Reconciling Investment Accounts

I replied to your other post about how to add or remove shares and add or remove cash from an investment account. As for reconciling, first be aware that Quicken Mac can reconcile only the cash in an investment account, not shares. But let's dig into that a little more…

If you use the Reconcile window, you're reconciling the cash balance of an account. And it works just like reconciling a bank account or credit card account: enter the ending balance and date, then check off the transactions which are included, and the reconcile difference should be zero. You can create a New transaction in the Recncile window (look for the “New” icon), and enter a Type=Payment/Deposit and Category=Adjustment transaction to raise or lower the cash balance if you're not looking to dig into the source of the discrepancy.

There is no functionality to reconcile the number of shares of specific securities, although the developers have indicated they may add such a feature at some point in the future. However, this does not prevent you from checking your share balance as of a specific date in the Portfolio screen, and then marking all the share transactions as reconciled (green check mark) if you find it helpful to do so. One approach to doing this is to first go to the Portfolio window, set the as of date to match a brokerage statement, and check the share balance and market value of each security on the statement versus the Quicken portfolio window. Once you have verified they agree — after making any adjusting entries if needed — you can then go to the Transaction screen, click Reconcile, and mark all the transactions for cash as well as shares as reconciled. You're technically just reconciling the cash balance, but in the process, you can set all the share transactions to a status of reconciled via this window.

Alternatively, you can mark individual transactions for securities as reconciled (green checkmark in the Clr column) manually, if you wish. when you click on the Clr column, it toggles between no status and “cleared” (blue checkmarl). But if you hold down the Option key, it will toggle between no status, cleared, and reconciled (green checkmark). For instance, if you have verified that your share value for Microsoft are correct, you could Option-click each one to markk that share transaciton as reconciled.

Marking investment transactions as reconciled doesn't serve any real purpose other than keeping track for yourself that you have verified the share balance of this security through whatever date you mark the transactions reconciled. Personally, I only use Quicken's Reconcile only in investing accounts which have cash balances. I do check my share balances for each account and each security in Quicken versus my brokerage statements when I get them monthly or quarterly, so I know my transaciotns in Quicken are reconciled; I just don't bother adding the green checkmarks in Quicken. Some people might want to do so, and there's nothing wrong with that. Even in accounts with no cash balance, if you've verified in the Portfolio screen that your share balances are correct, you can go to the Transactions screen and do Reconcile, enter the end of the month date, enter a balance of $0.00, and click the Mark All As Cleared button in the Reconcile window to mark all the transactions through that date as reconciled.

I hope this helps and I didn't lose you. ;) Post back if anything isn't clear.