Setting up old investment accounts

Koshkaboo

I have recently started reusing Quicken after not using it for almost 2 years. I decided that I would start at 2020 and deleted all transaction before 2020. For most accounts, I was able to download or manually enter transactions back to 2020.

However, I am not quite sure what to do about some investment accounts. I have several accounts from Vanguard. Vanguard will only let me download transactions for the last 18 months. I also have available either monthly or quarterly statements for the accounts.

I am not sure how to best set these accounts up in Quicken to go back to 2020. One reason I want to do this is that for all of the accounts I do have transfers that have occurred from the accounts to my checking account.

Several of the accounts are existing IRAs that exist today. Taxable transfers have been made to my checking account.

One account is a non-IRA taxable account. It was closed in mid-2020 with the proceeds going to my checking account.

Do I just download what I can and then fill in with the transactions (mostly exchanging between funds occasionally or dividends) from 2020 on? The transfers to checking are, of course, already shown in the checking account but not necessarily where it came from.

All of my investment accounts are set up as complete investing although simple would be fine for me except for the fact that I do make regular transactions to checking.

I hope this question is clear. If not, I can try to explain it better.

Sherlock

It is really up to you to decide how accurate and complete you want the data in your Quicken file to be.  If all you want to do is track the positions in the investment accounts, you may use Simple Investing otherwise you should use Complete.  Basically, you're drawing a line at a certain start date, establishing the balance at that date, and maintaining transactions moving forward from that date.  There's nothing that say's each account can't have there own start date.  You may think of sort of like moving an account to a different financial institution.

Koshkaboo

Yes, I understand that it is up to me to establish my start date. I think perhaps I was not clear in my question though.

I have several accounts at Vanguard. All of them have transfers from each account to my checking account during the first half of 2000. My checking account shows receiving that money. Most of the accounts are IRAs where that income in taxable. The other account was a non-IRA which I withdrew everything in early 2020 and closed the account. The deposit to my checking account is shown.

I want to use January 1, 2020 as my start date for these accounts. However, I can't download transactions from Vanguard that are older than 18 months. Therefore, I don't have the transactions from Vanguard except as shown in my monthly and quarterly statements. Should I use the statement data to basically recreate everything?

I am willing to use Simple or Complete. However I do want to be able to show in my checking account that this transaction came from that IRA and this other transaction came from this other IRA and this other transaction came from the non-IRA, etc.

How do I do that? Do I just manually input everything from the statements?

Sherlock

Koshkaboo said:

Yes, I understand that it is up to me to establish my start date. I think perhaps I was not clear in my question though.

I have several accounts at Vanguard. All of them have transfers from each account to my checking account during the first half of 2000. My checking account shows receiving that money. Most of the accounts are IRAs where that income in taxable. The other account was a non-IRA which I withdrew everything in early 2020 and closed the account. The deposit to my checking account is shown.

I want to use January 1, 2020 as my start date for these accounts. However, I can't download transactions from Vanguard that are older than 18 months. Therefore, I don't have the transactions from Vanguard except as shown in my monthly and quarterly statements. Should I use the statement data to basically recreate everything?

I am willing to use Simple or Complete. However I do want to be able to show in my checking account that this transaction came from that IRA and this other transaction came from this other IRA and this other transaction came from the non-IRA, etc.

How do I do that? Do I just manually input everything from the statements?

Again, it is really up to you to decide how accurate and complete you want the data in your Quicken file to be. 

Regarding income you received in your checking account during the first half of 2000, you may use a deposit transactions with an appropriate tax-line item assignment or you may use the statement data to basically recreate everything.

Jim_Harman

In Complete mode, when you download the transactions that are available, you will see Placeholders that force your current share balances in Quicken to match your online balances. You may have to edit any transfers that are already in Quicken. Quicken's performance and tax calculations will not work correctly with Placeholders, but if this is good enough for you, you can just go forward from there.

If you want Quicken's data to be complete and accurate and there are not too many missing transactions, it may not be much trouble entering them by hand. You should delete the Placeholders before making any Buys or Sells that affect the cash balance of the account.

If you don't care at all about the details of the investing accounts, just the holdings and balances, you could switch to Simple mode.

There is also a middle ground, where you stay in Complete mode and have reasonably accurate data but enter a summary of the missing transactions. Please post back if you want more info on that option.

As always, back up your data file before altering historical transactions.

Koshkaboo

> @Jim_Harman said:
> In Complete mode, when you download the transactions that are available, you will see Placeholders that force your current share balances in Quicken to match your online balances. You may have to edit any transfers that are already in Quicken. Quicken's performance and tax calculations will not work correctly with Placeholders, but if this is good enough for you, you can just go forward from there.
>
> If you want Quicken's data to be complete and accurate and there are not too many missing transactions, it may not be much trouble entering them by hand. You should delete the Placeholders before making any Buys or Sells that affect the cash balance of the account.
>
> If you don't care at all about the details of the investing accounts, just the holdings and balances, you could switch to Simple mode.
>
> There is also a middle ground, where you stay in Complete mode and have reasonably accurate data but enter a summary of the missing transactions. Please post back if you want more info on that option.
>
Thanks. I probably am OK with Simple from an investment standpoint (my investments are IRAs that mostly have index funds) but I understand with Simple you can't show transactions. I do regular transactions to my checking account though.

Thanks for the info about deleting the placeholders. If I end up doing everything from statements I will do that. I need to look and see if it is complicated. Probably not.

Jim_Harman

With Simple investing accounts you can't enter deposits and withdrawals with Categories as you would if you write or mail in a check.

But you can enter transfers to and from Quicken banking accounts or investing accounts that use full tracking by entering the transfer in the other account's register. The cash balance is tracked correctly in the Simple account.