What's the best way to fix Avg Cost when data does not migrate to new acct?

MauryJ

I have a few key investments that have this same characteristic:

1. I bought some shares in a Fidelity IRA - Quicken Windows and Mac have the entire history - Bought in Feb 2019
2. Transferred the account's holdings to Merrill - Quicken Windows and Mac have history - transferred into Merrill equiv account in August 2019
3. Migrated to Mac
4. I then transferred certain equities in this account to a Merrill self directed account for ease of trading in Sept 2020 - and the aggregate shares of a given equity came over as one line item under "Shares Added" at a zero cost. Instead of having a purchase - # of shares @ X cost plus 4-5 quarters of dividend reinvestments - which were properly captured in items #1 & #2 above. So - My goal is to rectify this so that I can more truthfully look at the performance of the equity over time regardless of which account it was in originally.
5. Would this work:
   a) Recreate the original purchase and dividend transactions missing in the newest account? b) Then delete the aggregate transfer transaction? It's not a lot of labor, and the performance of the equities affected by this are way off base, and it skews the gains performance of the newer account drastically as there is a $0 basis for 90% of the value of the equity

NotACPA

This missing info is "How did you record all of that in QMac"? Step-by-step, please.

John_in_NC

The easiest/quickest fix would be to simply add the correct cost to that single transaction of "aggregate shares of a given equity came over as one line item under "Shares Added" at a zero cost." If you edit that Add Shares transaction, you can enter the cost basis there. (It won't affect your cash balance.)

You won't have prior individual lot history/performance, but you will see metrics on the security as a whole.

As NotACPA noted, we aren't sure how you did this, but there is also the option of entering a "Transfer Shares" transaction in the source account to move one or all securities to a the new investment account. This allows you to retain lot history. You can also backdate this transaction if you need to do it in the past. You would then delete any downloaded transaction that accomplished the same.

MauryJ

NotACPA: I didn't record it manually. Quicken Windows did the migration from Fidelity to Merrill equiv. acct when I made the switch. All transactions were retained, and new ones were recorded (div reinvestments) since the move. When I transferred it internally in Merrill, it just did an "Add Shares" at zero cost. Since that point I have the 1 aggregate transaction and then additional dividend reinvestments.

John-In-NC: The problem with that solution is the date of the aggregate transaction is the date of the internal transfer between accounts. The ROI on the balances between certain dates would still be skewed.

I'll look at Transfer Shares - I had never seen that before, but I'm unsure how much maintenance I might inherit from that process in the register for the newer account (which already has a few years of dividend reinvestments since the transfer). I'll just make a backup file and give it a shot. Thanks for that suggestion.

Amended to say if I try the Transfer Shares function I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. Am I creating new transfers and designating lots, then going back and deleting the Add Shares / Remove Shares? Also, I now realize that Merrill tends to not support a lot of Quicken functions organically - they always just "add/remove shares." I made an error in my original post - the shares from Fidelity to Quicken were just removed from Fidelity and added to Merrill, but the original Fidelity transactions for dividend reinvestments and purchases were retained when I did the migration. So I'd have to "Transfer Shares from the Fidelity acct. to the 1st Merrill acct, then do it again from the 1st Merrill acct to the 2nd Merrill Acct.

jacobs

If you want to step back to that date, you can do the transfer between accounts the "right" way: use the transaction type of Transfer Shares. Instead of one Add Shares transaction Quicken will create a series of Remove Shares transactions in the original account, and Add Shares transactions in the destination account, all on the same date, but the Add Shares transactions will have a Date Acquired corresponding to each purchase date in the original account. (You'd have to delete the Add Shares transaction you created manually.) This approach would give you the correct investment history. I suggest if you want to try this, that you make a backup of your file before starting, so if things get messed up, you can quickly revert to the backup.

MauryJ

I've never created any Add Shares or Remove Shares in any account since I started using Quicken. Those were either Quicken interpretations when the transfers occurred or the broker doesn't prepare the data properly (my guess). The dates for the Adds/Removals was the date of the aggregated transfers, so therefore the date of acquisition and div reinvestments is missing from the newer account

jacobs

Okay, I thought you created it, but Quicken did. Doesn't matter. You can delete the Add Shares transaction and the Remove Shares transaction from your old account, then do the Transfer Shares from the old to the new, and you'll have multiple Add Shares transactions on one date, but each with it's own Date Acquired to preserve your investment history.