Adjusting Cost Basis

[attunement]

Is there a simple way to adjust the Cost Basis of various funds.

I have a number of funds where the cost basis is shown as zero, others where the cost basis is just not right, so this really throws off the capital gains report.

I want to adjust the cost basis without a change occurring in cash or portfolio value.

I'm sure this has been asked before but a cursory search through the various posts as well as the help manual didn't result in the information I'm looking for.

Many thanks

[Mark]

Hi attunement,

It sounds like one or more of your purchase transactions did not have accurate cost basis. You can fix this by editing the transaction(s). Open up the Data Register and select the data type of "Transactions (all)". Here you will see all your purchases for your investment. If one of them is incorrect, select it and press "Edit...". You do not need to change the shares, so your market value will not change. You are only changing how much you paid for those shares. If you have a default cash account assigned, this will affect your cash balance though. If you don't want this, you can temporarily disable the default cash account under the "Properties..." of the sub-portfolio. Once you're done making your edits, turn back on the default cash account.

[attunement]

Mark,

The problem occurred when somehow my Scottrade account got all screwed up. It worked fine for years (using Fund Manager) then all the sudden started showing -187,000 in the cash account. Apparently something from Penson transferred wrong.

Then I recently transferred that account to Fidelity. So I figured, just start fresh. But the transfers don't include the cost basis. I know that ordinarily you're supposed to just keep the Scottrade data, then after the transfer start up on the new data with the new Fidelity account and password. Normallly that works very smoothly. But in this case, the Scottrade data got all messed up (somehow) and I could never weed through all the transactions to figure out where the mishap occurred. Each time I tried to make a correction, other balances just got even more out of sync.

But I think I just figured out how to do it! Tell me if I'm right. I just go into each fund, click edit, and there I find a "Transfer of Assets received" transaction. Clicking on edit gives me a place to enter Tax cost basis information! Right? I've been looking for that for months! Ha ha.

But I think this will do it. Let me know if I'm wrong.

Thanks.

Tod

[Mark]

Hi Tod,

That sounds like a transfer in or purchase transaction with the memo of "Transfer of Assets Received". That memo would have been pulled down from your broker when you retrieved transactions. But yes, this is where the cost basis should go.

[attunement]

Mark,

Yes, that's right. The Cost Basis information made it to Fidelity (from Scottrade) but for some reason doesn't make it into the information that FundManager is receiving. The CostBasis there is shown as zero, even though Fidelity shows the correct, non-zero cost basis in my account.

It's no problem for me since I have only a few funds to update in this way. After that, everything should be fine.

Thanks for your help.

Tod