Switching banks

Question

I'm moving all my investment accounts (already being tracked in Quicken) to a different bank.

Is there anything special I need to do in Quicken besides setting it up to auto-connect to the new bank? I'm just wondering if I need to tell it that the old Roth account is being continued by the new Roth account (and so on for each of the corresponding accounts).

Chris_QPW · Answer

Actually the "zeroing out" of the old account will probably download just fine if you keep the account open long enough for the download to happen.  But like I said I prefer to keep the full history and the best way to do that is to stay in the same account and delete downloaded transactions that are deleting and adding these securities.

It doesn't really reflect the real world, but neither does the transactions that will be downloaded.  When you transfer securities between financial institutions they won't lose things like the cost basis and the return, but with just what is download you will unless you do something extra manually.

Chris_QPW · Answer

Here is my perspective coming from a Quicken Windows user.

In Quicken Windows there is actually a special command for moving a security from one account to another.  It does a remove of the shares in one account and an add in the other for every security lot, which keeps the cost basis right, but misses on some other information like "return".  But if a person is only moving some securities this might be the only way to do it.

On the other hand if one is moving all securities to another financial institution my preference is to simply disconnect it from downloading from the first financial institution and reconnect it to the second one, and delete any transactions the new financial institution sends to add those securities.

If one creates a new account the problems you are going to run into is first off you will have to enter transactions in the old account to zero it out. And then in the new account you will need to enter transactions to get things like the history/cost basis to be right.  At least in Quicken Windows downloading a new account that has existing securities in it will never have the proper history/cost basis.

Jon · Answer

I don't think I've ever tried to do that, so I don't know what happens. When I move accounts to a new bank I start new accounts in Quicken, I don't try to connect the old account to the new bank. The money or securities are transferred from the old account to the new account.