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Cost Basis Not Being Downloaded From Brokerage After Shares Transferred Between Accounts

Pumbu

With my broker I have two stock accounts. After a stock's shares are moved from one to the other and I download the data from the broker's website, the cost basis is Zero. Which really messes up the cost gains of a stock. It ends up showing the Gain as the current Market Value. The brokerage transactions that are downloaded are "Removed" and the destination account calls them, "Added". I think they should automatically called, "Shares Transferred Between Accounts". But, if I go and manually change the action to "Shares Transferred Between Accounts", the dollar amount is added back into the losing account. Which is not correct.

Yesterday I called Intuit. They said it is because of how the brokerage handles the data in the computer system. I called the Brokerage support line and they were stumped and never called me back.

I have conducted all of the Validate and Repair choices in Quicken, still not fixed.

To do this manually, I would have to delete 30 transactions from two different accounts and hope that I manually re-enter them correctly. The beauty of downloading is being diminished when you have to re-enter the transactions manually.

I cannot just close out the originating account since it is not being closed. Shares over time will be moving in and out of the account.

I have been a Quicken user for 29 years and keep very meticulous and precise records and this is bothersome.

If someone has a solution, other than manually putting the data back in, please let me know.

Thanks!

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Comments

Tom Young

The "Shares Transferred Between Accounts" action should create a Removed action in the "from" Account and create multiple Add actions - one for each lot - in the "to" Account. It should work flawlessly and always has for me.

You shouldn't have accepted those "Remove" and "Add" actions in the first place BECAUSE THEY WERE WRONG. You simply cannot rely on brokers (and Quicken) to "do your accounting for you."

I would delete, in both Accounts, those erroneous transactions. Then, in the "from" Account I would use the "Shares Transferred Between Accounts" action to make the transfer. That should work, with each lot of the moved security correctly stated as to basis and holding period.

Pumbu

Thanks Tom. I will dive in an tackle the repair work.

Pumbu

Tom,

Multiple times I deleted the erroneous transactions and each time I ended up creating a huge mess. On one entry, the "cash register" noise engaged 20 or 30 times. Bottom line, I kept going back and restoring the last good version of my data, and what I determined to be the the simplest and least nightmare solution (and the SOLUTION FOR ME), I edited the Added Shares with the Date Acquired and the Total Cost and now my data is correct. Heretofore, I will watch more carefully when downloading data from the brokerage to make sure it is correctly done in the future. Thanks for you help in this.

miklk

The repeated cash register noise is from Quicken entering an added share transaction for EACH lot which is why there are so many. If the cost basis was in the old account, the new add shares from the transfer transaction should carry over to the new add shares entry for each lot.

Tom Young

@pumbug

I won't poke the bear and ask any more questions, but I'm frankly astonished that that process didn't work for you, for some reason. In my "live" file with close to 40 years of activity I've used it probably 15-20 times with nary a hiccup, and just tried it again in a test file with a 10-lot security, and no problems. I don't know what to tell you.

I do think though that it's "best practices" to not let transactions automatically come into your Transaction List (Register). The vast majority of transactions are no-problem, plain-vanilla transactions like Buys, Sells, Dividends and the like so you can typically dispose of those transactions with a few seconds of work. The bigger potential for problems arise with "corporate actions" like Rights Issues, Mergers and Acquisitions, Spinoffs, Splitoffs and the like. Most of the time you're not going to get the right accounting transactions for these sorts of events.

Pumbu

Tom,

The complications and confusion at my end was due to the number of transactions I had to correct, and in the end, everything worked out with just putting in the cost basis and the date of purchase after the transaction ended up in the second account. I had a couple of days where many transactions took place, from now on, my transactions will be more minimal since I hope for my portfolio to coast for awhile. Your best practices will be implemented.

Again, thanks everyone for the help!

holmge

I suspect what some of you are seeing is a Quicken flaw when using AVERAGE cost basis. The flaw happens if you sold shares in the initial account and transferred the remaining shares to a new account.

What Quicken should do is calculate the average cost of all shares at the time of a sale, then assign said average cost to each of the shares (sold and unsold) at the time of the sale (i.e., keep the purchase date intact, but change the purchase price to reflect the average at the time of the sale). Then as the unsold shares collect with future purchases, the average cost continues to be accurate. Also, if the unsold shares get transferred to another account, the cost basis continues to be accurate (average).

What Quicken appears to do instead is keep the ORIGINAL purchase price on the unsold shares (i.e., don’t update their purchase price at the time of a sale). The problem comes when said unsold shares are transferred to another account. Quicken pulls the ORIGINAL purchase price with said shares, which begins an inaccurate (FIFO) cost in the new account.

I hope this helps.