Why can't I set the share price on a dividend reinvestment in Q2019 like I can in Q2007?

barryi

Migrating from Q2007 to Q2019 Deluxe.
In Q2007, on a dividend reinvestment I would enter the number of shares and price. Quicken would calculate the dollar amount. Most of the time the dollar amount would be off up to a few cents, but who cares - what matters most in calculating a cost basis (for a future taxable sale) is number of shares and price.

But in Q2019, I am restricted to entering the number of shares and dollar amount and Quicken calculates the price. Now the price does not match my statement! Isn't this a serious flaw? Isn't it more important to have a dead accurate share price?

J_Mike

Mac has "closed the door" to user errors in entering reinvestment transactions.

Per your statement; "Most of the time the dollar amount would be off up to a few cents,,,,,,,,,". Your method of entering shares and share unit price was generating errors most of the time - as you acknowledge,edge. The errors were in your account cash balance and in the total dollar amount of a transaction.

The proper inputs for Buy, Sell and Reinvestment transactions are the total number of shares involved and the total dollars involved.
The per share price is simply a bit of interesting side information at this point and yes, the resulting share price may differ slightly from that reported by the FI. This is likely the result of routing errors and really of no significance.

A critical use of this information is in tax reporting - capital gains/lpsses. If you look closely at Schedule D, it asks for total shares and total dollars involved. Share price is not mentioned at all and plays no role in computing gains/;osses.

Bottom line - as indicated above - QMac is preventing you from errors. QWin operated as you describe up until a few years ago when it moved to a "safer" mode of entry.

smayer97

Good Question! This is one of the problems identified here:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/19184469/#Comment_19184469

and here:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/19414294/#Comment_19414294

in the discussion thread:
List of Obstacles and Hindrances for Migrating from QM2007 or QWin to Quicken for Mac
for those migrating from QM2007.

After all this time, not sure what Quicken intends to do about this, if anything.

barryi

In Response to J_Mike,
Thank you for your response and I will "roll with it". Schedule D ask for a cost basis which I always took as price*shares. I don't understand why a Financial Institution would report an inaccurate price, so I assumed that was the way to go.
Now we are talking round-off error reporting issues, so again thanks.