Understanding how to handle offline investment accounts

Eric N

I started using Quicken last week, one of the brokerages I use doesn't support any of the online connection methods and I can't seem to figure out how I should categorize the transactions on the online side and offline side to make everything resolve properly.

Issue # 1:

Monthly investment from checking → investment account. The checking account is online and pulls transactions. I tried marking it as a Transfer→Investment account. This ends up showing up as a Payment/Deposit transaction in the investment account and adds to the cash holding in the investment account (even though in reality it goes straight to shares). So I go in to manually enter a Buy transaction in the investment account to move the funds from cash to the security. If I put in the total, but leave the #shares blank, expecting it to auto-calculate based on the daily price (mutual fund), it leaves it as 0 shares. If I look up the full transaction details I can make it reconcile, but its feeling like I'm making extra work for myself, but this might be the correct workflow.

Issue #2:

When I setup the offline brokerage account, its listed as a live opening balance that should auto-correct for pre-dated transactions, but since they are also transfers(Payment/Deposit), the predated transactions just blows up the cash balance and messes up the actual opening balance.

Thanks in advance for any tips y'all have.

John_in_NC

Howdy, Eric N:

Handling an investment account offline isn't a big deal, but it just requires a little more work.

Issue 1:

It sounds like you are doing things correctly regarding the transfer & Buy up until the point of entering the price: Even if you have already set up the Security and downloaded price histories, that field won’t be populated with that cost data. Anything you enter in the Buy transaction (either it be the Share amount, or Price/Share) will determine the other field. (And if the cost is different than what was downloaded, your transaction entry takes precedence and )

I suggest you find out the # of shares purchased and cost, and let Quicken calculate the cost. (What you pay for a security can be different than actual closing price.)

Issue 2:

You can manually retype a similar transaction for the opening Balance, and it won’t have that “Magic” auto update status. Then delete the original account creation one. You can also use the Account: Adjust Balance to do similar and choose the option where it isn’t “Live”.

I hope this helps!