Need to convert Vanguard Investor Shares to Admiral Shares

Bryan116
Bryan116 Member ✭✭
in Investing (Mac)
I’m attempting to convert vanguard investor shares to admiral shares. Apparently others have done it as posted in this thread:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7820537/mutual-fund-conversion-in-quicken-mac-deluxe-2019

However, I’m not quite sure I’m following the logic here:

“Then I recorded each Admiral Shares lot as an "Add Shares" transaction (not "Buy"), which let me set the transaction date to the date of the conversion and input a separate "date acquired" for each lot so that the historical data is all there."

Has anyone else conquered this problem that can go into a bit more detail on the best path forward for accomplishing the conversion?

Comments

  • John_in_NC
    John_in_NC SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Mutual Fund conversions are always a (not so) fun thing. QWin has a wizard for it, but I have heard that it doesn't always produce the desired results.

    The main three things you want to keep correct are 1) correct present value of the fund, 2) correct cost basis, and 3) correct lot tracking if desired. The latter is what I found to be the tricky part, and the financial institution (FI) isn't always so helpful in keeping records straight.

    Yes, you will want to use a remove shares of the old MF, and an Add Shares transaction (with a total "cost") to make the final cost basis for your new fund correct. That is the easier part. Many FIs will push out the remove/add shares transactions, and it is up to you to figure out the cost. That isn't so hard.

    The harder part is that the Add Shares also has an Acquisition date field (for lots)-and Vanguard might be dumping multiple lots into a single removal/conversion.

    If you don't care about lot tracking, then Add/Remove with an added cost is all you need. If you care about lots, then you will have to break the Add Shares transaction into multiple to represent each lot acquired. This will require more legwork on your part.
  • volvogirl
    volvogirl SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    I have Windows Quicken so Mac might be different.  But....

    To switch to Vanguard Admiral (I have several) you should use Corporate Acquisition (or the new Mutual Fund Conversion) and you have to manually calculate how many new shares you got for each ONE old share. Took me 3 times to notice that part.  So you may have to do some dividing on paper first. Don't worry if the price per share comes out fractionally different. Just be sure the # of shares and cost is accurate. Most of my conversions to Admiral were for all the same # of shares.  So I just changed the name and symbol.  One fund was so close I just did an adjustment and removed .176 shares.  I had 536.743 shares before and they converted in only 536.567 shares.

    I'm staying on Quicken 2013 Premier for Windows.

  • John_in_NC
    John_in_NC SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    No Corp Acquisition in QMac. :-(
  • Bryan116
    Bryan116 Member ✭✭
    John — thank you for your reply.

    "Vanguard might be dumping multiple lots into a single removal/conversion.”
    — yes, this is what occurred :neutral:

    "If you care about lots, then you will have to break the Add Shares transaction into multiple to represent each lot acquired.
    — this is where I’m not sure how to proceed as I would like to keep the lot information.

    I have two funds that underwent conversion. In both cases, there are now fewer admiral class shares than there were investor class shares — and there is a price difference between the two classes (see attached). I’m wondering if I need to weight the investor shares based on the pricing of the admiral shares when entering the add shares (i.e admiral class price + weighted investor shares)?

    I’m not afraid of the work, but there are probably 4 to 5 dozen transactions per fund that will need to be treated this way and I’d like to avoid the pain of mistakes if I can :smiley:
  • Bryan116
    Bryan116 Member ✭✭
    Should have read volvogirls response more thoroughly before replying.

    It looks like a weighted approach does need to be taken on the actual number of shares. I’m not so lucky on the conversion side as I started with 191 and 51 and ended with 67 and 44, with fractional shares of course :neutral:

    I’ve seriously considered downloading the windows version, converting, and running them through, and then reconverting.
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @Bryan One thing to consider is how you have Vanguard accounting for the cost basis in your funds. Mine are set up for Average Cost. And Quicken Mac, disappointingly, doesn't do Average Cost.  As a result, I can't use Quicken to precisely calculate my capital gains or cost basis when I sell shares; I have to rely on Vanguard for those calculations. I mention this because if you are in the same boat, then doing all the precise work for your Admiral Shares conversion, lot by lot, isn't worth the effort. Because Quicken can't do those calculations for me, I simply used a single Remove Shares and Add Shares for each of my Admiral conversions so that I have the correct number of shares reflected in my Quicken accounts.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
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