mutual funds - setup as single or multiple accounts

(Is the word "accounts" above meant to refer to real-world "accounts", or real-world "securities" (mutual funds)?

As far as I can tell, the only thing that matters significantly is whether you can (or ever will) download to those accounts. If you can now, or may in the future, download to the accounts; you will want them setup the way the financial institution requires for downloading.

For those fi's that already permit downloads, it should not be a problem to determine this.

For fi's who do not offer downloads now, but may in the future, I think you need to guess ... and I guess they will want all their funds in a single account ... or they won't care; meaning a single account would have the better probability of being right.

Naturally, I am assuming that you will already take into consideration the nature of the account; non-retirement, IRA, Roth IRA, 401k. etc. The preceding comments were based on all non-retirement account holdings. (At Vanguard, for example, I have four accounts: one account for non-retirement holdings, and three accounts for three different types of IRA. Each of the four accounts can hold as many funds as I choose).

I guess this was more of a Quicken logistics question - Currently the accounts are setup individually in Quicken, and downloaded every so often to capture transactions. However, I have my Schwab brokerage account setup and then within it the various securities and a couple of mutual funds acquired thru the Schwab account.

For my other mutual fund holdings, each account/fund is setup individually... not sure why ? vs setting up the overall "portfolio" for say .... American Century (with Ultra + Intl Bond) Fidelity (with G&I, Health, Asia) T.Rowe (with New Era, Intl Stock) Vanguard (with Windsor, etc) - manually initiated download

So - like I mentioned above, since my mutual funds are pretty static, I currently have a Quicken account setup separately for each fund and was thinking of redoing it with each "company" as an account, and each fund a security within that account - just like my Schwab

Is there any difference in - downloading, reporting, charting, etc

For my reporting purposes, I do not remember any reason to care

For downloading, yes there are differences. If you have your Quicken accounts setup differently than your fi requires, you will have to change them if you want to download. Generally, like I said, I think the fi wants your securities in Quicken to be in accounts that correspond to the accounts they are in with your fi. Check with your fi's.

got it - it's been a long time since I originally set things up - started with Quicken 2000... when the internal Schwab software was discontinued.

I have my funds set up as individual accounts on Quicken from many years ago. Now, in order to download the funds, I need them in a single account. Is there an easy way to convert them?

I certainly hope you have checked this out with your fi; I have no personal experience that any fi that requires Single Mutual Fund accounts, and I have never found any use for single mutual fund accounts.

You didn't say what version of Quicken you are using.

In Q2005, on the Summary tab of the investment account, in the Account Attributes pane, there should be a link labelled "Single Mutual Fund". You can click on "yes" or "no" to switch an account between the two choices.

That should have read:

"I have no personal experience that any fi requires Single Mutual Fund accounts,"

Before we can recommend a method, we need to know what version of Quicken you are running.

Sorry I wasn't clear enough. What I meant is that I currently have all my mutual funds in single Mutual Fund accounts, which I set up many years ago. Now, in order to download, I need all the funds to be in a single Brokerage account.

I'm running Q2005.

Sorry, I didn't read your previous post well enough.

Well Q2005 complicates matters, since, as you probably know, Q2005 will not import QIF files to investment accounts ... at least not to individual accounts.

There is a sort-of workaround which offers varying degrees of success; Q2005 will still import QIF files to "all accounts". I can not tell you exactly what rules Q2005 applies to convince itself that you are, in fact, importing "all accounts", but if you convince it you are, you can import into any account type.

You can easily experiment by making a copy (or multiple copies) of your existing file, exporting with various selections (probably export "all accounts", then remove data from the resulting QIF file) to QIF files then importing using "all accounts".

I would plan on setting up a new investment account to hold the transactions from your multiple investment accounts, and I would plan on modifying the QIF file data so the exported individual

If you are unable or unwilling to try the QIF file route, I think you will have to manually enter transactions in your new investment account, then delete the old accounts ... or possibly pay Intuit to move/merge the transactions for you.

I forgot; you should also investigate the "Shares transferred between accounts" transaction. I believe this transaction may accomplish the end result you desire, though it will leave the history in the single mutual fund accounts.

Thanks. I think I'll try this method.

And it will forever screw up your investment performance reports.