Private Equity, Limited Partnerships and Similar

Question

I found a great article by Quicken CEO Eric Dunn on how he handles non-brokerage types of investments:  https://www.quicken.com/blog/investments-planning-tips/how-eric-dunn-uses-quicken?utm_source=pocket_mylist

My questions relate to these specific comments he made:

Private Company Stocks:

I create a new security of Type “Private Company” (I created a custom Security Type for that) with the name of the company and the security – “XYZ Company PFD A.

Limited partnerships:

I handle these investments by creating a Security in Quicken of custom Security Type “Venture Funds”.

How are custom securities created?  Where do these Custom Securities fit in the account hierarchy?  As of now I have Banking and Investments as major groups with the various banking and brokerage accounts under them.  Do they go in with the brokerage accounts under investment or some type of other asset account? How are they broken out:

Is it:

Private Company Stocks
           Private Company A
           Private Company B
                       Total Private

Venture Funds
           Venture Fund A
           Venture Fund B
                         Total Venture

or:

Private Company A
 Private Company B
 Venture Fund A
 Venture Fund B
                   Total Private and Venture

Thanks in advance for any help!

Nick

Nick0131 · Answer

Jim, Q & Tom,

Many thanks for the answers you provided!  Every time I get an answer from the Power User Group of people, I learn a great deal.  I will take some time and absorb everything here and put it to use in my situation,

Nick

Tom Young · Answer

"How are custom securities created? Where do these Custom Securities fit 
in the account hierarchy? As of now I have Banking and Investments as 
major groups with the various banking and brokerage accounts under them.
 Do they go in with the brokerage accounts under investment or some type
 of other asset account?" 
"Securities", that is ownership stakes where you want to track both your basis and the changing market value of the security, must get created in Investment Accounts.  That's the most straight forward way of handling these things.The Account itself will be a "Offline Account", i.e., not connected to any financial institution.  The most logical choice would be a "Brokerage Account."  You can choose how many different Investment Accounts you want to create.  That is, you could set up an Investment Account for each and every one of these "non-public" securities, create one Investment Account for ALL your non-public securities, or something in between.   Personally I'd probably opt for one Account for Private Companies and one Account for Venture Funds.In the Account Bar and in the Portfolio View you can arrange your Investment Accounts in any order you wish  
You can establish each security either by buying a new security in your Account(s) - you type in the name and Quicken begins the interview process - or you can establish a new security by Tools > Security list > Add Security.  Either approach brings you to the same interview.  
Since these securities are non-public Quicken won't find a match to the name you've typed in, so you'd click the link at the bottom of the "Add Security to Quicken" window to make this a "manual" security.
For the moment you could leave the Security type as "Other", and edit that after the security is established.  The next window after that asks what Asset Class the security fits into and you can choose one of the predefined Asset Classes, leave it "Unclassified", or create a custom asset class.  When the security is established in Quicken you can click on the security name and then click "Edit Details."  That's where you create your Security Type.  (This new Security Type will then be available to you for any other new securities you establish.)

q_lurker · Answer

Security Types are wholly separate from accounts. Types are identified as a security detail. Default Security Types include Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, and several others. When editing a security detail you have the ability to assign a Security Type and to create types beyond the default options (within limits). Various views, reports and presentations allow for customization using types.  But everything is still within the set of investment accounts. 
I haven’t reviewed Dunn’s blog recently, but I suspect he also mentioned (or should have) creating one or more manual investment accounts to hold these non-brokerage investments. In that portion you might have a Private Capital account with several such securities held within it. Or you might have only one such account with all sorts of security types included.