401(k) Rollover in Quicken Mac

Question

The company I work for was recently acquired, and as part of the acquisition I needed to roll my old 401(k) with Principal into the new company's 401(k) plan with Fidelity. What is the best way to record this in Quicken? I entered "Remove Shares" transactions in the old Principal account with the old mutual fund as the security, then marked the account as closed (Quicken added a small adjustment due to a really small leftover share balance of 0.000029 shares--most likely due to rounding differences between Quicken and Principal's website). Do I just need to create "Add Shares" transactions in the new Fidelity account with the new mutual fund as the security?

Austin@ · Answer

Thanks for the suggestions @Frankx and @Jon. I think I figured out the best way to handle my situation (although I'm still very new to this stuff, so hopefully I'm not way off). The Transfer Shares option didn't seem to work in my case since the the shares in the old 401k were with one security, and the shares in the new 401k were with a different security. I ended up changing the "Remove Shares" transaction I had added in the old 401k to a "Sell" transaction so it removed all shares of the old security and created a corresponding cash balance in the account. Then I transferred the cash balance from the old to the new 401k. The "Buy" transaction that Fidelity downloaded then zeroed out the cash balance from the transfer. Now the old account/security has no shares or cash balance, and the new account matches the share balance and cost basis on the Fidelity website. Thanks again for the help!

Jon · Answer

The other way to do it would be to transfer the shares. You can re-open your old 401K account in Quicken (just right-click on it & select "Reopen"), delete the "Remove Shares" transaction, and then add a new transaction selecting the type "Transfer shares". If you elect to transfer all the shares from your old 401K to the new one, it will create multiple "Add shares" transactions in your new 401K - one for each security purchase in your old 401K. The purchase dates & prices will be carried over to the new transactions which should maintain your cost basis.
You also have the option to transfer only a portion of your current 401K, in which case you can specify which lots you want to draw shares from.Offhand I can't think of a reason you would need the cost basis for securities inside a 401K, unless it's just for comparing fund performance. It's not going to change how the withdrawals are taxed.

Austin@ · Answer

@Frankx Thanks! As far as you're aware, is there any way to preserve cost basis in a situation like this?