401K: Do 1 'buy' on 1/1/07 vs. entering all txs?

Jim S wrote in news:zJ- dnVNfjO6EkAnYnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

I sure hope this is OK becuase it's what I did when I first started using Quicken in 1996. I the current figures from my 401(k) which I had opened about 10 years earlier.

But instead of a Buy, you can "Add Shares to account". Basically the same but you don't have to enter that dummy cash transaction

Correct me if I am wrong but you don't care about cost basis in a 401(k). When you start withdrawing, you sell X shares of Fund Y at price Z and declare X*Z as income. Doesn't matter if you are selling the shares for more or less than you paid for them.

"... but I'm wondering if I "lose" anything (eg: > cost basis data) ".

It is highly likely that you do not have a cost basis as most 401K plans are funded by employee pre-tax and employer pre-tax contributions. Yes, you'll lose historical data as well as (assuming Q has this ability) to differentiate between your monies you put in and any matching employer contributions. Personally, I don't care about that as the statements I get from my 401k plan admin are much more detailed than Q could provide anyway.

I think your method would work as long as you don't include the original purchase in your date range, as obviously that will skew the results. Also, I think you need to have at least one year's worth of real transactions to make the IRR calculations (performance) meaningful, as extrapolating a full year's IRR with only a few months of data can lead to erroneous results (ie: if your fund goes up somewhat in one week, that doesn't mean it will continue to do so at the same rate for the next 51 weeks!).