Is there a column to show commissions fees?

Toxalot

I am comparing investment performance totals in Quicken to those reported by Questrade as a way to "reconcile" the account between quarterly statements. And nothing matches up.

Questrade offers Total P&L that used to match Amount Return until they reimbursed a transfer fee. They count that reimbursement as account income (unrelated to any security) rather than a deposit. To me, a reimbursement is not income. I think they are reporting this incorrectly. But even if I want to match that, I don't see a way to duplicate that in Quicken.

Questrade also offers Open P&L which is Amount Return minus commission fees. If there were something in Quicken that reported that or something that reported the fees separately, then I could have matching totals.

Jim_Harman

The Investment Transactions report has a column for Commissions.

A good way to record investing account fees is to set up an expense category like "Acct fees" and enter the fees using the MiscExp action and the category you have set up. Leave the security name blank in the MiscExp.

You can get a total of the fees by running an Investment Transactions report and selecting just the category you have used.

Using a relatively new but poorly documented  Quicken option, you can also control whether amounts charged to this Category are treated as Returns or whether they just reduce the ending balance of the account. If you edit the Category in the Category List, you will see a checkbox "Affects investment performance".

If the box is unchecked (the default), amounts assigned to that category are included in Returns in the Investing Performance report and do not hurt the account's performance. If the box is checked, the fees are not included in the Returns column of the report and hurt the calculated performance because they reduce the account's ending balance.

Jim_Harman

The Investment Transactions report has a column for Commissions.

A good way to record investing account fees is to set up an expense category like "Acct fees" and enter the fees using the MiscExp action and the category you have set up. Leave the security name blank in the MiscExp.

You can get a total of the fees by running an Investment Transactions report and selecting just the category you have used.

Using a relatively new but poorly documented  Quicken option, you can also control whether amounts charged to this Category are treated as Returns or whether they just reduce the ending balance of the account. If you edit the Category in the Category List, you will see a checkbox "Affects investment performance".

If the box is unchecked (the default), amounts assigned to that category are included in Returns in the Investing Performance report and do not hurt the account's performance. If the box is checked, the fees are not included in the Returns column of the report and hurt the calculated performance because they reduce the account's ending balance.

Toxalot

Thanks. I'll have to dig deeper at another time. I haven't been using the investment reports, just the Investing > Portfolio tab. I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around all the different values and what's included in them.

I think what it comes down to is that I don't like how Questrade reports the totals. They don't include commission fees in book value, so book value doesn't equal cost basis. Yet everything I've read says those two should be equal. It's a registered account so doesn't affect taxes, but the way Quicken does it makes more sense to my brain. And I don't want to do separate transactions for fees that are only a few cents each.

Then Questrade included a transfer fee reimbursement as account income. In my mind, it's actually a deposit. Bank deducted it from my deposit and Questrade gave it back. To me, that's the reversal of an expense, not income.

I think I'm just going to have to live with the fact that Questrade and Quicken report different things that I can't compare directly. As long as account balance, number of shares, and market value all match, I will use Quicken values to gauge investment performance.

BK

I don't mean to take away the main question of this post.

Hi @Jim_Harman , Your response to this post reminded me of a forgotten question I had long ago:

Why does register's MiscExp Action show up as Cash Action in the Investment reports?

I recognize that the expense is typically a cash transaction, and for consistency I would've expected the Action field's data in the report to match that of the register.