Feedback #3 — Parent/Subaccount Relationships and Duplicate-Asset Detection
Suggested title: Prevent Double Counting of Assets Reported Through Multiple Financial Institutions
I recently encountered a situation in Quicken that suggests an opportunity for an important improvement.
A retirement plan contained a self-directed brokerage account. One financial connection reported the self-directed brokerage account as an asset within the retirement plan, while another financial connection reported the individual investment held inside that same brokerage account.
Both downloaded accounts were legitimate. However, because Quicken treated them as independent assets, the same approximately $108,000 of retirement assets could effectively be counted twice.
There should be a way for Quicken to recognize and represent relationships such as:
Retirement Plan
→ Self-Directed Brokerage Account
→ Underlying Securities
I suggest adding Parent Account, Subaccount, and Look-Through Account relationships.
A user could then retain both financial connections. The parent account could show the complete retirement-plan value, while the brokerage connection could provide detailed information about the underlying securities. Quicken would know that the brokerage account is contained within the parent account and would count its value only once in Portfolio Value and Net Worth.
Quicken could also provide automated Possible Duplicate Asset Detection.
For example, when two downloaded accounts have very similar values, or when one institution reports a brokerage account while another reports securities corresponding to approximately the same value, Quicken could display a warning such as:
Possible duplicate asset detected.
This account may represent assets already included in another account. Including both accounts may overstate your Portfolio Value or Net Worth.
Quicken should not automatically decide that the accounts are duplicates. The user should make that determination.
The program could offer choices such as:
These are separate assets — count both.
This account is contained within another account — retain the details but count the value only once.
Exclude this account from Portfolio Value/Net Worth.
Quicken should then remember the relationship during subsequent downloads.
It would also be helpful to display these relationships visually:
Financial Institution → Account → Subaccount → Security
This would be particularly valuable when different companies administer different portions of the same retirement plan.
In my case, diagnosing the problem required examining the financial institutions, connection methods, account balances, underlying securities, and the retirement-plan statement before determining that the same assets were appearing at two different levels.
Quicken already possesses much of the information necessary to help users identify these situations. Adding explicit account relationships and duplicate-asset detection could prevent potentially very large errors in Portfolio Value and Net Worth.
