Quicken - Etrade: Data Not Aligned - Do I Delete Etrade account and re-connect?

Filip S

I've used Quicken and Etrade for over 10 years and have found that the balance is increasingly out of whack.

As an example when GE recently divested it's healthcare business in Etrade I now see old GE shares and new GE shares, clearly they are duplicates and when I try to delete the old GE shares and keep just the newly divested ones it says I'm not able because transactions are linked.

I've tried "zeroing" out qty's but still get errors. Can I just "disconnect" my Etrade acocunts and start over with a fresh load from Etrade or is there another way to have the system reconcile for me?

Tom Young

There' no way I know of of "start(ing) over with a fresh load from Etrade." Ten years of transactions - most likely - simply aren't available* and it's all those transactions that constitute the building blocks of the positions you hold today.

Even if you could get 10 years of transactions downloaded you'd still suffer from what's an insurmountable problem that you can't simply rely on "downloads" from brokers to get all transactions exactly correct from an accounting standpoint. In the case of transactions that are the least bit "complex" you frequently have to delete information sent to Quicken by the broker, sit down and figure out what transactions you should really be using in this case, and then making your own entries. (I am assuming that in the main you have been simply accepting downloaded information. That may or may not be correct.)

For example, the spin off of GE's healthcare business should have resulted in you holdingg GE stock (GE), each lot of which now has a lower basis than before the spin off, and a new holding of GE Healthcare stock (GEHC) in your portfolio, each lot of which has the correct basis and holding period. So in this case you'd have to go back to early 2023 when the spin off happened, delete whatever transactions resulted in the "new" GE shares, enter a proper "Corporate Securities Spin-off" action, and then "sell" any fractional shares received using the Cash in Lieu as the proceeds of that sale.

So if you have 10 years worth of transactions that have built-in errors, resulting in built-in misstatements in current holdings, then getting things properly stated from an accounting standpoint could be a significant bit of work.

A different approach which might be acceptable to you if in the main you just want the number of shares of each security you own properly stated would be to simply make adjustments in the Account to get the share numbers and securities held correct, and then work forward from there. This can be accomplished in a number of ways, the easiest of which is to use the "Update Share Balances" function available from the Account's gearwheel "Actions" icon.

*Some financial institutions actually do make available for download a lot of historical transactions, perhaps even 10 years worth. Check to see if ETrade is in that group.

Filip S

Tom, Thank you for your feedback and detailed answer, very much appreciated.

The main problem I face today is that when GE spun out and I received new shares for the new entity, for some reason I have two placeholders in my Quicken for GE, one named GE and one named GE New (both created by Etrade / Quicken) but when I try to delte or change the value to "O" shares fo r one of them the system won't let me. In Etrade it is reflected correctly with a single GE Healthcarer entry.

When I go into Quicken to try and change the qty from 5,000 to 0 on one of the entries it won't let me do it.

Any advice on how I can clean this up?

Tom Young

You don't want to change the Placeholder, you want to Delete the Placeholder. The Placeholder is simply a Quicken-generated transaction and can be deleted like any other transaction.

Filip S

Good morning Tom.

So below is a screenshot of the two GE placeholders which is causing the issue with my balance as both entries are fully accounted for in the value when only the "new" should be accounted for. When I go into the original (top) entry and try to "zero" out the qty it works but also zero's out the "new" Ge entry.

Any idea how I can update the qty of the original to "0" without affecting the "new".

Thank you

Filip S

Good evening Tom,

Any thoughts on the above?

Tom Young

Sorry, I would have sworn that I responded some days while visiting relatives in southern California. Looking at my laptop I see two screen shots that I know were in that reply, a reply that, maybe, I forgot to click "Post Comment" and then disappeared.

The screen shots, captured 12/28, were these:

My response basically was that the picture you posted was NOT a picture of the "Placeholders." Instead it seemed to be taken from the Account's Holdings screen, showing lot-level detail of your original GE shares and then also the lot-level detail of the new shares, and then I posted a picture of what a real "Placeholder" (a fake Placeholder I created in a test file) should look like.

So it wasn't clear if actual Placeholders were associated with the problem or if somehow a spin-off action was kicked off, using incorrect information. And thin another possibility was that E-Trade sent some erroneous lot-level detail to your file AND a placeholder was needed (created by Quicken) to balance both securities.

If you can take a picture of everything E-Trade sent you for that spin-off that might clear things up. But the long and the short for fixing this, I think, and subject to the original GE information being correct, would be to make a backup, delete every transaction in the Account associated with the spin-off, and then use the Spin-off wizard to make the entries for you. The transactions I posted above show the first few entries made by the wizard, a RtrnCapX, a MiscIncX, and then a bunch of Added actions, one for each lot of the old GE and one for each lot of the new GE Healthcare. The spin-off wizard doesn't work precisely as it should but it should get your overall basis in each security correctly split and with the correct number of shares, "subject to" the accuracy of your initial GE holdings.

The Form 8937 for the spin-off is here:

https://www.ge.com/sites/default/files/general-electric-form-8937-attachment.pdf

and has suggested numbers to use for the spin-off wizard:

One possible approach is to utilize the New York Stock Exchange
opening trading price on January 4, 2023 for GE common stock ($68.41 per share) and the Nasdaq
opening trading price for GEHC common stock ($54.13 per share) as an indication of the fair
market value. Based on that approach and the assumptions and calculations set forth in the response
to Line 16 below, 79.13% of a GE shareholder’s aggregate tax basis in his or her shares of GE
common stock immediately prior to the Distribution would be allocated to such shareholder’s
shares of GE common stock following the Distribution, and 20.87% of a GE shareholder’s
aggregate tax basis in his or her shares of GE common stock immediately prior to the Distribution
would be allocated to such shareholder’s shares of GEHC common stock received in the
Distribution. Other approaches to determine fair market value may also be possible. You are not
bound by the approach illustrated above and may, in consultation with your tax advisor, use
another approach in determining fair market values for GE common stock and GEHC common
stock.

The ratio to use is 0.33334 x (# of GE shares owned).

You include the fractional share you should have received and then sell that fractional share for a gain or loss using the Cash in Lieu as the proceeds.