments of Jim_Harman and q_lurker, because you folks have hit upon probably the main reason for my difficulties involving exchanges between IRA funds. I don't think the implications of calling a mutual fund a "single mutual fund" in Quicken was ever explained to me, but it does seem to be the cause of my problems (and I do not think it is due to my financial institution as they are simply passing along transactions and balances). Still, it does not explain the Contribution entries and I suspect q_lurker is correct in linking this to the more recent updates. I hope that Quicken is listening because they need to look at these Contribution entries and they also need to work on the investment exchange list so that it reflects all of one's accounts, not just a subset of them, when one is using SoldX/BoughtX for exchanges between accounts. And assuming my accounts are all normal (non-SMF), I am hoping that a SoldX transaction in one account will now be linked to a BoughtX transaction in another account, for exchanges between IRA accounts.

Thanks everyone for their help, I really appreciate it!

Gary

q_lurker

"I am hoping that a SoldX transaction in one account will now be linked to a BoughtX transaction in another account, ..."

FWIW:  I just attempted, between regular accounts in QW2017, a SoldX in one account, then editing the XIn created in the receiving account to make it a BoughtX.  The process worked with the SoldX in Account A staying connected with the BoughtX created by edit in Account B.  The edit needs to be done carefully to maintain the transfer account specification. 

The process cannot happen automatically, since Quicken cannot know which security (if any) should be bought in the receiving account. User input is required.

The same process worked between two non-SMF IRA accounts.  I've made no investigation of this with respect to Tax Planner actions and behavior.

My process was:

1. Create a SoldX transaction in Account A transferring the proceeds to Account B.  That creates in Account B an XIn transaction (regular account) or a ContribX transaction (IRA account).
2. Edit the XIn (or ContribX) transaction to make it a Buy Shares transaction specifically keeping the :Use Cash option as the original Account A specification; the XIn or ContribX transaction becomes a BoughtX transaction.  .
3. Save the edited transaction.  

Again, this is QW2017 I am working with, so maybe I am just confirming what you know used to be possible.  

 

GarySeven

Interesting, because I've been doing this for a while. Recall that the two sides of an exchange transaction come in to Quicken via a download from my FI. When the transactions come in they go into the correct accounts but the transfer account specification is in the name of the same account, not the other account, and the entries are automatically identified as SoldX and BoughtX. Theoretically, the transfer account specification should reflect the other account involved in the transaction. This is what I am hoping Quicken can eventually do.

Thanks again for your insights and help with this.

q_lurker

"Recall that the two sides of an exchange transaction come in to Quicken via a download from my FI. When the transactions come in they go into the correct accounts ..."

Meaning your FI is tied in on your setup of one account per fund.  It might help to know the fund family.  I know Vanguard used to set it up either way; others required that setup.

"... but the transfer account specification is in the name of the same account, not the other account, ..."

How is either the FI or Quicken supposed to know the "other account name".  The FI can't because there are no requirements on how the user is supposed to name accounts.  Quicken can't assume it is any particular account. 

" ... and the entries are automatically identified as SoldX and BoughtX."

IMO, the FI is reporting to Quicken a Buy or a Sale,  Since your setup in Quicken is (I believe) as SMF accounts, Buy means it has to be BoughtX, Sale means it has to be SoldX.  No way to know the transfer account, so use the holding account. 

"Theoretically, the transfer account specification should reflect the other account involved in the transaction. This is what I am hoping Quicken can eventually do."

And that "other account" is what I am saying has to be user supplied information that Quicken can't reliably establish on its own. 

If you are so inclined, you might choose to access and review the OFX logs through Quicken's Help.  I think what you'll find is that the FI is reporting all the transactions on an account-by-account (fund-by-fund) basis.  The fact that you are selling $X of Fund A and buying $X of Fund B may be separated by a multitude of other information.  I believe Quicken takes those in likewise.  Then at some point the user's own acceptance steps need to come into play.    

I suppose a matching algorithm could be developed to identify that the dates and $-amounts correspond, so SoldX/BoughtX should relate, but I am not convinced that would always apply.  In my case, I might sell $500 of Fund A and buy $200 of Fund B, $200 of Fund C and $100 of Fund D.  Does that mandate three separate SoldX transactions?  I do not see an easy process here.  What might sound simple, may not be.  

Jim_Harman

All this would be much simpler if you were not constrained by the limitations of SMF accounts. Unless there is some reason these must be SMF accounts, I recommend you explore converting them to normal accounts.

If you have a backup from before recent downloads, you could try it  by restoring that, converting the accounts to non-SMF, then downloading to see what happens. 

GarySeven

Hi, I did change all my accounts removing the SMF. I'll wait for the next instance of doing an exchange to see if that helps, since I have the accounts set up properly now and do not want to do something to change that situation. Regarding q_lurker's comments, transfers in Quicken occur seamlessly for credit card and bank accounts, where the receiving and sending accounts are clearly identified. I'm not sure why Quicken cannot do this, especially when the FI (in my case T Rowe Price) sends the account IDs and information for each side of the exchange.

Bruce Anderson

Having just moved my accounts to T Rowe Price I'm finding similar issues with mutual fund exchanges. I think my future approach will not be exchanges but a sell/buy transaction. It means I might not have those funds invested for a couple of days but it will eliminate automatic update errors and manual reconciliations.