More Import Issues

David T. sunfish62 at yahoo.com
Tue Oct 31 17:38:47 EST 2006


To everyone with suggestions on my questions about accounts, thank you! I will
take the suggestions and work with them.

Now, on to another tricky problem, working still with this funky
Quicken-inherited file. The file originally had transaction dating back to 1989
(!), but while in Quicken I had to split out older transactions in late 2003 to
make the file size manageable. The problem is that Quicken retained each
transaction that involved a change in stock or mutual fund shares, while
deleting all other transactions. While it's nice to have the purchase/sale
dates and prices of mutual funds and stocks in the system for capital gains
purposes, what I *DON'T* like is that the balancing entry for the sale or
purchase was retained as well, which throws off the balances on the other
accounts. In other words, if I purchased a stock with funds from a checking
account, the checking account debit is still listed. 

I have to change something here so that my account balances are accurate. I see
a couple of solutions: 

1a) I could change the source account from Checking to Equity:Opening Balances

1b) I could change the source account to Retained Earnings

1c) I could change the source account to yet another account (suggestions?)

2) I could change the transaction to reflect the shares added without retaining
the actual cost

As far as I can tell, Option 1 in all its flavors retains the cost basis, which
would be useful, but I imagine it throws off overall calculations of worth.
Option 2 would keep worth accurate, but would remove cost basis analyses. Under
the circumstances, what would be the recommended path? And, if Option 2 is the
most appropriate solution, what steps exactly would I do to change the
transaction? (The last time I tried to alter the costs, I ended up with
negative share balances, I don't know why?)

Thanks,
David


 
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