How do I reflect an account retitling in Quicken?

I recently completed an estate plan and was advised by my attorney to retitle any non-Roth investments to "Gary Revokable Trust, dated xx/xx/2012". I did so, and now, as the agent (Vanguard) moves assets from my "Gary" account to my "Gary Revokable Trust" account, transactions are appearing in my one-step-update that have messed up my total balances because they show removals from my old account, but no corresponding adds to a new account. I originally thought the new account would appear in Quicken automatically (as it does on the home page of my Vanguard account on the internet), but it seems as if I must enter the new account manually into Quicken (and probably also in the part of Quicken that controls the one-step-update).

Am I missing something that will come back to bite me later? Are there documented instructions anywhere?

Reply to
Gary
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"Gary" wrote

I recently completed an estate plan and was advised by my attorney to retitle any non-Roth investments to "Gary Revokable Trust, dated xx/xx/2012". I did so, and now, as the agent (Vanguard) moves assets from my "Gary" account to my "Gary Revokable Trust" account, transactions are appearing in my one-step-update that have messed up my total balances because they show removals from my old account, but no corresponding adds to a new account. I originally thought the new account would appear in Quicken automatically (as it does on the home page of my Vanguard account on the internet), but it seems as if I must enter the new account manually into Quicken (and probably also in the part of Quicken that controls the one-step-update).

Am I missing something that will come back to bite me later? Are there documented instructions anywhere?

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Yes, you need to create the new account. But based on your comments, it may be a good thing you didn't do that already.

When the dust clears, you'll want one Shares Added transaction in the new account for every lot you owned in the old account. And those Shares Added transactions need to carry the cost basis of the lot they represent. In my experience, the Shares Added transactions downloaded from the financial institutions rarely, if ever, have that cost basis.

If you create a new Quicken account for the new real-world account and set it up for downloading during the account creation process, you'll probably get all those Shares Added transactions from Vanguard ... and they probably won't have the cost basis. And you might get just one Shares Added for each security, rather than one Shares Added for each lot.

So I suggest:

Create a new Quicken account for the new Vanguard account ... but create it as a "manual" account ("No, I don't want to download to this account").

When the account has been created, go to the old Quicken Vanguard account and initiate a "Shares transferred between accounts" pseudo-transaction, to move all lots of all securities in the old Quicken Vanguard account to the new Quicken Vanguard account. The Shares Added in the new account should contain the correct cost basis for each lot. Your new Quicken Vanguard should be "correct" at this point (unless you had any "cash" in the old account, which you should transfer using the "Cash transferred out of account" transaction in the old account).

Then set the new Quicken Vanguard account up for downloading. I'm guessing you'll see some Shares Added transactions in the initial download. If they are one-for-one matches for the Shares Added transactions that Quicken created, Accept them. Otherwise, delete the downloaded transactions.

Reply to
John Pollard

"John Pollard" wrote in news:ke0qrg$rnd$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

John, I got the impression that everything from the old account got transferred to the new one. Then, with the proper backups generated in case things go wrong, wouldn't it be easier to disconnect the download features of the old account, remove the "removals" Gary mentioned, and then to rename the account to the new name, enter the new data for downloading data into this "new" account, and making sure the "shares added" transactions indicating the transfer from the old account to the new one get downloaded and promptly deleted. That should preserve all history then. A simple zero dollar transaction with the remark account (s) transferred from old account should be sufficient indication.

Reply to
Han

Thanks so much for the answers to my question. Your suggestions have worked out very well.

Reply to
Gary Lotto

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