American Funds : Need to combine in Quicken

"Tivo'ed" wrote

Interesting.

I have a couple of MFS funds, originally purchased through Legg Mason, and held at MFS. Legg Mason always reported the MFS transactions, and included them in my downloads, though they were a few days later than when they actually occurred at MFS.

Recently (possibly part of the Smith Barney takeover of Legg Mason), the MFS funds are now, apparently, held at Smith Barney. I still get my transactions just as before though.

I'm not sure, but I think both Legg Mason/Smith Barney and MFS had to make some compromises to allow me to get my MFS transactions seamlessly via Legg Mason/Smith Barney.

"John Pollard" wrote

It turns out that I also have an American Funds mf also purchased through Legg Mason. It too has been reported by, and had its transactions downloaded successfully from, Legg Mason/Smith Barney.

In the case of this fund, I do not think it was actually held at American Funds though, because I do not recall getting a 1099 from them.

It does seem that there are other arrangements possible than the one you got from Edward Jones and American Funds.

Well, you are the lucky one. Even though these funds have just been opened up, Edward Jones only shows the transfer out, and not the purchase transaction of the fund. So that side of the equation is no joy.

The problem is definitely on the idiot American Funds side. They have tracking through Quicken, but only on an individual fund basis, not on an acccount basis (ie multiple funds under one acct #).

And therefore the only way to track in Quicken is to set up an individual account for each fund. Definitely idiotic.

held at MFS. Legg

downloads, though they were a

funds are now,

some compromises to

Mason. It too has

Mason/Smith Barney.

Funds though, because I

from Edward Jones and

No different then Oppenheimer Funds. At least you can track through Quicken. I could not while I held those funds. I would not complain.

Tivo'ed wrote:

held at MFS. Legg

downloads, though they were a

MFS funds are now,

some compromises to

Legg Mason. It too has

Legg Mason/Smith Barney.

Funds though, because I

from Edward Jones and

yeah - there are some fund companies that track their funds as separate accounts. Therefore, Quicken is forced to setup as SMF (single fund) vs multiple funds.

I'm wrestling with the same issue with my T. Rowe funds - all separate accounts. even with an overall "investor account number" they can't seem to get past the single fund --> single account

I would suspect if you open a higher level account - like an overall brokerage account, then the mutual fund accounts could be inserted into that higher account. There have been similar msgs over in the Quicken website/forum for years, but no update or solutions...

Weird - in that Fidelity & Vanguard accounts figured out the logistics.... to create an "investor" account, and insert the mutual funds into that account.

"Phil Schuman" wrote

I don't believe this is quite true.

There is a difference between having to setup one Quicken investment account for each mutual fund and having to setup one Quicken Single Mutual Fund account for each mutual fund.

Can you confirm from documentation, or personal experience, that your fi (or Quicken) required that you use Quicken Single Mutual Fund accounts ... or is it just that you need a separate Quicken investment account for each fund for some financial institutions?

hi - Not sure I understand what you are getting at ? With our T.Rowe portfolio - each mutual fund @ TRP has an account number that is NOT related to any account family or other accounts... Therefore - within Quicken, there is no way to point at TRP and say download this "family" of accounts. Each mutual fund appears in a separate Quicken account, and each account has only ONE sub-account for that mutual fund. I can reset the Quicken field from SMF to MMF, but Quicken won't allow me to add a TRP into that account as it complains that each TRP account must be unique.

"Phil Schuman" wrote

I can say it again, but I'm not sure I can get it any clearer.

I am suggesting that there should be no difference if you download each mutual fund to a separate Quicken "Brokerage" account, or if you download each mutual fund to a separate Quicken "Single Mutual Fund" account.

I am suggesting that I believe the only requirement is that there be a separate Quicken account for each fund held at the financial institution ... that the neither the financial institution, nor Quicken, cares whether the Quicken account type is "Brokerage" or "Single Mutual Fund".

There is good reason to consider this, as Single Mutual Fund accounts have significant restrictions on the activities they will permit. One example: you can not do a Corporate Acquisition in a Single Mutual Fund account ... and a Corporate Acquisition is the recommended method for handling certain mutual fund actions where, say, "B" type fund shares are "converted" to "A" type fund shares.

There have also been a few strange problems thought to be linked to Single Mutual Fund accounts - sorry I do not recall them at the moment; but the net effect of it all is that I, personally, will never use a Single Mutual Fund account unless I am absolutely required to do do.

ok - we're tripping over the abstract....

real world - at TRP... each mutual fund is setup as an account. In our case, we don't have any other Brokerage account or umbrella account setup - just each individual mutual fund account. There are currently 7 funds setup in the portfolio.

Now - working within Quicken to setup the account/s. On a test system, I can delete all the TRP accounts & start over. What should be the steps to setup these accounts ? Do the usual online steps..

1 - Click Add New Account 2 - Select TRP from financial institution list (TRP vs the TRP Brokerage vs the TRP Retirement) 3 - checkmark Online setup 4 - enter Cust ID & password for online access 5 - now the 7 accounts are listed by acct number with

At this point you can only really select "Add a new account in Quicken". If you try to only setup 1 account, and then somehow re-use that account for mutiple funds, Quicken won't let you and displays an error/warning message.

So - I don't see the logistics of how - with only having TRP funds - you can get around this..

"Phil Schuman" wrote in message news:4ll4h.8502$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...

I NEVER suggested that you try to use, or re-use, one account for multiple TRP funds.

You are clearly making an assumption about what I suggested, which I have done almost everything I could do to demonstrate that I was not suggesting. I believe you have glossed over some of the words I wrote, words which were important to the point I have been trying to make.

At no point in this thread have I said, or have I suggested, or have I implied that you could download more than one TRP fund/account to the same Quicken account: all I have ever been talking about is what TYPE of Quicken accounts you would download to.

This will be my last attempt to make this point.

I am suggesting that you could have setup 7 (that's "seven") Quicken "BROKERAGE" accounts to download each one of your TRP fund/accounts to ... instead of 7 ("seven") Quicken SINGLE MUTUAL FUND accounts. That would still have resulted in you downloading each TRP fund/account to a SEPARATE Quicken account (each TRP fund/account to it's very own Quicken account) ... just a different Quicken account TYPE than you have now.

Ok. Let me try to add a comment based on personal experience. TR Price converted me to a brokerage account years ago, I didn't object at first. I could download all mutual funds into one account with the brokerage account. Yes, that's a real brokerage where you can also buy stocks. Then they wanted to start charging for services in the brokerage account I didn't use so I said no and put me back in the mutual fund side. Quicken and TR Price will let you have more than one mutual fund in a mutual funds account, but only one will download. So I had to set up separate mutual fund accounts in Quicken for each fund so I could download each. I have mine set up as mutiple fund accounts with only one actual fund in each.

my comment was about setting up a T. Rowe Brokerage Account actually at the company TRP - which would then contain ALL investments including the mutual funds...

yes - It doesn't matter at the Quicken end... There doesn't seem to be any way to fudge the downloading into a single account. At this point there does not appear a way to do this for certain companies like T.Rowe. It's the TRP end that needs a consolidated account like Fidelity or Vanguard.

Well, I called AmericanFunds, and complained vehemently about the setup of individual funds into individual accounts in Quicken. All I got from the first level support is "why" they are set up that way. I stated their reasoning was ridiculous and asked to speak to a supervisor. When I was told the same crazy reasoning, I asked to speak to the vice president in charge of their IT.

After about a week, I finally was able to speak to a VP over the phone and told her how stupid their setup was, and what a lack of customer service they provided. I was not very pleasant to any of them, and would not take no for an answer, or any reasoning for an excuse. My only question was "WHEN WILL THIS BE FIXED!!!"

By way of explanation to you, the reason they gave me is that their records are actually processed by a third party that has the transaction data on their systems, and does the Quicken transaction downloads. When you connect to AF's website and see all your funds on one page, that is just a summary page they create on their own. They do not keep transactions.

The VP told me she was having a meeting with the third party provider to discuss this very problem. They had a solution where they could combine up to 6 funds, but I told her that even though I only had four in an account, this type of solution was just a bandaid, and not acceptable. She called me back this week to say that she had good news, but we were unable to connect, so I'm not sure what that means.

I'm not sure if they will ever resolve this to my satisfaction, but one thing is for sure, I'm fed up with telephone support, and I'm not going to take it any more.

replying to Tivo'ed, frustrated AF holder wrote: still have this problem in 2018!