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using a mutual fund for 2 different accounts & UNIDENTIFIED SECURITY

Nalgas

Hello all
1) I have 2 accounts, a Roth IRA and a regular mutual fund, that have the same fund with the same ticker symbol, obviously. Is it correct to use the same security name in Quicken for the transactions of both accounts? Or should I have a different Security name for each one, with the same ticker symbol? (I assume that Quicken won't let me do that..)

2) I downloaded some transactions into one of the accounts above, and the security name appears as UNIDENTIFIED SECURITY grayed out, so I cannot correct it. How do I correct it? Or do I have to delete the transaction and enter it manually?
Thank you

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Nalgas

EDIT - I fixed number 2 by searching, which I should have done first.
I'm still wondering about number 1, though. Does having the same name in different types of accounts (roth vs regular) matter? It shouldn't, right? A fund has a price, and the type of account should be irrelevant. But I ask for your opinion anyway

Boatnmaniac

@Nalgas - You can use the same security name and ticker for both accounts. I have been doing that for many years and it has worked fine. By doing it this way you get the benefit of seeing the total allocation of this security in all of your holdings and you can see how much this security makes up of your holdings for each account.

Some people do change the security name and/or ticker but I do not recommend doing that as it can cause issues with quotes downloads and/or security transactions downloads. Plus you lose easy visibility of how much this security you hold in total and that is important in assessing your portfolio investment risk and compliance with your overall investment allocations strategy.

Nalgas

Boatnmaniac said:

@Nalgas - You can use the same security name and ticker for both accounts. I have been doing that for many years and it has worked fine. By doing it this way you get the benefit of seeing the total allocation of this security in all of your holdings and you can see how much this security makes up of your holdings for each account.

thank you Boat.
But how do I then direct the correct transactions to the correct account during download? By specifying the account number in the account properties? And linking it during that initial download screen?

Boatnmaniac

(Edited to rephrase. Edits are in italics.)

@Nalgas - Do you download via OSU? If so, when you set up your accounts for download, Quicken will enter the Financial Institution (FI) and account number information into your Account Details during the set up process. When you then run OSU, your broker will include transactions for each account in the downloads and they will be automatically matched by Quicken to the appropriate accounts. So your transactions for Account #1 will automatically go into Account #1 and those for Account #2 will automatically go into Account #2.

If you download manually (called Web Connect or WC), you will likely need to do that twice...once for Account #1 and, again, for Account #2. At least, with all of my financial institutions I am only able to download transactions for one account at a time. The first time you download an account transactions file from the FI, Quicken will set up your Account Details with the FI and account number information. After that initial download account set up, your future WC downloads should automatically go into the correct accounts. If they don't, Quicken should prompt you what to do with the downloads and you will need to Link each download to the correct account.

In both types of downloads, there is data in it identifying both the financial institution and the account number. Quicken uses that data to match the downloads with the appropriate accounts in Quicken. It's an easy matching process for Quicken.

In other words, a security is just a security, just like a category is just a category. Neither the security nor the category determines which accounts the transactions are to be imported to. And just like categories can be assigned to transactions in any number of different accounts, securities can be assigned to transactions in any number of different investment accounts.

Nalgas

@Boatnmaniac - thanks for the explanation, and it was very helpful. Yes, I use OSU (not Oklahome State University) to download everything, and I saw where you can point and match each account on the broker's side to your own.

My wife works for UBS, so I am being politely asked/forced to move all of my investments to them so that they can be monitored. We won't go into the why and anything else, as I have achieved inner peace with having to fill out a ton of forms and having to pay a commission now for sneezing; eTrade charged $0 to do anything, and they reinvested fractional shares as dividends. But, we will leave that.
So, much like they are transferring everything to UBS, I'm having to do the same within Quicken, and I continue to debate whether it's better/wiser to:
1) Remove shares from an account and add them to the new UBS account -leaving 2 clean entries of removal and addition. Or
2) Using the "Shares transferred" transaction that uses 1 clean removal entry, but then adds every single lot of shares to the new account. Some of the accounts go back to 2013, so they have a lot of transactions.

Boatnmaniac

@Nalgas - Well, I'm certainly glad you do not use Oklahoma State University. If you did, I'd probably have to delete my responses in this thread and then block you...it would be the only thing a devout fan of University of Texas Longhorns fan could do, right?

Sorry to hear that you are being "politely asked" to move your investments to UBS. In my mind that is highly unethical, especially since it is your wife who works for them, not you. But I had a conversation not long ago with someone else here in Community along the same line with regard to his being "politely asked" to move his investments to Morgan Stanley. I just keep SMH.

Regarding how to do all this in Quicken: You correctly identified the two main methods. They both have pros and cons. I've used both and have had some heartburn with both. I've used both and have had some heartburn with both.

Remove/Add Shares: Nice and clean historical delineation of when the shares were at eTrade and when shares started to be held at UBS. This is mostly likely the process that will be used by eTrade and UBS (and how they will download the transfers to Quicken) but you'll then need to also enter your securities cost basis for them manually in your UBS account (if tracking cost basis is important in how you use Quicken).
Transfer Shares: Nice and clean for tracking cost basis but you then lose that clean historical delineation.

There is one other option which I've found to be clean for both historical delineation and for cost basis reporting: Sell all your current holdings at eTrade, transfer the cash to UBS and then execute buy transactions with UBS for whatever securities you want. The added benefit for doing it this way is that eTrade wanted to charge me about $80/account for transferring my shares to Fidelity so I saved on that cost. By selling all of my shares and transferring the cash it cost me only a 1X $49 fee (I had 3 accounts at eTrade). I also ended up saving some sell transaction fees at Fidelity which would have been incurred for selling some mutual funds that they don't normally broker. For me, the 3 accounts were retirement accounts so there were no tax implications for doing this. I might not want to do this with a taxable brokerage account, though, because the tax hit might be hard to swallow. Just another option for you to consider.

q_lurker

I continue to debate whether ...

If at all possible, I take the third option -- to convert the existing account to be a UBS connected account. That is, disable the existing connectivity and re-establish it as connected to UBS instead. The shares do not transfer at all. Now that only works if there is a one-to-one account to account relationship.

My second choice is your option 2 so that I keep holding basis and date acquired status correct.

Nalgas

q_lurker said:

I continue to debate whether ...
If at all possible, I take the third option -- to convert the existing account to be a UBS connected account. That is, disable the existing connectivity and re-establish it as connected to UBS instead. The shares do not transfer at all. Now that only works if there is a one-to-one account to account relationship.
My second choice is your option 2 so that I keep holding basis and date acquired status correct.

Lurk - thanks a lot, and why didn't i think of this before?? Geez. It's clean, and eliminates the need to have so many accounts, hidden or otherwise. My example: My stocks were with Sharebuilder years ago, they were bought by Capital One, and then eTrade bought the Capital One broker; I have 3 accounts for that, of which 2 were hidden, and the eTrade account was the active one. Damn.

@Boatnmaniac - I did not go to OSU, but it was the first acronym I thought of as a joke. With you being a Longhorn, we'll move on.

Yes, let's stay clear of the ethics behind the request to move and monitor my activity. Sure, she could get a hold of information that would help me invest, I guess, and that's what the compliance department is clinging to. I hate it, it has cost me money, will cost me more money, and I have no choice. So, the process has started.
Yes, eTrade charged me a $75 transfer fee for moving the stocks to UBS, and I learned that by seeing the transaction after the fact. Oh well.

I see that I have 3 options for doing this, and I mention my concern. The cost basis of any purchase will be important any time that an investor sells something whether it's now, in a year, or at my retirement in 25 years or so. I imagine that at age 70 or so, when I go to sell stock of something that I might be holding on to since 2013, I will need to look up what those shares cost me. I know that there are different methods for that answer (FIFO, LIFO, average), so I will turn to Quicken 2040 (ha) to look that up. And that's why I lean towards the Shares-transferred method. Of course, I can remove and add, and the history of the purchases will reside in both the hidden old account and the new one. In 2040, I can unhide the Sharebuilder, Capitalone, and eTrade accounts, and look up the prices paid.
Will I really care by then what they cost, and simply just use an average for my tax return?? We'll see. I'll start a new thread in this community then.

Thanks a lot guys. I appreciate your answers a lot. Q-lurker's option of renaming and reconnecting sounds like a real clean way, and I can add comments to the account's properties

Boatnmaniac

@Nalgas - Yes, @q_lurker 's suggestion is another great option that many have used successfully. Overall, it's probably the easiest and fastest way of setting up UBS in Quicken. I haven't done that with investment accounts but I have done that with credit cards (when a card gets compromised and gets replaced with a new one). When all is said and done, it really just boils down to personal preference.

Nalgas

@Boatnmaniac - the last question for today. UBS lumped all of the non-retirement things together - stocks and mutual funds. Would you create 2 Q accounts for them (UBS Stocks & UBS Mutual funds)? Or would you lump them together?
I know that quicken can obviously handle it, but I'm just curious. There are 3 funds, and 14 stocks, so a separate one might be visually better perhaps???

q_lurker

Nalgas said:

@Boatnmaniac - the last question for today. UBS lumped all of the non-retirement things together - stocks and mutual funds. Would you create 2 Q accounts for them (UBS Stocks & UBS Mutual funds)? Or would you lump them together?
I know that quicken can obviously handle it, but I'm just curious. There are 3 funds, and 14 stocks, so a separate one might be visually better perhaps???

One account at UBS should mean one account in Quicken. That is the (only) practical way to make downloads and account reconciliations make sense.

If you choose to, you can set up portfolio views or saved reports to see the separations more clearly. One of the features in portfolio views is grouping by "Security Type" which rather naturally creates a visual separation between stocks and mutual funds.

Boatnmaniac

@Nalgas - I agree 110% with @q_lurker ...all in one Quicken account. That is how UBS will download so you want to be aligned with that.

BTW, I'm not sure how well Quicken could handle splitting it up into different accounts. At a minimum you would end up doing a lot of manual work to try to get and keep all the accounts balanced and keeping them balanced so the totals of your accounts in Quicken equal what UBS shows. I cringe just thinking of what the reconciliation process would be like.

Nalgas

alright
this is the last question.
My 401k has pre and post-tax contributions. At present, all transactions download into 1 account, but I wonder if they should be separated/identified somehow.
What's a good way to do this? Or do I just keep it as is?

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @Nalgas

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to ask your question, although I apologize that you have not received a response.

To answer the "How" of your question, I would consider using tags to differentiate between pre and post-tax contributions.

https://www.quicken.com/support/how-do-i-tag-transaction

I hope this helps!

-Quicken Tyka

Nalgas

Quicken_Tyka said:

Hello @Nalgas

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to ask your question, although I apologize that you have not received a response.

To answer the "How" of your question, I would consider using tags to differentiate between pre and post-tax contributions.

Thank you Tyka
Unfortunately, if I have to go in to each download and manually categorize the roth transactions, that will be very tedious and manual.