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Does anybody have a workaround to handle TIPS value in Qmac?

pamela77

Hi, All of my market values in quicken in the portfolio for TIPS are much lower than at Schwab. It appears quicken is not increasing the value over time? It does not seem to be adding the interest or increasing the value with the inflation factor? Does anybody have a work around for this? It is significantly affecting things. Thank you

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Andy Crouch

Unfortunately, Quicken does not have a standard way to handle the inflation factor, and different brokerages give Quicken different information in their QFX files (for example, Vanguard sends an investment position report with the number of shares inflated by the inflation factor, while giving a correspondingly lower price per unit than they show the user on the web interface—Fidelity apparently handles it differently).

I used Vanguard and have concluded that the only way to handle this is to manually override the downloaded price from my brokerage with the price they show me on their website, which does correctly value the bonds as of their current market price plus the inflation factor.

(For the record for others who may have this question, even more confounding is that in some of my accounts, Quicken creates a dynamic transaction to account for the difference between the number of shares Vanguard reports—which is inflated by the factor—and the original number of shares at par value. This has the advantage that after importing downloaded transactions, Quicken does show the correct market value of the security, albeit with a weird number of shares, and the price matches other data sources. But in other accounts, it doesn't do this, even though the QFX data from Vanguard is exactly the same. Quite perplexing.)

pamela77

Andy thank you! I have been trying to find a way to make this work. I use Schwab, and I can see the correct cost per share including the inflation factor there. In quicken if I go into the individual transaction it does have that correct cost per share. However, when you go into portfolio view, is shows the unadjusted price and uses that to create a market value from the number of shares and cost per share. I can go into portfolio view and click on either the name or the price and edit the share price. Do I use the date that we bought the tips or todays date?

Also, there a quite a few tips where we bought some on one date and some on another date but I cannot edit the individual listings, only the total listing. I tried averaging it but my amount was still 400 dollars off. Any ideas on how to handle that?

Thank you so much for responding about this!

pamela77

In addition to the comments above, if I edit and change the price in portfolio view, it changes the market value, not the cost basis. Also, if I try to put in a date from 3 months ago it doesn't respond. My downloaded numbers from Schwab have a transaction with the principle bought, and quicken reflects that, and it seems to be inflated from the "price". However it doesn't agree with the cost basis that comes up when I click on Schwab's cost basis! Any thoughts would be appreciated.

pamela77

OK, after long discussions with Schwab and Quicken - I think we have some answers. Quicken is downloading the correct cost basis amount of principle and takes into account the inflation factor . If I go to Schwab transactions it agrees with quicken. I do a separate transaction for accrued interest.

If I go to Schwab portfolio view and click on cost basis, it does not agree with quickens cost basis. That is because quicken is using the actual amount you paid the day you bought it. Schwab's website is using a calculated amount of principle for cost basis. This calculated amount is derived in part from the inflation factor on any given day and it actually changes day to day. Whatever that number is on dec 31 is the value that the IRS uses for the year.

Quicken puts this cost basis number in the market value column in quicken. There doesn't seem to be any place or any good way that I can find to see or put the market value in quicken unless you manually change the share price (in edit share price) to reflect the current market value.

If you are a buy and hold TIPS person, the the calculated cost basis shown in Schwab and quicken is actually more important because that is the value of your principle in that tips and that is the amount you will get back when it matures. It does change day to day.

Andy perhaps Vanguard works differently?

Any comments on this? Thank you for your input.

pamela77

One correction on the above statement. Everything about Schwab is still correct, but the part about quicken using the cost basis number as the market value doesn't hold. When quicken updates, it will revert to using the price for that day, but not the adjusted value of the principle, so it makes it look like you have losses In the tips. Andy, you said you entered yours manually, but how did you get quicken to hold on to that manually entered number? On my quicken, when it updates, it reverts and overrides the manually entered number that I put in and uses the base unadjusted price for the tips.