How to move RRSP account to Personal Retirement group on Account List?

Susan Tennier

In the Account List there are 6 sections:

Personal Spending
Personal Savings
Personal Credit
Personal Investment
Personal Retirement
Personal Asset

When I go to an account and click Edit and on the Display Options tab, I can select from a drop down the Account intent:

Spending -> moves the account to the Personal Spending group.
Savings -> moves the account to the Personal Savings group.
Asset -> moves the account to the Personal Asset group.

There are 6 groups but only 3 account intent options. Therefore, once you have moved an account that was originally Credit, Investment or Retirement to another group, you cannot move it back.

I had an RRSP in the Personal Retirement group and moved it to the Personal Savings group by selecting "Savings" on the Account intent drop down. But when I attempted to move it back to the Personal Retirement group, there is no choice in the drop down for that.

I chatted with Quicken support and they said I have to create a new account and start over now. That seems a bit ridiculous? I am a long time Quicken user and have 10 years of history on this account. This is messed up. Can anyone help? Is this a flaw in the program? If so, can Quicken please fix?

I am using Quicken Deluxe 2020 R25.22 Build 27.1.25.22

Frankx

Hi @Susan Tennier,

Sorry to hear you are having problems with your Quicken file.

Do you happen to have a recent backup file (from before you changed he "intent" of the account mentioned above)?  If so, that will likely be the best way to proceed.  You can restore from the backup and that will put the account in the "correct" group, but then you'll need to update the file for transactions/activity since the backup was made.

If not, then my question to you would be - How important is it (to you) that the account appears in the "correct" Intent group?  Truth is, the group has no effect on the value of the account or in your ability to continue to use the account as you have in the past.  I understand that it may appear in a different place on a report that you use, but unless that is a significant problem it may be best to leave it where it is because I suspect that Q Support may be correct that you cannot "undo" that change.

And as a final thought - the process of setting up a new account (with the correct "intent") may not be all that onerous, since you should be able (after you setup the new account) to do a "cut & paste" of all transactions (for the 10+ years) in the old account into the new one.

Let me know if you have any follow-up questions or if you need more specific instructions on the potential transaction transfer process.

Good luck!

Frankx

Chris_QPW

From what I can see the bug is in fact that they let you change the intent, at least when I compare it to what the US version does.

Your Canadian RRSP account would be equivalent of the US 401K or IRA.

In the US version when you setup a retirement account type you can't change the intent.

They are grouped under Investing/retirement.

Here is a retirement account in the US version.

And here is a regular investment account.

And last a savings account.

This falls under that request people make to change the account types.  Some conversions make sense, like changing an investment account to a retirement account.  Others don't like changing a checking account to an investment account.  The transactions are completely different and can't be converted.

I'm not exactly sure everywhere they use the "intent", but I can certainly see that if they leave them completely open like yours there can be places like in reports where they might be mixing investment transactions with non investment transactions or retirement accounts with non retirement accounts that don't make any sense.

Frankx

Hi @Susan Tennier,

Sorry to hear you are having problems with your Quicken file.

Do you happen to have a recent backup file (from before you changed he "intent" of the account mentioned above)?  If so, that will likely be the best way to proceed.  You can restore from the backup and that will put the account in the "correct" group, but then you'll need to update the file for transactions/activity since the backup was made.

If not, then my question to you would be - How important is it (to you) that the account appears in the "correct" Intent group?  Truth is, the group has no effect on the value of the account or in your ability to continue to use the account as you have in the past.  I understand that it may appear in a different place on a report that you use, but unless that is a significant problem it may be best to leave it where it is because I suspect that Q Support may be correct that you cannot "undo" that change.

And as a final thought - the process of setting up a new account (with the correct "intent") may not be all that onerous, since you should be able (after you setup the new account) to do a "cut & paste" of all transactions (for the 10+ years) in the old account into the new one.

Let me know if you have any follow-up questions or if you need more specific instructions on the potential transaction transfer process.

Good luck!

Frankx

Chris_QPW

From what I can see the bug is in fact that they let you change the intent, at least when I compare it to what the US version does.

Your Canadian RRSP account would be equivalent of the US 401K or IRA.

In the US version when you setup a retirement account type you can't change the intent.

They are grouped under Investing/retirement.

Here is a retirement account in the US version.

And here is a regular investment account.

And last a savings account.

This falls under that request people make to change the account types.  Some conversions make sense, like changing an investment account to a retirement account.  Others don't like changing a checking account to an investment account.  The transactions are completely different and can't be converted.

I'm not exactly sure everywhere they use the "intent", but I can certainly see that if they leave them completely open like yours there can be places like in reports where they might be mixing investment transactions with non investment transactions or retirement accounts with non retirement accounts that don't make any sense.

Susan Tennier

Thank-you @Frankx & @Chris_QPW for your replies.

@Frankx

A restore from back up may have been a good option initially but I have done too much work since then and so reverting to a back up now would lose all of my recent work.

If I set up a new account with the correct "intent", unfortunately Quicken would not allow me to "copy and paste" the transactions from my old account to my new account. It seems the accounts must be in the exact same section in the Account List for "paste" to be enabled. Quicken also does have the option to export and import transactions. Manually entering them would be way too tedious. These limitations in Quicken are frustrating.

@Chris_QPW

Thanks for your screen shots!

On the Canadian version, my retirement accounts, investment accounts and savings accounts have 3 intent options:
Spending -> moves the account to the Personal Spending group.
Savings -> moves the account to the Personal Savings group.
Asset -> moves the account to the Personal Asset group.

My MasterCard that has the intent options:
Credit -> moves the account to the Personal Credit group.
Liability -> moves the account to the Personal Liability group.

@Frankx @Chris_QPW

Really all I wanted to accomplish was for my accounts in the Account List to be grouped in a way that makes sense on the Home Screen.

Personal Spending -> goes to the top of the "Banking" section on home screen.
Personal Savings -> goes below the line in the "Banking" section on home screen.
Personal Credit -> goes below the second line in the "Banking" section on home screen.
Personal Investment -> goes in the "Investing" section on home screen.
Personal Retirement -> goes below the line in the "Investing" section" on home screen.
Personal Asset -> goes to the "Property & Debt" section on home screen.
Personal Liability -> goes below the line in the "Property & Debt" section on home screen.

It is a rather tedious as you can see to accomplish a simple organizing task in Quicken.

The workaround I went with is:

My house/property was the only thing in the intent group "Asset" and so in the Display Options, I selected, "Keep this account separate". That way it doesn't show in the total, which I don't really want it to anyway.

Then I moved my 3 registered accounts to the intent group "Asset".

Lastly, when adding a new Retirement account, the selection of financial institutions seems to be extremely limited to just 3 financial institutions (screen shot attached). Not sure if I'm missing something here, but I deal with BMO Private Banking and I don't see that option anywhere. So I am forced to set up all of my Retirement and Investment accounts to "enter transactions manually". If you skip the question about adding a ticker and create the account without any security holdings, it goes correctly to the "Personal Retirement" section on the Account List which shows up below the line in the "Investing" section" on home screen. As you mentioned @Chris_QPW there is no "intent" drop down. I suppose my Retirement accounts must have grandfathered into that section somehow from a previous version of Quicken. After I moved them to another "intent" group, I discovered there is no easy way to move them back.

Thanks for your replies and the info!

Chris_QPW

Even if you could use copy an past in an investment account you couldn't select more than one at a time.  But you should be able to move the transactions between the two accounts with a relatively new function they have added (at least it is in the US version), "Move Transactions".

Backup before you try this since people have reported for some cases it didn't work properly for them.

Go to the "old investment account" and select the setting/gear icon, and you should see Move Transactions.