Bulk Updating of Share Balance and Price for Simple Tracking Accounts

kevinwalkerca

Currently, to update share balance and price for a simple tracking investment account you must click on the current share balance and price for each security individually. I would suspect that most people are trying to reconcile their simple accounts to a brokerage statement on a monthly or quarterly basis. I have 18 securities in my account. To reconcile I must click on the share balance, change the date, set the share balance, save. Repeat for the price. Repeat for each security. That is 36 clicks, date changes, setting, and saving.

Instead, provide a reconcile screen with one "as of" date and allow for updates to the share balance and price for all securities all at once. Click Save when done.

mshiggins

[Caveat: I do not use the Simple Tracking method; but I have tested with it for the comments that follow.]

If I understand this Idea correctly, it seems to me it's asking for a capability for "Simple Tracking" users that doesn't even exist for "Complete Tracking" users. Quicken might not want to go there, but maybe they don't need to.

Regarding changing share prices: all the methods for changing share prices for Complete Tracking are also available for changing share prices for Simple Tracking.

Simple Tracking users can initiate Update Quotes or Update Historical Quotes downloads. Both tracking methods also allow the addition/modification/deletion of share prices via the "Edit Price History" dialog.

And both tracking methods allow modifying share prices on the Investing > Portfolio screen and the individual investment account "Holdings" screen. Changing prices on either screen works the same. The user can just put the cursor on the Quote/Price for the first security to be changed, key the new price, then arrow down to the next security's Quote/Price and repeat (the Portfolio, or Holdings, screen "As of" date will be the date of the new share prices).

Regarding updating share balances in bulk: I know of no way to do that using Complete Tracking, so Simple Tracking users have not lost any efficiency for maintaining share balances.

As I see it, there are two variations on the same theme for modifying share balances when using the Complete Tracking method:
- adding, modifying, deleting transactions for the security in Quicken to cause Quicken's transactions to agree with the transactions at the financial institution
- adding a "Placeholder" transaction (an "Adjust Share Balance" transaction) for each incorrect share balance; which basically concedes that the user is unable/unwilling to maintain the share balance by insuring that each real-world transaction has a Quicken counterpart (there are times when that approach makes a lot of sense).

Modifying the share balance when using the Simple Tracking method causes Quicken to enter either a Shares Added transaction or Shares Removed transaction - depending on whether the user increases or decreases the number of shares held.

I'm not sure I understand the need to modify share balances for every security for every reconcile; but it seems to me the process for modifying a share balance when in Simple Tracking mode is no more cumbersome than the process for modifying a share balance when in Complete Tracking mode ... probably even less cumbersome.

The bottom line as I see it is that Simple Tracking users already have methods available for adjusting share prices and share balances that are essentially at least as easy to employ as those methods available to Complete Tracking users.

One thing Complete Tracking users have which Simple Tracking users do not have, is the ability to update the Account List "Last reconcile" date column (when a Complete Tracking account is "reconciled") - that seems like a useful feature, and might be simple for Quicken to provide for Simple Tracking users.

FWIW: Both the Banking > Transactions and Investment > Transactions reports will display transactions in Simple Tracking accounts. Double-clicking on a transaction in one of those reports will take the user directly to that transaction in its investment "Tracking List". With that transaction open, the user can change the transaction's values and Save it. Further, right-clicking a transaction in the Banking > Transaction report gives the user the option to Delete that transaction (multiple report transactions can be selected and deleted in bulk).

[NOTE: When initiated, the Investment > Transaction report presents the following information if Simple Tracking accounts are present (the Banking > Transactions report does not include this caution):

"One or more of your investment accounts has the 'positions only' attribute and has been excluded from this report. "You may use 'Customize' to manually include these accounts, but some data needed for the report will be missing."

My tests were not exhaustive; but I did not notice any "missing", or incorrect, data for Simple Tracking accounts - in either transaction report.]

-JP

kevinwalkerca

@mshiggins, thanks for your detailed comments.

I was not aware (or had forgotten) that prices could be updated directly in the Investing > Portfolio screen. Effectively, all I am recommending is that "Shares" be made editable the same way Price is for a Simple account. Update the share quantity, <Tab>, update price, Enter. Quicken adds the adjustment line in the register.

I am aware that prices and quotes can be updated automatically but this only applies to investments that are publicly traded. I have an account that has several private equity instruments and quotes cannot be obtained automatically. Hence, a simple account is (almost) perfect for my needs since I am just trying to update the share quantity and price to match a broker statement each month.

In my opinion, the reason why Simple accounts would benefit from bulk editing is that users are not entering transactions that would normally update the share balance. For example, in the course of a given month, an investment may have 2 reinvestments and a partial sell. In a detailed account, the user wants to enter those transactions with the associated prices, commissions, etc. but for a simple account, the user is foregoing that detail and just wants the account to match the brokerage statement.

When I mentioned reconciling I was referring to when a user reconciles their account to a brokerage statement. Many investment share balances will need to be updated with each statement reconciliation due to activity during the month.

I agree nothing is missing and everything is working as designed. My recommendation is for an enhancement to make simple account tracking even more simple.

q_lurker

Do I understand correctly that you want this for manual (off-line) accounts? For online accounts with a brokerage download, the program does those share balance adjustments adequately, and normally would even for a private equity not publicly traded.

kevinwalkerca

@q_lurker, my interest is for an offline account. I'll leave it to others to determine if it is feasible for online accounts but I am not sure why not. Agreed that an online account will get updates automatically but there may be times where bulk updates may be helpful. All the bulk updates would be doing is adding entries for adding or removing shares. I could imagine an option in settings "Allow share quantity updates on Portfolio screen".

mshiggins

My previous comments were predicated on the assumption that you were downloading to the Quicken account. I don't recall ever hearing of anyone using Simple Tracking with a manual account. My guess is that Quicken thought Simple Tracking would be used with online-enabled accounts too.

I decided to comment since I thought that your request was unlikely to be implemented; but even if it was implemented, it could take quite a while. While you were waiting, I thought there were ways to reduce the manual workload. But now that I know the account is a manual Simple Tracking account, I have to say I don't know of any way to make it easier to maintain share balances for Simple Tracking accounts.

If you had the account use Complete Tracking, you could try an alternative approach to maintain share balances - I make no claim it would suit your needs better.

With Complete Tracking, you could use "Adjust Share Balance" transactions for share balance changes. When entering each Adjust Share Balance transaction, you could use the "Enter/New" button to retain the "Adjust Share Balance" Action and the date; leaving only the security name to be keyed (or selected) and the number of shares to be keyed. 


[NOTE: If your financial institution offers the ability to download security prices, properly formatted as CSV or QIF files, you can import those into Quicken. Since you say the securities are not publicly traded, you'd probably need to give each of the securities a phony, but unique, ticker symbol to be able to import them.]

[FWIW: Older versions of Quicken had a feature that offered the capabilities you requested here - but it was only available for manual 401k accounts. That feature was available as late as Q2013 but was no longer available in Q2017. I have no idea why it was dropped, and I don't recall reading any complaints about its loss.]

-JP

005587

I have not been able to change my investment accounts from 'simple tracking' to 'complete tracking' as the previous Q&A posts have suggested. My box is greyed out and "simple tracking" is already chosen. I do NOT have the preference to "default new accounts to simple investing" checked either. How do I migrate these investment accounts back to 'complete tracking'?

kevinwalkerca

@005587, I would suggest you open a new thread as this thread is related to "Bulk Updating of Share Balance and Price". Your question will get the appropriate attention that way.