Can you Merge two accounts in Quicken

Willy85

I am helping someone update from Quicken 2007 to current version. We have ended up with two accounts, one with year to date info and the other with all history data. We would like to merge them. Any suggestions?

jacobs

Well, merging/moving things in investment accounts is definitely trickier!

You can't just move transactions around, because with investments, the order and type of transactions affects. (Picture if you had an account the transactions for security X over a period of time, and you were able to just move in a copy for a share split somewhere int he middle of the time period -- that would affect everything which followed, and would be difficult for the program to know which values to change or not.)

So the only thing you can really do to maintain historical accuracy is to move shares out of one account and move them into the new account, meticulously, transaction after transaction. It's the only way to maintain the correct costs basis. Of course, if you have transactions going back long time, this could be tedious or too big a job to handle manually. So in version 5.11 back in 2019, the developers added some functionality to automate this process. From the release notes:

We've added a new feature that allows you to transfer one security or all your securities from one account to another. By using this feature, Quicken will automatically create Remove and Add Share transactions in the respective accounts and maintain the cost basis information from one account to the other. Add a transaction as you normally would in your investment account and select Transfer Shares in the transaction type to start the process or click on the Transfer Shares button in the Remove Shares form.

I definitely suggest you make a copy of your Quicken data file before you start this, in case things get messed up along the way. 

@Willy85 In your case, I might suggest a possibly simpler approach. You say you have one account with all the historical transactions, and one with just transactions from this year, right? I would disconnect the new account from downloading. then connect the old account to download linking to this existing account. If it downloads the past 90 days of transactions, you should capture nearly everything from this year; you might need to enter a few transactions from early January manually if it gives you only 90 days. If that works, once you have your cash and security balances correct, you can simply delete the other (2021 only) account.

jacobs

Two accounts, but in the same Quicken file, correct?

If this is a "banking" account -- checking or savings account, credit card, cash, etc. -- it's very easy to move the transactions from one account to another. First, save a backup, just in case something gets messed up and you want to start over. Write down the correct current account balance. I'm guessing from your description that the account Are there any duplicated transactions between the two accounts? (You can double click on one to open it in its own window, so you can view both accounts simultaneously.) Also, the new account probably has an opening balance transaction around the start of the year, and you'll want to delete that.  Now, open the old account register, make sure there are no filters, and do Select All (Command-A). Then drag on one of the highlighted transactions over to the new account on the left sidebar. All the transactions from the old account will move into the new account. Once you can see all the transactions there, check for new transactions and let Quicken get your current live account balance; it will create an adjustment if the sum of all the transactions since the beginning of time do not tally to what he bank is reporting.

Once you're sure everything is correct the and accounted for, and you can see the old account has no transactions remaining in it, you can delete the old account (Control-Click on it in the sidebar for the Delete option); you can also rename the surving account the same way if you wish.

If the account involved is an investment account, disregard everything above, because you cannot drag-and-drop transactions between investment accounts. Post back, and we can provide information about how to tackle that task.

Willy85

Thanks but the accounts are investment accounts, please provide the additional information

pactaz

"@jacobs said:
> If the account involved is an investment account, disregard everything above, because you cannot drag-and-drop transactions between investment accounts. Post back, and we can provide information about how to tackle that task."

@jacobs
I'll take you up on the above comment to merge some Investment accounts because so far I've had zero luck. (Quicken for Mac Version 6.1.1 (Build 601.37924.100))>

jacobs

Well, merging/moving things in investment accounts is definitely trickier!

You can't just move transactions around, because with investments, the order and type of transactions affects. (Picture if you had an account the transactions for security X over a period of time, and you were able to just move in a copy for a share split somewhere int he middle of the time period -- that would affect everything which followed, and would be difficult for the program to know which values to change or not.)

So the only thing you can really do to maintain historical accuracy is to move shares out of one account and move them into the new account, meticulously, transaction after transaction. It's the only way to maintain the correct costs basis. Of course, if you have transactions going back long time, this could be tedious or too big a job to handle manually. So in version 5.11 back in 2019, the developers added some functionality to automate this process. From the release notes:

We've added a new feature that allows you to transfer one security or all your securities from one account to another. By using this feature, Quicken will automatically create Remove and Add Share transactions in the respective accounts and maintain the cost basis information from one account to the other. Add a transaction as you normally would in your investment account and select Transfer Shares in the transaction type to start the process or click on the Transfer Shares button in the Remove Shares form.

I definitely suggest you make a copy of your Quicken data file before you start this, in case things get messed up along the way. 

@Willy85 In your case, I might suggest a possibly simpler approach. You say you have one account with all the historical transactions, and one with just transactions from this year, right? I would disconnect the new account from downloading. then connect the old account to download linking to this existing account. If it downloads the past 90 days of transactions, you should capture nearly everything from this year; you might need to enter a few transactions from early January manually if it gives you only 90 days. If that works, once you have your cash and security balances correct, you can simply delete the other (2021 only) account.

mvmcc

Transferring one security to another account doesn't EXACTLY work in terms of the investment returns, roi, gain/losses. It might work if you look at both accounts together in a report, but on the portfolio view, it doesn't work. The new account doesn't represent historical information correctly, just what happened since the date you transferred them.