What are best practices in entering investment accounts?

kkeltonnc

I have used Quicken for a lot of years but have not found an accurate way to tell how much cash has been invested vs the value of the account. For instance what I have been doing is transferring money from my checking to an investment account. Then I've entered in the transactions from the statement. I would think that the cash amount would be the amount that I transferred over but it entering in the buys or sells or whatever seem to change the cash amount so that it is not the amount that is being invested. In other words I want to be able to see how much I have transferred into the account. But then be able to have the total number of shares of the investment and see it's value.

Rocket J Squirrel

Quicken has an investment statistic called "Amount Invested". This is the total amount ever invested in a security and never decreases unless you sell all shares. You can add this statistic to a Portfolio View and get a total at the bottom.

For more information, go to Quicken Help and search for "investment terms". Amount Invested is documented there. Read the documentation carefully; this statistic may or may not be what you are looking for.

Valderi

For exemple: Normally, if you want to transfer 100$ from your bank account to buy one share, you have to go to your investment account et choose "Buy - Shares Bought" and at the bottom left, under "use cash for this transaction", select "from" and select your bank account. 
Your account's cash balance will be at zero because you spent your cash to buy a share.

If you want to I want to be able to see how much you have transferred into the account, you should use one of an investing report. I hope it is what you're looking for.

Rocket J Squirrel

Quicken has an investment statistic called "Amount Invested". This is the total amount ever invested in a security and never decreases unless you sell all shares. You can add this statistic to a Portfolio View and get a total at the bottom.

For more information, go to Quicken Help and search for "investment terms". Amount Invested is documented there. Read the documentation carefully; this statistic may or may not be what you are looking for.

q_lurker

I'll suggest you look at an Investment Performance Report limited to or subtotaled for the account in question.  That report includes a column for "Investments" that should at the beginning only cite cash added into the account and bee what you are looking for -- The account began at a $X value, you added investments of $Y value.  It ended the period at $Z value.  If you happen to take some money out, that too will be reflected.   

As your investments change, there may be some circumstances where Add Shares (and Remove Shares) come into play (spinoff and mergers of stocks, class conversions of mutual funds, and some other transactions).  Those 'Adds' will make an appearance in the Investment column and may fog up the info you seek, but in total and properly managed, the bottom line performance percentage will not be skewed.

Note that this report is for the applicable period.  It will not show that before this period you put in $1000 as cash; only at the beginning of the period, the account was worth some amount.  To see what you put in over the life of the account you need to get the report for that full period.  At that point subtotaling by year can be helpful as shown below: