I am using Quicken 2006. I want to enter a 3M spinoff of Imation and I'm getting an error message: "Security name already in use."
Here's what I did: I clicked on the placeholder entry in the transaction history for 3M, chose Enter History, chose Enter Missing Transaction, and chose Corporate Security Spinoff. I entered the date, the security name was already there in light type, I entered the new shares issued per old share, cost per old sshare post spinoff, cost per new share, and clicked Enter/Done.
I don't see Imation in the list of my holdings.
I have read through all the past postings, and found them very useful, but I didn't come across one that seems to address this problem.
You do not have to "hold" Imation; all that matters is if it is already in your Security List (meaning to Quicken that the company already exists). If you don't see it in your Security List, make sure it is not "hidden".
You must delete a security from your Security List before it can be the product of a Quicken spinoff transaction.
Dear John, I am embarrassed to say I just found your message. (This is the first time I have used a usenet group.) I had hoped to hear from you because I was impressed with your advice in the archived messages. Following your suggestion, I deleted the security from the Security List (yes, it was there!) and I was able to enter the Imation spinoff. Thank you!
I am confused about what is listed in the Imation report, though. The report lists a 5/2/1988 buy of 24 shares at $8.142917/share. What I entered was 7/1/1996 buy of 24 shares at $8.24333333. I am quite sure I entered whta I meant to enter.
The other confusing thing is that Quicken recorded a series of Imation buys for each date that we reinvested 3M dividends from 2000 through
2006. I checked our brokerage house records and I see the 3M reinvestment, but I don't see any listing for Imation.
My father (who is 89, but a much more experienced investor than I) says, "That's fine." Do you think there is anything amiss?
No, I don't think anything is amiss. Quicken's method of recording a spinoff *may* not be the best way, but I think it "works". Others here can probably explain it better than I, but I will offer my view.
Quicken's spinoff transaction is really a pseudo-transaction; there is never a true spinoff transaction in your account ... there are "Bought" transactions and "Return of Capital" transactions. You could - if you were patient - manually enter the same transactions yourself and produce the same result that Quicken does.
When the spinoff is complete (in Quicken), you want to have the correct cost basis in the spunoff company; that means that each lot of the company doing the spinoff gets a portion of its cost passed to the spunoff company ... on the date of the lot. So you may have dated the spinoff transaction on 7/1/1996, but all your old lots of 3M contributed some cost basis to Imation, both Buy lots and Reinvestment lots.
Quicken's method of handling that is to pretend that you actually bought shares of the spunoff company at the same time you bought shares of the company doing the spinning off. That will make it appear that you owned shares of Imation before Imation ever existed ... but I think it produces mostly correct results.
There has been another method suggested for handling the spinoff which avoids the misleading indication that you owned the spunoff company before it existed.
Change the Quicken generated Buy transactions from the spinoff to "Shares Added" transactions. Date the Shares Added transactions on the date of the spinoff, but make their "Acquistion date" the same as the date each of the lots of the spinning off company were purchased. Then, to clear the "cash" from the account caused by the Return of Capital transactions, you edit the Return of Capital transactions to have a "Transfer account" of the investment account where the transaction is recorded ... causing the Return of Capital transaction to have no effect on the cash in the account.
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