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Enter historical transactions for your accounts whenever possible. If you don't have all past statements for an account, they are sometimes available for a fee from financial institutions.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
This method provides complete performance reporting and tax planning assistance, for current holdings and for shares you've sold. This is the most accurate and thorough way to report unrealized or realized gains. (Capital gains information is used to calculate your tax liability). Quicken calculates the adjusted cost basis for each of your lots. From this information, Quicken can provide historical performance and help you plan for taxes:
| You must be able to locate all past statements for this account. You must spend time entering historical transactions. |
Don't resolve the Placeholder—I'll track my holdings only
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If you don't enter missing transactions, Quicken can't provide complete performance reporting or tax planning assistance.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
Easiest method. Quicken can still provide portfolio analysis and limited performance reporting. You can also download security fundamentals, news and alerts, and see how your investment portfolio contributes to your overall net worth. You can go back later and enter missing historical transactions. | Quicken can't provide historical performance and help you plan for taxes. Quicken will mark some performance and tax calculations as estimates. Quicken will keep the placeholder entry in the investment transaction list.
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Enter estimated average cost for Placeholder shares
If you don't have access to your old statements, or don't want to enter historical transactions you can still get limited performance reporting and tax planning assistance. Just enter an estimated average cost for your Placeholder shares. (Tell me how)
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
| This is the easiest way to resolve a placeholder entry without entering all historical transactions. Use this for mutual funds, especially if you reinvest dividends or make frequent purchases (as when following a dollar cost averaging investment plan). Basically you are estimating the average cost. You can go back later and enter missing historical transactions. | Because this doesn't capture the true average cost, Quicken will still mark some performance and tax calculations as estimates. Quicken will still keep the placeholder entry in the investment transaction list. (You can go back later and enter missing historical transactions.) Quicken can't provide historical performance and help you plan for taxes. You may have to wait a few months before your investment data is in the range where you can display useful investment performance reports. Even when they do, your investment performance reports will show data relative to when you started using Quicken, not based on your portfolio's true historical performance. You will be able to monitor your portfolio's fundamentals but not its historical performance. You will still be able to analyze your holdings and balance your asset allocation. You can also research investment opportunities. Cost basis and open lot data is incomplete, so that you can't create investment-related tax reports to help you prepare Schedule D tax information. Also, Quicken can't distinguish between short- and long-term gain capital gains, so you lose the benefit of using the Capital Gains Estimator. |