How do I fix an investment account in Quicken that was just tied to the online account?

Question

I created an account in Quicken to track 401K investment account in 2021. I have been adding cash to it (automatically from my paychecks from a different account). So for years it just has transfers in and there are not securities or share balances. The other day I decided I should start using the online services for it. I set that up without any issues and had to select all the securities and then add some placeholders.

Problem is that the share balances, investment amount, cash amount and cash balances are all messed up. It is pretty much just showing all the transfers in that I did over the years.

Any suggestions how to fix it so it closely resembles what the investment company is telling me I have?

Tom Young · Answer

"Problem is that the share balances, investment amount, cash amount and cash balances are all messed up. It is pretty much just showing all the

transfers in that I did over the years."

When you first establish a downloading connection in a Quicken Account that has several years of history, the initial download very, very rarely captures all that has happened in the Account over the years since it was created.  The financial institution itself dictates how far back in time that initial goes, and 90 days or so is a very common limit.

So the fact that the Account now "is pretty much just showing all the transfers in" - some of which that were denoted as "Match" in that first download - is not surprising.  What you'd expect to see in the Account after that first download would be lots of unmatched cash Transfers, a few matched Transfers, a few security transactions (depending on how far back that 1st download went), and some Placeholders, one for each unique security.

The accepted Placeholders for the securities have no bases information in them, but what you should expect to see is the correct number of shares for each security - the sum of any downloaded transactions plus the Placeholder - a correct Market Value for each security (# of shares times quote) an incorrect basis for each security, and a correct cash number.  But are you saying that nothing in the Account actually matches what you're seeing at the financial institutions web site?

If you did this initial connection in the last few days and have a recent backup you might try restoring that backup and taking another run at the connection process, as it should work pretty closely to what I've described.

If you want to stick with what you have and work it out, then I'd suggest adding some more detail as to what you're looking at and how it does or doesn't comport with what should have happened would be helpful.

Chris_QPW · Answer

Did it get any new transactions at all?

If you are getting transactions the problem might be that the investment transactions downloaded are limited to more recently ones and you will have to put in some transactions to get the cash/security shares correct.