Which version to track stock holdings and charitable donations?

Helen Bacque · October 27

I need a financial tool to keep track of my stock holdings at Vanguard and my charitable contributions.

At Vanguard, I have a brokerage account and the SEP-IRA account. I would like a tool that can keep track of the stockholdings including dividends, my required minimum distributions (RMD), my qualified charitable donations (QCD), and things like dividends and stock splits. Is there a Quicken tool that can do that automatically with an authorized link to access my account?

Vanguard does have a way for me to download my account history to a qfx file. I did that about a month ago. It is my understanding that I can upload that into Quicken. Is there anything special I need to do to make that work? Do I have to redo that every month or so?

I believe the qfx files only go back about 18 months or so. If I want to go back further than that, can I enter the information manually? And how much of a headache is that?

Which version of Quicken would be the most appropriate for me to get to do what I want to do?

Jim_Harman · October 27

You would need Quicken Deluxe or higher. Premier offers some investing tools that you might find useful, but Deluxe can handle the basics.

The interface to Vanguard is very smooth. Once it is set up, you do not need to download and import QFX files, you do a "One step Update" and Quicken downloads and imports the data for you. I believe the "Direct Connect" downloads for Vanguard will fetch several years of transactions. Make sure you select Complete tracking mode when you set up the Vanguard accounts.

It can be a little tricky to set up RMDs and QCDs so that they get handled correctly by Quicken's Tax report and Tax Planner. When you are ready to do that, please post back for detailed instructions.

NotACPA · October 27

You should also note that Q can't record the tax w/h portion of an RMD in the IRA account.

SO, you need to reflect the entire w/d as a transfer from the IRA to the taxable account and then split the transaction to reflect the entire amount as a positive number transfer from the IRA and a negative number tax w/h, resulting in the net deposit to the taxable account.

Jon · October 27

Well, technically you can record tax withholdings inside your IRA as long as you're willing to put up with it not appearing as a tax payment in a tax report. I'm fine with getting that information off my 1099-R instead, so I go ahead & record the tax withholding transactions in my IRA register.

jacobs · October 27

I believe the qfx files only go back about 18 months or so. If I want to go back further than that, can I enter the information manually? And how much of a headache is that?

Yes, you can enter older data manually. Since Quicken will create automatic transactions to create your starting balances of cash and security holdings so that your current totals match Vanguard. (That is, if the downloaded 18 months of transactions contains a purchase of 100 shares of MSFT, and Quicken says you currently hold 250 shares of MSFT, then Quicken will create a dummy ("placeholder") transaction to put the additional 150 shares in your account. Quicken doesn't know the cost basis for those missing shares; if you do from your brokerage statements, you can update the placeholder transactions with a cost basis so your gains/losses will be calculated correctly going forward. Going back further in time and adding transactions is relatively easy — depending on how much time and how many transactions there are; if you have only a handful of transactions per year, you can add many years worth fairly quickly; if you have many dozens or hundreds of transactions per year, you'll have to decide how much past detail you want to enter, and how much of a headache that is.

Which version to track stock holdings and charitable donations?

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