Need expert advice on updating brokerage account...

Terri wrote:
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well - how active are they ? what kind of transactions do they have ?
I mean, are they idle with respect to "trading" and only are sitting there with basic Divs, LT/ST gains ?
I would try the One Step Update and see what you are able to download.
Then I would manually go thru your statements and just add those transactions up to the point where a One Step Update made it current.

They are still active accounts in my portfolio and they are either buys/sells/dividends etc. They are up to date at 12/31/2005 but I have not entered anything since then
Would the information have to be put in for the years separately? I want to do this the easiest way possible so they are updated to 12/31/2007 with the proper final totals so that I can update more frequently in the future.
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I would always be safe to load the oldest first and move forward. You can do a one step update (to see how much data is returned) or possible you might be able to be able to load specific dates on the brokers site (likely 90 days per transaction). However, I recommend you do not accept the one step update transactions until you get caught up to that point.
Also, you do not need to reconcile each month - when I dealt with history, I reconciled quarterly. Saves a little time.
If you are not concerned with history and want to start with 1/2008, you can simply do a Remove Share for items you don't own and Add Shares for Items you do Own. You will need to add shares for each lot you purchase to have the correct basis in the future.
Oilcan
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A couple of other basic questions: You say "not entered" vs "not downloaded" ?
Do the accounts have One Step Update capability, or maybe just the manual Web Connect, or at the bottom - NO online access.... like my kid's 529 accounts.
Also - based on the above scenarios, why have you not updated the accounts since 2005 ?
Terri wrote:
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I think the "best" way depends on you. For me, the "best" way to do this would be to take each month's statement and enter the listed transactions one-by-one. That way I could 1) enter the transactions at my own pace, 2) review each transaction and select the best way (in my opinion) to enter the transaction as opposed to Quicken's way of entering the transaction, 3) balance each month end 's market value per Quicken to each month's statement, giving me confidence that I'm entering transactions correctly. At the end of the day I'd have a better understanding of what went on in the account for the past 3 years and more confidence in the end result. Because of all that, I'm willing to do the work.
If you aren't willing to go to that effort then you might try the One Step Update route. It sounds like you might not have understood the process when you tried it before. If, for example, you want to update your Schwab brokerage account but you also have a Traditional IRA, a Roth IRA and a SEP IRA at Schwab, Quicken will really want to update ALL those accounts; if you don't read carefully and understand what Quicken is asking you in the One Step Update process it would be easy to combine transactions for all those Schwab accounts into your one Quicken/Schwab brokerage account.
However, I'd be surprised if whatever Financial Institution you're dealing with will have over 3 years of transactions available to download via One Step Update, so you're probably going to have to enter some (old) information manually, in any case.
Tom Young

OK - what if I deleted ALL the prior information from ALL the accounts and just went to One Step Update and began anew with, let's say December 31 2007 - would this be disastrous? It is just too much work to go back and do everything by hand.
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It might be easier to create a new account for your brokerage firm and see what gets downloaded.
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One problem with this approach is that you most likely would lose cost basis information for older securities that you still have in your portfolio.
Say, for example, you originally purchased a stock in various lots in 1990, 1991 and 1992. From 1993 to to the end of 2005 you sold some of those shares from time-to-time, specifying different lots for calculation of capital gain/loss. At the end of 2005 your Quicken file would be carrying that lot/cost basis information for the stock that remained, and that information would all be lost with the deletion. It's almost a certainty that the downloaded information would not include this kind of cost detail.
If, at this point, you did a One Step Update the FI would send along, and Quicken would enter, transactions from the present back to however long the FI provides this information (probably no more that 2 years.) Then Quicken would create "placeholders" (adjusting entries) in your account to balance the sum of the transactions with current balances provided by the FI. You'd end up with correct current balances for securities but no reliable cost basis information for older securities.
If you're unwilling to enter this information manually but still want to have good cost basis figures for older stocks then the only other option is to do a One Step Update and go back and "fill in" any gap between the end of 2005 to the point the One Step Update information begins, followed by deleting placeholder entries created by Quicken.
What I'd recommend you do is to back up your current files, do your One Step Update, and see how far back the information goes.
Tom Young

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I think you will also lose any stock that you no longer own. Those will need to be added for historical purposes only.

I have finally realized another problem. My brokerage company shows only 4 accounts but I have broken those accounts that have mutual funds down to say 6 or 8 separate funds. When I go to update, it only shows the MASTER account and of course, not the separate funds. Now what? Start all over? Out of the 4 accounts, 2 have been broken down by me and entered manually for years, but am still at that point where I got lazy and have not updated since 2005....Any further suggestions?
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You need to combine the Accounts to match the broker if you want to do an automatic download. Search this Group in Google as this has been discussed many times on different ways to accomplish this.
Oilcan
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