How I Exchange fund shares for new Fund shares in the investment module?

Question

I use EJ as my financial adviser on some of my retirement accounts and keep track of those accounts in Quicken. My adviser took a portion of one of my account's fund shares and exchanged them for shares in two other funds to improve my investment. The Quicken Investment module does not appear to have an option to do an "exchange of funds." How do I go about entering this transaction in my investment account on Quicken to keep it current with my EJ account values?

Tom Young · Answer

The word "exchange" is frequently used in the world of mutual funds where one fund absorbs another fund, or your shares move from one class of shares within the same fund to a different class of shares.  The hallmark of the exchange in these circumstances is that the entire transaction is or would be non-taxable if the transaction occurred in an after-tax account.  Quicken does have an "action" for these sorts of exchanges, the "Mutual Fund Conversion" action.*But if your advisor actually sold some part of your investments and then used the resulting cash to buy shares of some other investments, those transactions would be more properly recorded as Sells and Buys.
*The Mutual Fund Conversion action has reportedly resulted in errors when used with a fund using "average cost" to determine share basis.

Jim_Harman · Answer

There is no "exchange" in Quicken investing accounts, you sell one security and buy the replacement.