accounts not showing performance

Woody 53

I have 4 investment accounts - managed by others - I don't need them to be "live" updated - I just want to update monthly or as statements arrive. 

I have entered the initial value as an adjustment (as of 12/30/22) and made adjustments as statements arrive - using investment income as a category (+/- as needed). the total adds up correctly but there is no performance value (it shows $0.00 gain and 0%). I need to be able to get the investments total(s) as well as gain/loss over time. While the total will be correct I would have to evaluate every entry for the year for all 4 investment accounts to reconcile net worth at start of year vs end of year and then include with other assets income and expenses. 

jacobs

I think you're confusing two different things.

You do not need to connect your accounts to download transactions from your brokerages. As I wrote above, I do not; I enter my transactions manually.

Separately, Quicken will download price data for securities automatically. That doesn't require connecting your accounts. It saves you the need to manually enter the closing price of every security every month or quarter or however often you want to see your performance changes. I allow Quicken to download security price data in the background because it's pretty problem-free and saves me time. But if you don't want even security price history to download, you need to use bogus security symbols for each security in your portfolio (e.g. "ZZAPPLE" instead of "APPL", if you own Apple stock). If you do this, Quicken won't have anything to download. But you'll need to manually enter the closing price for each month or quarter that you want to be able to see performance changes.

If you don't want to enter your transactions like dividends and capital gains for investments, you can choose not to do so and simply enter an adjustment transaction to bring the account value to match your brokerage account each month or quarter. If all you want is a monthly or quarterly Net Worth statement, then Quicken's Net Worth report will be accurate if you just enter an adjustment. But you said initially you wanted to track the performance of your investments. Well, you can't calculate the gain on an investment without downloading or manually entering your dividends and gains/losses, because those values are needed to calculate performance.

MontanaKarl

It's a little confusing following your description. It seems you are making the process of achieving your stated goals way harder than necessary.

Nothing is "live" updated in Quicken. Once you have linked all 4 investment accounts, you can click to update as often or as rarely as you desired within reason.

If you entered initial values as an adjustment, then of course you'll have no gain/loss data - as to have that you have to have created "Buy" transactions for each holding with the appropriate basis lot date with a fake cash balance adjustment to wash all of that historical setup to the balance as of 12/31/22 which seems to be when you want to start tracking things. You need the cost basis and the basis date for the holding periods to be computed correctly in Quicken.

You should never have to make adjustments as statements arrive. Doing an update will download all transactions that affect your balances and the result should be exact every time. (That said, Schwab money funds, and fixed income security maturation requires some manual steps to account for things properly. Topics on that elsewhere on this forum.)

There should be no need to make adjusting entries as you describe on a monthly or year-end basis. I just seems you are missing the point of using Quicken to automate all these things for you.

jacobs

I'm also unclear about your description. Are saying you don't have your accounts connected to your financial institution(s) for downloads, and instead enter your updates manually? If so, that's fine. I do exactly that.

But if you want to see investment performance, you need to use the built-in investment transactions in Quicken; if you enter adjustments as a category like "investment income", then Quicken won't report any performance because you haven't reported any purchases, sales, or dividends or gains. So if you are entering things manually, in your investment account, you would want to create a new transaction and select the Type dividends, short-term capital gains, and long-term capital gains — and/or reinvested dividends, short-term capital gains, and long-term capital gains. These transactions look like this in your register:

If you have the correct security symbol entered for the securities, Quicken will automatically download the security price history, so combined with your transactions, you will be able to track your investment performance over time.

Does this make sense?

Woody 53

While both responses make sense - it's not what I wanted. Both instances mention the need to automatically update securities. If the software will not give performance information unless connected why do they advertise that you don't need to link the accounts?

My needs are simple - I do NOT want to connect accounts (which according to Quicken isn't required.)

I need to track income, expenses, and net worth for probate purposes. That includes cash accounts, investment accounts, real estate investments, etc. On the investments I would like to enter the initial value, add updates as needed/received - to get fund total and performance over time. Its pretty simple math

I guess its back to excel

jacobs

I think you're confusing two different things.

You do not need to connect your accounts to download transactions from your brokerages. As I wrote above, I do not; I enter my transactions manually.

Separately, Quicken will download price data for securities automatically. That doesn't require connecting your accounts. It saves you the need to manually enter the closing price of every security every month or quarter or however often you want to see your performance changes. I allow Quicken to download security price data in the background because it's pretty problem-free and saves me time. But if you don't want even security price history to download, you need to use bogus security symbols for each security in your portfolio (e.g. "ZZAPPLE" instead of "APPL", if you own Apple stock). If you do this, Quicken won't have anything to download. But you'll need to manually enter the closing price for each month or quarter that you want to be able to see performance changes.

If you don't want to enter your transactions like dividends and capital gains for investments, you can choose not to do so and simply enter an adjustment transaction to bring the account value to match your brokerage account each month or quarter. If all you want is a monthly or quarterly Net Worth statement, then Quicken's Net Worth report will be accurate if you just enter an adjustment. But you said initially you wanted to track the performance of your investments. Well, you can't calculate the gain on an investment without downloading or manually entering your dividends and gains/losses, because those values are needed to calculate performance.