Moving T D Ameritrade to Schwab

Steve Peartree

Not knowing how the end will look for T D Ameritrade account on my downloads, can I use the same account when my info is moved to Schwab this weekend? Or should I start a new account. I think one can update an account but.... to a complete new account?

Mark1104

Here is an idea..... when you do the transfer what **should** occur is a number of 'remove' transactions from Ameritrade and a number of "add" transactions from Schwab post into Quicken. if you want to simply use the same account, just delete all these transactions and then change the name of the Account to Schwab.... I have prefered this approach when I've moved portfolios to different FIs.  That way all the reporting, etc is contained in one account and I don't have to remember over time how this money moved from one FI to another. 

Technically, download all the Ameritrade transactions, then change the account name and connection hooks to reflect Schwab and THEN download the Schwab transactions. \

Steve Peartree

mark1104 - you say: "just delete all these transactions and then change the name..." Are you saying to remove ALL of T D Am and then switch the account name and number to Schwab? I tried to do a download from TD Ameritrade to get the last of it but it's already sending an error message but Schwab won't be available till Tues it said.

Mark1104

correct - the point is you don't want the 'remove' transactions from TD AM or the 'add' transactions from Schwab in your register.  Any other type of transaction (buy, sell, div, etc.) you want to maintain in the register 

Steve Peartree

Mark1104 - I hate to be a dumb **** here but I do not understand what you're saying I should do. If I start a new account and download to it, it will have a balance so I have no idea what to do with the TD A account which will also still have a balance on my Quicken.
If you have time, can you explain step by step what I should do tomorrow? I sure would appreciate it.

mshiggins

Not a dumb question at all. I will be going through this Ameritrade to Schwab transition at some point. What instructions did Ameritrade/Schwab provide regarding making this change?

Steve Peartree

Hi mshiggins - I've not been able to find anything from quicken or Ameritrade about going from one to another. That why I'm about to panic as it will be completed tomorrow and I would suppose I need to have things in place. What I had talked to Mark1104 about was to keep my Ameritrade account in quicken and changing the account name and download information to the Schwab account number to get the updates. I just don't understand the instructions above that he provided. Any help would be appreciated for sure.

mshiggins

My first recommendation would be to wait at least a few days before trying to make the switch. You likely aren’t the only Quicken user getting transitioned this weekend. If there are issues, folks will be posting about it here. Check out any such posts and use them to guide whether it’s time to make the switch or not. 

A few months back, I wanted to know how Schwab handles their cost basis tracking as I was worried about losing Ameritrade’s Gainskeeper feature. I called Ameritrade to inquire. Ameritrade pointed me to this page:

https://welcome.schwab.com/

It did help answer my question about Gainskeeper, but I don’t see anything there about downloading to Quicken. You might want to give Ameritrade a call to inquire about transition instructions for Quicken users.

I do know Schwab transitioned to a different transaction download method, EWC+, a few months back. Ameritrade uses Direct Connect (DC) So that is a likely change that will occur for you this weekend. The Schwab transition from DC to EWC+ was not problem free, just look for Schwab EWC+ posts here to get a sense of the problems encountered. 

One key piece of information about the difference between DC transaction downloads and EWC+ transaction downloads:
- DC is sending transaction data between your computer and the financial institution’s server.
- EWC+ is sending transaction data between the financial institution’s server, Intuit aggregation servers, Quicken Inc aggregation servers, and your computer. 

So your financial data is in the cloud with EWC+. Not sure how you feel about that, but I don’t want my data in the cloud. 

Mark1104

Steve - if you want to maintain the SAME Quicken account, here is how I would do it (and I've done with other FI moves).

1) download the last of your TD transactions. I suspect there will be a number of 'remove' transactions which will zero everything out in Quicken. 
2) Using that SAME account in Quicken, change the name of the account AND the download credentials to Schwab
3) Download your Schwab transactions into the SAME Quicken account.  I suspect there will be a number of 'add' transactions which puts all the balances from TD back into Quicken.
4) Manually delete ALL the 'Add" and "Remove" accounts. They should all net to zero in any event.  You can leave them all in place for historical purposes if you really want (because they all net to zero).  When I've changed FIs, I've manually deleted them because they are 'noise'. 

Be sure to make a backup before you begin.   

mshiggins

@Mark1104 guessing all your price brokerage FI transfers gave been DC to DC. Have you done any DC to EWC+ transfers? If so, any special steps you would recommend?

PKD

There is no mention of Schwab here - your instructions seem to say 1) download the "TD" transactions then 2) change account to "Ameritrade", 3) download the "Ameritrade" transactions. Aren't "TD" and "Ameritrade" both the same company "TD Ameritrade"? Should steps 2 & 3 say SCHWAB?

Mark1104

@pkd - good catch; I have corrected 

LindyR

I am in the same boat. I last updated TD accounts on February 16th, now my seven accounts are with Schwab. I am following this discussion with much interest. I would really like to keep all my accounts in the same Quicken "Account". I have over 25 years of brokerage transactions. I am not a computer whiz at all, so all this talk about using a backup file and all that makes me nervous. Don't get me wrong, I do a lot of backups but have never needed to go to them.
Hoping others will post their successes with this move to Schwab, and soon so there won't be to many transactions to review.

LindyR

The more I look at this the more I think it would be better to just set up new Schwab accounts. I can't download from TD Ameritrade anymore so I will need to remove all the stocks, then when I download from Schwab the stocks are added there. The cash may just be a transfer between accounts. Again, hoping others will post their experiences here.

foliNTEM

> @Mark1104 said:
> Steve - if you want to maintain the SAME Quicken account, here is how I would do it (and I've done with other FI moves).
I followed Mark104's directions and it worked fine. I only had about 30 transactions show up in the 'Downloaded Transactions' area. The ones that said matched, I accepted. The ones that said New, I deleted because all of them were already listed in my register from TDAmeritrade. The whole process only took me about 15 minutes. Also, I did have to enter two 'buy' transactions manually from right around the account transition date. I'm not sure why.

> 1) download the last of your TD transactions. I suspect there will be a number of 'remove' transactions which will zero everything out in Quicken. 
> 2) Using that SAME account in Quicken, change the name of the account AND the download credentials to Schwab
> 3) Download your Schwab transactions into the SAME Quicken account.  I suspect there will be a number of 'add' transactions which puts all the balances from TD back into Quicken.
> 4) Manually delete ALL the 'Add" and "Remove" accounts. They should all net to zero in any event.  You can leave them all in place for historical purposes if you really want (because they all net to zero).  When I've changed FIs, I've manually deleted them because they are 'noise'. 
>
> Be sure to make a backup before you begin.   

foliNTEM

Sorry for formatting - my reply is in the middle of that mess.