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Inactive for years; how to zero investment accounts and start over?

Snuffy

Retired in 2014, stopped updating the Quicken investment accounts a few years later, tracked them with Excel. and later combined all investments under one financial manager.
Would like to move my investments back to Quicken:
1. How do I zero out the balances of the former financial managers, as well as the current one?
2. How do I start over and get up to date with the accounts with the current financial manger?

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Accepted answers

Jim_Harman

One thing you could do would be to mark the old investing accounts as Separate and Hidden. That way the data will still be in your file in case you want to refer to it but it will not affect your reports and net worth.

To do this, click on the gear at the top right of each account and select Edit Account Details. Check all 3 boxes on the Display Options tab. If the accounts are set up for downloading, go to the Online Services tab and disable them. I do not close accounts because that is irreversible.

Then you would create new accounts for your current brokerages.

You can hide any Categories you no longer use. I would not delete them if they have any transactions that use them, because then those trnsactions will become uncategorized.

Snuffy

Thank you, Jim!
That would be a perfect solution: no lost data while hiding balances of deleted investment accounts, as well as out of date categories. Want to avoid lost data that would results from deleted categories.
Much obliged!

All comments

UKR

Did you continue to update your bank and credit card accounts during the time frame where you didn't update the investment accounts in Quicken?
Is there a huge gap in transactions between then and today for all your accounts?
If there is, it might be best to abandon the current Quicken file and start with a fresh new Quicken data file as of 12/31/2022 and only load transactions for this year (To start a new file select File Menu / New Quicken file)

Snuffy

Thank would indeed be a solution IF somehow I could somehow copy and paste my payee names and category structures that have been developed over the years.
Is that possible?

Snuffy

UKR, thank you for responding.
Please forgive my partial response to your question.
All other accounts are up to date w/ the exception of the investments - never understood placeholders.....
The Tax Summary is critical with annual prep of tax returns.
I have two decades of data on Quicken and, like most users (I assume), often compare current finances w/ prior years....
OTOH there are more than a few old payees, accounts, and categories (including the old investments accounts).
What would be the alternative to a new Quicken data file?

Jim_Harman

Then you would create new accounts for your current brokerages.

You can hide any Categories you no longer use. I would not delete them if they have any transactions that use them, because then those trnsactions will become uncategorized.

Snuffy

Follow-up question, if I may, Jim,
How do I setup balances for the new accounts, since no cash purchases were involved?
Thank you for help for questions I doubted had doable answers.
Snuff

Jim_Harman

Will you be tracking these accounts manually or downloading transactions?

If downloading, Quicken will download transactions as far back as the brokerage supports, then create Placeholders to force the current share balances to match the online account.

If it is a manual (offline) account, the account setup lets you specify what the initial holdings are, usually as of your last statement, and it will create Placeholders to match. With Placeholders, you can go back later on and add the missing transactions.

We can discuss Placeholders separately if you want.

q_lurker

A FWIW comment —

I am not a fan of the Separate account designation. It is certainly not part of my normal setup or operation. Instead of that direction, I would be more inclined to simply Remove all securities and cash taking the account(s) to $0 value. Choose a date that fits your needs.

The primary difference I think is that this way looking back in your history when the data was reasonably reliable, you'll be seeing those accounts as yours rather than Separate. Overall a small thing and a matter of personal preference.

Snuffy

Appreciate the input, q_lurker. It gives a pause, tho I struggle with investments on Quicken. It worked until placeholders started appearing....
The struggle migrated when I combined accounts upon retirement: the abandoned accounts - even with the share transferred out - have had a life of their own, with "shadow" balances continuing to clutter the balance sheet. I feel more comfortable with spreadsheets that I could understand & manage.
Bottom line: at this point the investments reports on Quicken are useless to me (my fault, but nonetheless, useless). It's quite likely placeholders were raise their ugly heads again, and the combined reports would again be unreliable.
Maybe this time I will be better able to learn placeholders now - appreciate the help available here. Worth a try!
Thank you, q_lurker