Moving Equities Between Accounts

R Strax

When I added my wife as a joint owner of my Fidelity brokerage account, they moved the account to a new account number. All of my equities simply moved from one account to the other, there were no sales or purchases.

Quicken did not record this change accurately. My register now shows my original account with all of its equities and their history, and the new account with the same equities. However, the new account does not show the equity histories or bases. All the equities show a basis of zero. It looks like Quicken simply added the shares to the new account without carrying over the purchase history or basis.

To fix this, I need to move the equities from my original account to the new account, keeping purchase history and basis for each equity intact. There are simply too many equities and transactions to enter them manually. It looks to me like all Quicken can do is sell and re-purchase which will destroy the history and basis of each equity.

In the real world, sometimes equities need to be moved from one account to another without a transaction occurring. Is it possible to accomplish this in Quicken?

Using Quicken Version 7.7.1 (Build 707.53346.100) and macOS 14.5.

I appreciate any help that can be provided.

jacobs

First, make a backup in case anything goes wrong doing the next steps. 😉 and take a screenshot of your holdings in the account, and the account balance.

There are two ways to do this:

(1) In the new (joint) account, delete all the Add Shares transactions Quicken created.

Then in the old account, create a new transaction and select Type=Transfer Shares. From the "Transfer to Account" drop-down menu, select the new (joint) account. Quicken will create Remove Shares transactions in the old account and Add Shares transactions in the new account — but the difference will be that the Add Shares transactions have a Date Acquired date set to the original purchase date, so you will have a correct history and basis.

(2) Easier still: open the old account, do Select All to highlight all transactions in the old account, click on a transaction and drag-and-drop all the transactions into the new account. Make sure the Portfolio and account total are correct. Do an online account update, and make sure that the Portfolio holding and account balance remain unchanged after the download.

R Strax

Thank you. Ah, I wish I had your experience and know-how.
I did get it done before reading your tip - transferring one equity position at a time from old account to new. A little clunky, but I’ve got it all working now.
I very much appreciate your help! Next time I’ll know better. I’ve used Quicken for more than 20 years and I’m still learning how to use it better. It’s a fabulous tool!