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How do I change accounting techniques mid-stream?

There is one investment account for which all the statements have been in money only; never any "share" information. I accounted for this in Quicken by making all transactions at 1 share and using the actual dollar-amount as the number of shares transacted.

Now they have suddenly changed accounting, and my statements show I have a certain number of shares at a certain price. I'd like to be able to reflect that data.

I have had this account since 1983, and there are too many transactions to change from the beginning...besides I don't have the actual shares and dollars per share until it changed the accounting scheme in the last year or so.

How can I change from an only-dollar-balance to a full-fledged account with shares and dollars-per-share starting from when the company changed what they reported to me?

Reply to
Gary
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Seems like you have been dealing with a "stock" tht you held its "price" to $1.00 per share. Now you want to change to a different value and adjust the number of shares and then let the value float. Use the stock split to move from $1 to your revised value, then continue from there. See Stock split in Help for further details

Reply to
Howard

No! Don't use the stock split. It will leave odd fractional shares in the account. Much easier is a corporate acquisition, replacing the old $1-stock with a new stock valued at a specific value.

Reply to
Mike B

On Sun 27 Mar 2005 09:08:03a, Howard wrote in news:1111936083.029773.140030 @o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:

You mis-read. He logged each as 1 share with the actual cost of that "share".

Reply to
Mike L

So he has $100 wort of shares. 100 shares at $1 each.

He now finds out that in reality he has only 50 shares at $2 each. He creates a corporate acquisition where his 100 units of $1-stock is acquired for 50 shares of $2-stock. How did I misread that?

Reply to
Mike B

On Sun 27 Mar 2005 12:38:44p, Mike B wrote in news:4247008a snipped-for-privacy@news1.prserv.net:

It's more like: He has 1 share at $100; 1 share at $5000,. 1 share at

815.27... etc. times maybe 150 or so. Not so easy now.

If he had simply what you said, he would have just rekeyed it correctly and poof, no problem and no post to this NG asking for help.

You read it as one simple register entry... not the case though. He has a real mess.

Reply to
Mike L

Oops, I went back and reread. My bad. He does indeed have a mess. I have a solution. Wil post it in direct response to his original post.

Reply to
Mike B

So in the end he has (using your example) 3 shares at $5815.27. So he does a corporate acquisition of 824 (or whatever the ratio is) shares in the new stock for each share owned. He provides the price of the new stock as the required price/share of the acquiring company. He ends up with 2472 (if my math is correct) at whatever the current units are worth. His cost basis is still the $5815.257 of his original investment.

Only problem is that he will have fractional shares in his register and he will have the devil's own time figuring out why he can't get the lots to show zero whan he sells what he thinks is his holdings.

Reply to
Mike B

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