Best way to enter reinvestments

I have accounts with Fidelity, Schwab and TRPrice and I download my transactions from each into Quicken. However, each does reinvestments of shares (Dividend, LongTerm, ShortTerm) differently.

Schwab does it in 2 steps: 1) Create a short or long term income transaction, then 2) create a buy of new shares transaction.

Fidelity does it in 2 different steps: 1) Create a dividend income transaction and places "LongTerm" or "ShortTerm" as a comment, then 2) create a buy of new shares transaction.

TRPrice does it as 1 step 1) a Reinvest income into shares transaction.

Which way is the best way to do this? It seems TRPrice's way is the most logical, so why do Schwab and Fidelity do it into 2 steps?

What's the down side to doing it the TRPrice way?

Thanks

Reply to
sh
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Since I've never downloaded transactions, preferring to enter them manually just so I know they're correct, I didn't realize that the same transaction could show up in a variety of ways in the register depending on the source. Perhaps the difference in approach reflects how each company shows these transactions in their own monthly statements?

equally valid, just mechanically different. However, if Fidelity really does download all transactions with a "Div" action, only distinguishing various flavors of dividend income in the memo field, then their methodology is clearly deficient.

Tom Young

Reply to
TomYoung

I have a Fidelity account. I edit the transaction after it is downloaded and move the income from the dividend box to the appropriate place (long-term, short-term, etc), and then remove the comment.

I sometimes also change the transaction from Income to Reinvest, copy the info from the accompanying Buy transaction into this one, and then delete the Buy transaction. I skip this, though, when there are several Income transactions that correspond to a single Buy transaction because I am too lazy to do the calculations that it would require.

I have few enough of these transactions that I don't mind doing this by hand. But it would be nice if Fidelity downloads did more of it for me.

-- BeeL

Reply to
BeeL

That's odd, all my Schwab(3) and Fidelity(2) accounts download a single ReinvDiv transaction.

Bob

Schwab does it in 2 steps: 1) Create a short or long term income transaction, then 2) create a buy of new shares transaction.

Fidelity does it in 2 different steps: 1) Create a dividend income transaction and places "LongTerm" or "ShortTerm" as a comment, then 2) create a buy of new shares transaction.

TRPrice does it as 1 step 1) a Reinvest income into shares transaction.

Which way is the best way to do this? It seems TRPrice's way is the most logical, so why do Schwab and Fidelity do it into 2 steps?

What's the down side to doing it the TRPrice way?

Thanks

222 13843 body That's odd, all my Schwab(3) and Fidelity(2) accounts download a single ReinvDiv transaction.

Bob

Schwab does it in 2 steps: 1) Create a short or long term income transaction, then 2) create a buy of new shares transaction.

Fidelity does it in 2 different steps: 1) Create a dividend income transaction and places "LongTerm" or "ShortTerm" as a comment, then 2) create a buy of new shares transaction.

TRPrice does it as 1 step 1) a Reinvest income into shares transaction.

Which way is the best way to do this? It seems TRPrice's way is the most logical, so why do Schwab and Fidelity do it into 2 steps?

What's the down side to doing it the TRPrice way?

Thanks

Reply to
Bob Wang

Nope, no special settings.

BUT, I'm using Quicken 2007 H&B, and I've only had the Schwab and Fidelity accounts Spring of 2006.

Maybe they streamlined things for newer customers.

OR, all my positions with Schwab & Fidelity are still "short-term."

Bob

Bob Wang wrote:

Reply to
Bob Wang

Welcome to the wonderful world of online download of investment transactions! Basically totally worthless. The idea is to make things simpler for the end user but as you can see above it makes things harder.

I spoke to Fidelity back when I was concerned about this and their answer was "Well Fidelity has over 200 different transaction types and Quicken only supports a handful", to which I queried, "Exactly, which is why, when you are converting between two different systems, the programmer usually has to perform some mapping. So why aren't you?" which left him speechless for a little while before he regurgitated the standard line above.

Worse yet, Fidelity would handle a 2 for 1 split with a sudden purchase of X shares of stock for $0, which, of course totally messes up your graphs because Quicken uses the StkSplit transaction to adjust for splits in the graphs.

I would give them some pity if the protocol had no provisions for such transactions but OFX provides for them.

Like I said, more trouble than it's worth!

Reply to
Andrew DeFaria

sh wrote: I have accounts with Fidelity, Schwab and TRPrice and I download my transactions from each into Quicken. However, each does reinvestments of shares (Dividend, LongTerm, ShortTerm) differently.

Schwab does it in 2 steps: 1) Create a short or long term income transaction, then 2) create a buy of new shares transaction.

Fidelity does it in 2 different steps: 1) Create a dividend income transaction and places "LongTerm" or "ShortTerm" as a comment, then 2) create a buy of new shares transaction.

TRPrice does it as 1 step 1) a Reinvest income into shares transaction.

Which way is the best way to do this? It seems TRPrice's way is the most logical, so why do Schwab and Fidelity do it into 2 steps?

What's the down side to doing it the TRPrice way?

Thanks

Welcome to the wonderful world of online download of investment transactions! Basically totally worthless. The idea is to make things simpler for the end user but as you can see above it makes things harder.

I spoke to Fidelity back when I was concerned about this and their answer was "Well Fidelity has over 200 different transaction types and Quicken only supports a handful", to which I queried, "Exactly, which is why, when you are converting between two different systems, the programmer usually has to perform some mapping. So why aren't you?" which left him speechless for a little while before he regurgitated the standard line above.

Worse yet, Fidelity would handle a 2 for 1 split with a sudden purchase of X shares of stock for $0, which, of course totally messes up your graphs because Quicken uses the StkSplit transaction to adjust for splits in the graphs.

I would give them some pity if the protocol had no provisions for such transactions but OFX provides for them.

Like I said, more trouble than it's worth!

-- Andrew DeFaria Budget: A method for going broke methodically.

Reply to
Les
2 cents worth... maybe less

You think you have problems? (Yes, punch line from an old Myron Cohen joke)

Merrill Lynch accomplishes this simple task in AT LEAST three transactions.

  1. DIV is added - sometimes several transactions if different div types
  2. WITHDRAW cash from dividend(s)
  3. ADD SHARES of security in question, without bothering to enter price or total cost.

I wind up doing minimum editing by placing total of dividends in total cost box of ADD SHARES dialog box. Could do more but am too old and busy with other stuff.

Jay

Reply to
Jay M Apple

As I indicated in a post on 12/20/2006 regarding using downloads to Quicken

2006 from Fidelity all my Long Term, Short Term and Dividend gains from distributions from all my mutual funds show up as individual Dividend gains which then I must manually correct to the right category. This happens regardless of whether the mutual fund is an IRA or Brokerage account. From the other posts here I gather that this does not happen with Vanguard accounts. Is that everyone's experience?

Reply to
Art Prest

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