There is a FAQ for moving from one brokerage to another, but in the case of Ameritrade to Schwab a may be a bit more complicated as the download transaction method is different for Ameritrade than what Schwab is now using.
Here is the FAQ:
And here is a link to a prior discussion on the changeover:
According to Schwab the next movement of accounts from TDAmeritrade to Schwab will no occur until September, so we have some time yet. Perhaps Quicken will get their act together in the meantime and develop the step by step process. The change from Direct Connect to EWC+ will, I'm sure, present some surprises.
@Tom Young my Ameritrade accounts are scheduled to move to Schwab over Memorial Day weekend.
For the various folks wondering how to make the changeover, I would fools the reference FAQ.
The Help file explains these buttons and their use:
Click the Deactivate button to disconnect your account from online services. You can then make changes to Account Details such as the routing number or the Customer ID.
Click the Reset Account button. Quicken will automatically deactivate and reactivate the account to fix any errors. Your data remains intact and you can access the account at any time.
What is the difference between deactivating an account and resetting an account?
Deactivate fully disables your connection with the financial institution, stopping all deactivated accounts from communicating with your financial institution or downloading transactions. You should avoid doing this unless it is recommended as part of error-specific troubleshooting.
Reset is like a “soft deactivate”. It resets the connection without making you re-enter your login credentials or go through Deactivate/Reactivate. You will still need to enter your password to reset your account if it is a Direct Connect account and the password is not stored in the vault. You should usually try this before using Deactivate.
@mshiggins
"my Ameritrade accounts are scheduled to move to Schwab over Memorial Day weekend. "
I guess I misunderstood the Schwab rep I spoke to about this. I came away with the impression that the first "test" transition event had already happened in May with the main transitions scheduled for September, but it looks like I was wrong about that and that you've been selected as one of the early Pioneers.
“You can always tell who the pioneers are because they have arrows in their back and are lying face down in the dirt.”
My Ameritrade account is transferring this weekend as well. But since I’m using QW2017 which no longer has transaction downloading, I don’t have to do any updates to the online services. I’ll check the holdings on the Schwab site once the transfer is complete and if all looks well, just enter a reminder transaction denoting the change of brokerage.
I have a TD Ameritrade account moving this weekend, too. I have existing Schwab accounts and one thing that I wanted to mention for any new Schwab users - it will be necessary to authorize data access when setting up/reactivating an account in Quicken. I changed my existing setting so that Schwab will "automatically link new Schwab accounts in future," and so hopefully this won't be one more issue for me to deal with next week.
@GermanBlueRam thanks for the tip. Even though I no longer download transactions to Quicken, I do have an aggregation site I use with my financial planner. So I will have to update my Schwab settings to allow that connection.
So on Monday morning, May 30, I tried the "keeping the same account" approach per the FAQ. It didn't work quite as I had hoped, but I'm up and running again. I had already deactivated the TD Ameritrade account over the weekend of the transition. On Monday morning, I tried to reactivate the account with Schwab and was directed first to schwab.com to allow access Quicken. After that, Quicken asked me whether I wanted to add a new account, or link it to a an existing one. Unfortunately none of the "existing ones" was the TD Ameritrade Quicken account. So I added a new account in Quicken.
In the new Quicken account, I deleted everything that had downloaded on Monday, along with placeholder transactions created during the setup process. I then went to the "Enter Transaction" dialog in Quicken and transferred the cash balance and "all securities" to the new Quicken account.
Everything reconciles to the online balances now, but it took a little more effort than I had expected. I noted this afterwards from the FAQ and I wonder if I should have somehow "changed the financial institution information" first instead of merely deactivating the TD Ameritrade account:
This basic approach becomes deactivating the online service for the existing account, changing the financial institution information, and the activating the account for the new financial institution (FI).
@GermanBlueRam
"I wonder if I should have somehow "changed the financial institution information" first instead of merely deactivating the TD Ameritrade account"
YES. It's only after deactivating an Account from downloading that the Financial Institution and Account Number fields open up for you to change them.
@GermanBlueRam I am not finding where that 3rd party access page is when I log into my Schwab account. Can you point me to its location?
@gfvalvo I just did this this morning. These steps assume that you have already opened an account with Schwab.
This is as close as step by step I can get. Everybody's setup is different. Hope this helps.
On the Schwab site Profile > Security Settings > scroll down to "Third-Party Access to Account Information" to see what's enabled:
But i don't think the actual "authorization" page itself is necessarily available to you by simply logging into Schwab's site, that page comes up as part of the process of linking a third party into Schwab.
ADDED: It turns out that I was wrong. Do Profile > Account Access > Give Account Access to start the process, apparently.
I think that not deleting the account number in step 4 likely caused step 8 to not work the way that I wanted (Quicken did not offer to link to the existing account, only to Coinbase and some other accounts that have never been electronically enabled). Glad I'm done, nonetheless. Transferring the shares and cash to the new account was easy, and the cost bases moved over fine. 👍️
I followed @Snowman's steps and converted over my two TDA accounts without any major issues. I did have several Schwab transactions that were shown as "Match", which I simply accepted. Others were "New" and for those I manually scanned the account register and found existing TDA matches for every one of them. So, I just deleted those duplicate Schwab transactions. Thank you, Snowman, for the excellent help.
