Don't ask about Cost Averaging or Lot Selection

dburk

Consider providing a checkbox when there is a prompt to Cost Average or do a Lot Selection. The checkbox would give the user the ability to say that for this account, please use the answer I'm giving you now for when this question is raised.

Similarly, consider not asking at all for an account where it doesn't matter such as an IRA, SEP IRA, Roth IRA, 401K, etc. The answer doesn't matter and it takes a LONG time to process…longer than I believe it should. It feels like endless waiting.

CaliQkn

@dburk - I think there is a way to already do this? If you click on Edit→Preferences→Downloaded transactions, and then click on Settings by "Lot assignment…", you will get some options to automatically assign lots.

Jim_Harman

@CaliQkn The preference you show applies to all securities in an account. That might be OK for some accounts, such as IRAs, where you don't care about the tax consequences of selling securities inside the account, but in a taxable account you might want different choices for different securities.

For example, when selling an ETF I want to be able to select the lots to sell, but the lots make no difference when selling a money market fund so it might as well default to FIFO.

Another example is when you hold the same security in both taxable and tax deferred accounts. In that case, I want to be able to select the lots in the taxable account but have it always use FIFO in the tax deferred account.

So it seems it would be best to have a holding-by-holding selection, which might be difficult to implement.

CaliQkn

@Jim_Harman good points but it seemed like the OP was looking for an automatic account level option for lot selection which Quicken already offers.

Chris_QPW

I agree with @CaliQkn that @dburk said "for this account", so the current preferences seem to apply.

On the other hand, as @Jim_Harman said, that might not be "enough". Is there another suggestion that is stating that? If note either this one needs to be better qualified (and in the actually request not in the thread like seems to happen sometimes and then get buried).

I do find it interesting that if you have Automatic transaction entry mode on you have more choices than if you don't. And that the fact for Automatic transaction entry mode it spells out the two choices, but when that is off you have to somewhat guess what Quicken is going to do.

In all I suggest someone creating a much more detailed explanation of what is needed. And furthermore, I suggest that even the current selections for Automatic entry mode are "enough".

They should be the same as in the lot selection dialog:

q_lurker

@dburk

When faced with that prompt, which are you selecting - Average Cost, Specify Lot, or just closing the prompt window?

What security types (in Quicken) are you selling - Mutual Funds or Stocks, etc.?

If you are selling securities with Type = Mutual Fund, in the security details for that security, do you have it checked to Use Average Cost?

In a post from 2022, another user commented that selecting Average Cost for that prompt always cycled through a time-consuming recalculation even though they thought they were already set that way via the security detail. Is that what you are seeing?

In my opinion, the prompt should not ask about using average cost. If a mutual fund is being sold, the setting under the security detail should be used. If something other than a mutual fund is being sold, the average cost option should not be applicable. (The IRS does seem to now allow use of the average cost method for DRIP programs, but that would be too limited (IMO) for Quicken to implement.)

I am not currently able to generate that prompt effectively enough for thorough testing but i do think just closing the prompt window is frequently the best option. If need be, one can come back later and correct the lot specification.

tjlee089

What would help me is an option to choose "average cost" by default for the entire account, since it is a broker managed account. The broker uses average cost for tax statements (taxable accounts), so what I do in Quicken doesn't matter. It would just save me time, especially in IRA accounts where it really doesn't matter.

Chris_QPW

@tjlee089 if it doesn't really matter you might be happier with switching to Simple investment mode. That mode just tracks the number of shares in the securities and the cash balance. That is if you are using the Quicken data for taxes, which I'm guessing is the case.