New investment transactions aren't triggering a price history entry

Scott Rose

In the old Quicken 2007, there was a very cool feature:

Every time we entered a new investment transaction for a stock purchase or sale, the price history for that stock would update itself with the stock price that was entered for that new transaction.

But in the new Quicken for Mac, it seems like price histories never get updated from entering in a new stock transaction. It seems like price histories can only get updated automatically from Quicken's stock download service — or manually by going into "Windows > Securities > [Double Click on Stock Name] > Price History". These are a lot of steps!

We're entering in investment transactions for cryptocurrencies, so we can't get Quicken to automatically download the prices of those cryptocurrencies. In the past, we could depend on our new transactions triggering the price history additions, but now we have to manually go through sooo many steps to update our price history!

Please allow the price history to be updated from new transactions!

Thanks!
Scott

nhuddleston

I'm all in on this request. I have a number of employer retirement funds that can't be updated from online quotes, so I have to update their price histories manually. Prices paid or received in transactions are more significant to me than any others in the history. Even if manual entry weren't so unwieldy, it's annoying to have to manually update the history with the price Quicken calculates and enters in the transaction.

To beat a very dead horse, I miss the 2007 graphs for individual securities and price histories showing buys and sells.

jacobs

And to beat another dead horse, I really miss the ability to enter security prices for any date directly in the portfolio view. Having to go to the Securities window, double-click on a security to open it, click to change to the Price History Tab, then enter a date and a price, save, close, then move on to the next -- it's just a lot more work than it was in Quicken 2007.

Quicken Anja

Hello All,

The Community Support team regularly reviews long-standing posts and Ideas for relevancy and current interest. This Idea seems to have stalled and we would like to gauge the current interest in this request. 

If you would like to see this idea implemented, please add your vote and a comment explaining how this idea would be beneficial for you. More information, including steps to vote and how to submit your own Ideas for future product features/improvements, is also available here.

Thank you,

Quicken Community Support Team

smayer97

This seems more like an oversight/bug than an idea. But to track this, it should remain an idea and be passed on to the development team. It does not make a lot of sense for there to be a disconnect between transactions and price history.

jacobs

There is still a need for this, as the original post explains, for people entering transactions which do not receive automatic price downloads.

But it;'s a little more complicated than it might appear…

In Quicken 2007, you typically entered the number of shares and the share price, and Quicken calculated the total amount. Because the share price was manually entered, it was accurate to enter this value into the price history table. But in modern Quicken Mac, you cannot enter the share price for a manual transaction; you enter the total cost and number of shares, and Quicken calculates the share price. Because there is always rounding involved, that 6-digit calculated share price might be slightly different than what's reported by a brokerage, which is often truncated to two or three decimal places.  

Here's the complication: in Quicken Mac, a manually-entered share price for a day takes precedence over a downloaded one from the quotes service or a brokerage. But what would be needed here is that a manually-entered share price should take precedence for a day only if quotes are not being downloaded for the security.

I typically enter my investment transactions manually, but download quotes automatically. So on a day when I have a manually-entered transaction and Quicken calculates a share price from the transaction, I do not want that share price to preempt the downloaded closing price. For example, I purchased 417.21 shares of a security on 3/31 for $5,000; Quicken calculated the share price as 11.984372. But the actual close price downloaded in the history table for 3/31 was 11.98. I need 11.98 as the closing price or my holdings at the end of the month won't match my statement. So I think there would need to be a checkbox on each security to specify whether prices are downloaded for the security, so Quicken could know whether the manually-entered price or downloaded price for a day -- should both exists -- be what remains in the price history table. 

nhuddleston

I still have securities for which no online update is available, still want this feature.

I still want the other features mentioned previously, as well: graphs for individual securities, price histories that show buys and sells, and a much easier way to enter prices. 

jacobs

nhuddleston said:

I still have securities for which no online update is available, still want this feature.

Yes, I agree. I was just explaining above why it's a little tricky, because Quicken would need to know which for which securities a manually-entered transaction should enter a price into the price history table for a day versus those securities for which a downloaded closing price should be what's entered in the price history table. For securities with no downloaded quotes, the price calculated from a transaction should be automatically entered in the price history, rather than requiring the user to do this as a separate step. (Although there's an additional wrinkle: if there are multiple transactions on the same day, such as a dividend and a capital gain, the calculated price is likely to be fractionally different for each transaction because Quicken calculates the price per share from the total amount divided by number of shares; should Quicken just retain the price for the last-entered transaction for that day?)

And I agree 100% that entering a price for a security on a date should be easier than the current sequence of selecting the security, opening it to edit, clicking on the price history tab, entering a date, entering a price, clicking Add, and clicking Done; doing this for one security is mildly annoying, but doing it for several securities on the same date is downright frustrating. In the old Quicken 2007, you simply set the portfolio "As Of" date and could then click on and edit multiple security prices for that date. Quicken Mac today could follow that same approach: in a portfolio, set the As Of date, and clicking on a price in the Quote column could allow entering a new price value, for one or multiple securities, with a single click.

nhuddleston said:

I still want other features as well: graphs for individual securities, price histories that show buys and sells

These are separate requests from this Idea thread. 

There appear to be two separate Idea threads for graphing one or more individual securities; if you haven't already done so, jump to one or both and add your vote:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7384359/view-price-history-graph-for-a-security-22-legacy-votes

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7850195/select-securities-to-graph-from-investment-accounts

I'm not sure what exactly you're seeking with "price histories that show buys and sells". Do you want the Price History table to be able to show transactions? I think that's unlikely, since the price history is separate from transaction history. Or are you looking for something like a "security detail report" to see all the activity for that specific security? You can get that by entering the security name in the register Search box, so maybe you're seeking something else? 

nhuddleston

Voted already on one of the other threads, added a vote to the other. Thanks for the links. I chimed in here again in response to Anja’s prompt for an update on interest. 

I haven’t been back to the 32-bit world for a while and have to rely on memory, but as I recall, QM2007 noted where a buy or sell occurred in the security price history (in the list, graph, or both). Seemed like there was an easy way to see lots, too.

jacobs

nhuddleston said:

I haven’t been back to the 32-bit world for a while and have to rely on memory, but as I recall, QM2007 noted where a buy or sell occurred in the security price history (in the list, graph, or both). Seemed like there was an easy way to see lots, too.

Quicken 2007 didn't show transactions in the price list, but they were both easily accessible. If you clicked on a security in the Portfolio window, you could click a Detail button. This opened a window with four tabs:

• Setup info: similar to current Quicken Mac Settings
• Graphs: no current equivalent for a graph of a selected security
• Prices: similar to the current Quicken Mac Price History screen
• Transactions: all transactions for the security, similar to doing a Search for the security in current Quicken Mac 

While current Quicken Mac has all but one of these features, they're scattered in different places and in some cases (Prices) require multiple clicks to get to and open. 

smayer97

QM2007 shows Buy and Sell transactions in the Graph, not the price list.

David Argust

I too have to manually update security prices manually for unsupported securities in a Prudential Account. Having the updated from transactions would be very helpful and reduce a lot of manually double entry of the same information. Exactly what computers are good for....