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Sell all leaves me with negative cost basis

Mike Harris

I sold all of this mutual fund in my 401K, and I end up with a negative cost basis that breaks reports. I have no placeholder entries in the account. I've tried deleting and redoing the final sell transaction and using sell all as well as <ctrl-Z>, but nothing has worked.

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NotACPA

Do you have any Return of Capital transactions for these securities?

Have you tried Validating your Q data file?

Which specific Q product are you running and what BUILD of that product? This info is at HELP, About Quicken.

Mike Harris

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20515158#Comment_20515158

R64.30 Build 27.1.64.30. Validating didn't help.

I don't have any Return of Capital, but I do have two small Removed transactions for when Fidelity charged me a fee. Also, the lots were created from Added transactions in 2022 when my employer switched brokerages.

NotACPA

Tell us more about those Removed txn. Did you already have cash in the account, or did you sell an impacted security? What action did you use to record the expense in Q?

Mike Harris

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20515163#Comment_20515163

I'm assuming there was no cash in the account, so Fidelity sold shares and took the money. The downloaded transactions were "Removed" for 0.154 and 0.146 shares. These appear to have no lot selected which is likely the problem.

Mike Harris

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20515167#Comment_20515167

Deleting the Removed transactions didn't help. Now I have 0.3 shares held, cost basis=-16.06.

NotACPA

Should have chg'd those REMOVED to SOLD, of whatever security was actually sold to generate the cash.

A SELL txn will also reduce the cost basis of the overall holding by the basis of the shares sold.

Mike Harris

Sure, I should have changed them to sold plus xout if I really cared about being accurate to the 0.3 of a share on a security that I no longer own. But since I don't, I just deleted them to try to solve the problem. Either way, Quicken shouldn't have a cost basis for a security with 0 shares. This is obviously a Quicken bug. I'm just hoping to find a workaround.

q_lurker

So I am OCD enough that I would want to resolve the -19.19 cost basis as well. I suspect there has been some improper mix-up on a sale transaction along the way. That assumes there were prior sales before that final sale. I am also assuming there was not strange event along the way with this fund - a takeover or conversion, or other non-standard historical event.

First, I would restore the two 'Remove Shares' either as those or as Sold Shares with whatever other disposition of the sale proceeds ($3.13 ?).

Second since this is a 401k and capital gains do not matter, I would then edit each of the prior sales and specify the lots sold each time as the 'First lots In' selection. I'd work from oldest to newest. Hopefully that will clear the issue.