One thing to add to the previous post on Basis:
in Portfolio view, have BOTH the Cost Basis/Share AND
the Cost Basis set up in Customize. I keep it next to
# of shares and as one of the first four/five items.
Ok, so i'm further along in auditing my quicken files
and tracing the basis for a stock.
One friend: the Investment Transactions report under
reports:investments. This eliminates the need to use
Excel as i suggested in the last post.
Set the report for a single account (customize) and a single
security. This way you can walk through the buys, sells
Moved (MS) and Splits (SS), as well as Stock spin-offs that all affect
total basis (not sure what else does).
One thing to check: the lots on a sell or Moved Shares; sometimes the LAST
entry in the lots is a partial share entry, so the basis needs to match
both in the Portfolio view and via audit. This means that i tend to look
at buys over $500 first (it's a dividend reinvest
DRIP w/lots of little transactions) and that the last lot may refect only part of
that buy.
Beware of Lots: sometimes, lots just get messed up. Not really sure why, but
i had stock get stuck or not show up in lots, throwing the basis off.
The repair is to open lots and look that the lots (as a First in/out example) lots are a complete set with a possible fractional shares for the last one. Often there is a list of more dates with NO entries after the last share in the lot. This is fine.
What's NOT fine is if the lot isn't continuous; if not, you have to re-do the sell or buy that's causing the trouble. One way i found this was i had moved all the shares out of an account to a new account, but there were negative shares left in the account in portfolio. Re-doing a few transactions (the size of the negative shares gives a hint at which one) fixed this.
What to do: find the transaction. Start a new transaction (cmnd-N) on the same date and fill in a little info. Hit return to "move" that transaction into position. Scroll to the two transactions and copy/paste the rest of the info from old to new. Delete the old transaction; it should re-jigger the lots by doing this.
Now, check lots in the MS, Sell, etc transaction to see if it works out. I've also been in a situation where i had to "move" a tiny fraction of a share to the last lot; you have to redo each lot transaction in order from oldest to newest to do this. It's a pain.
I'll keep reporting in / Please ADD your ideas to this,
Foob
