Updating Cost basis in Quicken for Mac 8.4.2

Question

One of my Chase investment accounts was setup for Detailed Transaction tracking. The account is managed my Chase so there are a lot of transactions. Unfortunately, after 7 years the balance online and the balance in my Investment Portfolio keeps getting further apart.

Over the years I've made comparison to the online Portfolio to assure share counts were the same, but after another period of time the value discrepancy just keeps expanding.

As a result, I decided to disconnect that account from Chase and re-add to Quicken but NOT with detailed transactions. This has been great to keep the value consistent between Quicken and Chase, but without transaction tracking my Cost Basis for this account is based ONLY on transactions from the last 3 months. Most of the investments do NOT have any cost basis because their shares were acquired prior to that 3 month cutoff.

I have looked at a number of different views for each security in the hope that one of them would allow me to update the Cost Basis, but so far no view has offered me that option.

Since the transaction tab is unavailable in this setup, I cannot even add any transactions that would allow me to generate a Cost Basis.

It's more important to me for the value of this Account be accurate so I am not going back to a detailed connection. However, it's really strange to see that my Gain/Loss percentage is over 2000%.

Anybody have a suggestion?

John_in_NC · Answer

Hi, @jxwinks

As you see, the simple tracking is (usually) tracking the transactions behind the scenes, so I, like you, suspect this problem will resurface. Adding the account back in simply caused it to be correct as of 3 months ago versus having 7 years of data.

If you want to add the cost basis, you can go into the transactions view and scroll to the beginning of the register to view the placeholders where the older securities are added in 3 months ago. You can edit those and add the cost there. Obviously, you will have to calculate the basis bases on what it should be on that date excluding the future transactions that have come in (if applicable).

I am not there to see, but it sounds like your discrepancies  revolve around those cash transactions, but you should be able to now monitor to see what is going on and what is Chase is reporting, if placeholder gets added for it, etc.

It might be something where you go into Window:Securities and select the two seemingly same MMF and Merge them via the button in that window. That should cause them to appear as one.

Quicken Alyssa · Answer

@jxwinks,

Thank you for following up and providing more context.

Feel free to come back and let us know what you find after monitoring the situation for a while.

Thanks again!

jxwinks · Answer

Thank you Quicken Alyssa,

Good to know that I can still look at the Transactions tab via the Option key, however, that worries me with respect to what Quicken is tracking vs what Chase is reporting.

The issue lies with how this Chase Investment (IRA) tracks its 'cash' within the account. They purchase shares of Blackrock Liquidity Fed Funds (QBPNZ) but the transaction comes in with Security 123443210.

When I check the Portfolio on the Chase website, the shares all match, but the cash amount never does. After awhile that difference adds up to thousands of dollars. I've tried changing the Security in Quicken so QBPNZ replaces 123443210 but I still end up with a difference eventually.

I was actually hoping that Simple Tracking would only be capturing Portfolio values from Chase each time it syncs, but I now understand why I get a badge on that Account even though I am only Simple. If all the transactions are still being transmitted, I will eventually end up in a discrepancy again.

I don't believe sharing screenshots will help given this issue.

Let me monitor the Simple tracking for another month or 2 to see if adjustments are being made behind the scenes (e.g., Add/Remove share transactions) to keep my displayed balance in-sync with what Chase has. If that is the case, then I'll be fine with Simple Tracking.