Transfer Equities Between Accounts With History And Basis Intact?

R Strax
R Strax Member ✭✭✭✭

This has been touched on in the past, but I don't see my exact problem answered. It's a little complicated, but I'll try and explain. Using Quicken Classic Mac Version 7.7.1 (Build 707.53346.100) and macOS 14.5.

I have a Fidelity brokerage account with a long history. I added my wife as joint owner of the account. Fidelity for some reason assigned the joint brokerage account a new account number without asking. They transferred all the equities from the original account in my name to the new joint account with histories and basis amounts intact. Although these actions are clearly spelled out on the Fidelity website, Quicken download missed the entire equity transfer.

Presently Quicken shows my original account with all of its equities including their history and basis amounts. For some reason, Quicken has discontinued the online access of my original account and the last two weeks of transactions are missing. Quicken shows the new joint account containing duplicates of all the equities from the old account, but with no equity history and all the equities show a zero basis.

There is just no way I can manually enter the histories and cost basis of all my equities. Would it be reasonable to try swapping the account names and account numbers? Will Quicken get it right or will I just wind up with a great big mess? Obviously I will back up first so I can go back where I am now, but where I am now is really nowhere since I can't fix things. I just wish Quicken would simply get the details from Fidelity correct in the first place.

Have I missed something here? Is there a Quicken "New Transaction" category that allows you to transfer an equity from one account to another leaving the history and basis intact? This doesn't come up often, but not being able to simply transfer equities from one account to another seems to be a real Quicken shortcoming.

Thanks for reading through this convoluted story and for any help you can provide!

Best Answer

  • R Strax
    R Strax Member ✭✭✭✭
    Answer ✓

    A lesson here: look carefully at the program and its menus before jumping to conclusions.

    Under “new transactions”, there is a category of “transfer” that allows you to transfer equities from one account to another intact.

    Thank you for your help! Problem solved.

Answers

  • Aaron M
    Aaron M Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭

    I believe I had a similar issue recently when my TD Ameritrade accounts transitioned to Schwab. I have all new account numbers at Schwab. In Quicken, I ended up just renaming my TD accounts to Schwab and then reset the Online Services to point to Schwab for each corresponding account. I believe there were a handful of duplicate recent transactions that came in to Quicken on the first download, but after cleaning them up, it all works fine now. My cost basis in Quicken matches what I see on Schwab's website. I'm using Quicken Classic for Windows.

  • R Strax
    R Strax Member ✭✭✭✭

    Thank you. When you did this, did the securities retain their purchase histories and correct basis? In my case the securities are all there, but Quicken simply added them with no purchase history data. The data is in Fidelity online, but Quicken failed to pick it up.

  • R Strax
    R Strax Member ✭✭✭✭
    Answer ✓

    A lesson here: look carefully at the program and its menus before jumping to conclusions.

    Under “new transactions”, there is a category of “transfer” that allows you to transfer equities from one account to another intact.

    Thank you for your help! Problem solved.

This discussion has been closed.