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Will Switching Back from Simple to Complete Tracking Download the Missing Transactions?

Toolworker

BLUF: If I switch an investment account from Complete to Simple tracking, and later switch back to Complete, will Quicken then download or re-download the transactions so that Quicken shows exactly the same thing as if I'd stayed in Complete all along?

Or will some information be missing permanently?

Details: Download from Fidelity is still screwed up as of this post, and I need to track some positions.

The 10/17 consolidated update says "You may continue to use “Simple Investing” to download balances and positions while the fix is in progress," implying that we could then switch back if it's fixed.

The Investment Tracking Methods dialog warns (in red): "Note: The transactions you download in Simple mode are not the same as the transactions downloaded in Complete mode. Are you sure you want to switch the tracking method?"

In neither place does Intuit warn that I will lose information permanently, but it sounds like I will.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

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NotACPA

Take a backup (just in case) and then try it. What have you got to lose?

Chris_QPW

My guess is it will not download the transactions. At least not into that account (it would download some into another newly setup account). The reason is because in fact in both modes it downloads the transactions and records their unique IDs to prevent duplicates, it is just that in simple investing mode it throws away the transactions and uses the summary information instead.

What’s more like the message says what it is doing in simple mode is entering transactions to add/remove shares and change the cash balance. And those transactions will not be removed just because you switch from complete mode, so you would have clean them up too.

Toolworker

@NotACPA That's tempting. And then when (if) Intuit ever gets Fidelity download working again, I restore the backup and download everything again.

But I add notes and categories to transactions in other accounts, and going back to the backup would lose all that.

@Chris_QPW How about if I create a new temporary Quicken account, link it in Summary Tracking to the one Fidelity account I want to track transactions in, and then tell it not to include the real account in the porfolio?

And then when (if) Intuit ever gets Fidelity download working again, make the new Quicken account invisible and link back to the real Quicken account, which was always in Complete Tracking?

Chris_QPW

You can’t track the same online account in both complete and simple mode at the same time in the same data file.

What I was eluding to was the same thing one might do if they deleted downloaded transactions and then wanted them and restoring from a backup would be more work.

In general financial institutions will send about 90 days of transactions, but the reason you wouldn’t see them again after deleting them is because Quicken records the transaction unique ids per account and skips the ones it has already recorded. Since this done per account one can deactivate them is account and connect a new account and get the transactions again there. And then one might move them between accounts.

When you start with simple mode you are asking Quicken to instead look at the summary information which includes the number of shares and cash balance and just put in adjustment transactions. The longer this goes on the more that account will be missing the regular transactions and instead be getting these adjustment transactions. Depending on how many transactions there are and how long this goes on will determine how hard it is to fix it later if you switch back.

NotACPA

If you take the backup immediately before you make the switch, you risk NOTHING. A Q backup is an exact copy of your file at that moment.

So, if you don't like the results of the switch, just switch back.

BTW, I made the Fidelity switch to EWC+ on Thursday … and it's working fine for me. There were a few duplicated transactions in each of the 4 accounts (about 20 or so in total) but nothing horrendous.

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20516438#Comment_20516438

Sometimes when dealing with online services you do risk at least some time straighten things out, but in this case this is all internal to Quicken so it should be safe.

Note I have tried switching between the two modes from time to time and found it to be easy to fix once switched back to complete mode, but I didn’t do it for a long period of time.

I should also point out that switching to simple mode doesn’t delete your old transactions, it just puts in adjustment transactions.

Toolworker

You can’t track the same online account in both complete and simple mode at the same time in the same data file.

I propose to have two accounts - the real one and the temporary Summary one. I'll unlink Real and only track in Summary.

IWIF (If/when it's fixed) I'll unlink Summary, relink Real and get all the transactions loaded again, this time Complete.

If you take the backup immediately before you make the switch, you risk NOTHING.

It's not a risk; it's a cost. I enter comments and categories in transactions in at least six accounts in Quicken. The cost of falling back to the backup is having to redo all those entries.

BTW, I made the Fidelity switch to EWC+ on Thursday … and it's working fine for me.

I've tried maybe a dozen times. Usually it links up all ten of my Fidelity accounts and says it's downloaded transactions, but nothing downloads. One time four of the accounts loaded some.

Jim_Harman

To do a side by side test, you would need to have two Quicken files, not two accounts in the same file.

To avoid problems, the test file must be a new Quicken file or a copy of your working file made by going to File > Create a copy or backup > Create a copy or template, NOT by making a Windows copy of your working file.

I think you will find that when an account is in Simple mode, cash transactions such as deposits, withdrawals, and transfers are downloaded but other transactions like Bought, Sold, and dividends are not downloaded. When you update transactions, Quicken adjusts the share and cash balances to match the downloaded values. Thus if you decide to switch back to Complete mode, the register will reappear and the balances will be correct but you would have to manually correct the transactions for the period it was in Simple mode.

Toolworker

@Jim_Harman Are you saying I can't have two copies of the same account in my Quicken file, with only one of them linked to the online account and the other not linked to anything online?

Jim_Harman

Oh well yes, you can have two accounts with one of them being offline. But when you create the second account, you wouldn't want to just copy all the transactions from the first account. If you did that, for example any transfers to another account would be duplicated, creating a big mess.