Include Investment Transactions in Spending Plan & Pull Average Cost from Fidelity

Ankitkumar

Quicken Simplifi currently ignores investment transactions in the Spending Plan, making it difficult for users to track their full financial picture. This feature request proposes:

1. Option to Include Investment Contributions in Spending Plan- Investments should be deducted from available money, as many people do recurring investments every month.

2. Pull Average Cost from Fidelity- Just as Quicken Simplifi does with Robinhood, it should retrieve average cost basis for Fidelity investments.

Problem

Investment contributions (e.g., scheduled deposits to Fidelity) are completely ignored in the Spending Plan.

This creates an inaccurate view of available money since significant recurring investments are not accounted for.

Unlike Robinhood, Fidelity cost basis is not pulled, making it harder to track investment performance.

Proposed Solution:

1. Allow Investment Contributions in Spending Plan

Users should have an option to include investment deposits as an expense in the Spending Plan.

This ensures that recurring contributions are reflected in available money calculations.

2. Fetch Average Cost from Fidelity

Quicken Simplifi should pull the cost basis of investments from Fidelity, similar to how it does with Robinhood.

This helps users track gains/losses more accurately without manual entry.

Benefits:

More Accurate Financial Picture- Investment contributions are part of real spending and should be deducted from available funds.

Better Investment Tracking- Fidelity users get automatic cost basis updates, improving portfolio management.

Enhanced Budgeting- Users can plan better when investments are properly reflected in their spending plan.

This feature would provide a clearer, more accurate view of both spending and investments in Quicken Simplifi!

SRC54

I have a Fidelity Brokerage account, but when I transfer money to it, I don't consider that spending but just going from one account to another. However, if you want to include it in your cash flow, I guess you could create an expense category called Contributions and charge it to that. When Fidelity downloads it into your account, it will be deposited into your core account and show up there as an asset. Of course, there will be an entry in the Brokerage or a Payment/Deposit but you could just mark it TRANSFER without specifying the account so it doesn't get counted twice.

You could also, of course, set a Custom Amount in transfers so the money shows up in the Spending Plan. I admit that now that I am retired, I am not making further contributions to it, so feel free to set me straight.

I don't know why Fidelity doesn't download ACB as others do, but my understanding is this Fidelity's decision. If I am wrong on that, set me straight again. I know that Schwab does download the ACB.

DannyB

QS gives you full customization for Transfers.

For #1. I have set up recurring contributions as transfers to my grandchildren's custodial accounts. These are all included in my Spending Plan and the contributions are deducted from my monthly available income. You should be able to set up these recurring contributions and make them visible to your Spending Plan the way you describe. @SRC54 gives you some more details below, but you can also read these support articles for further information and how tos.

https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/5142302-how-credit-card-payments-and-transfers-are-handled-in-the-spending-plan

https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/3352152-how-do-transfers-work

For #2 that may be something you will want to troubleshoot with one of the coaches. I have accounts at Schwab and BNY/Mellon - Pershing and QS successfully imports the average costs for each holding in my portfolios.

SRC54

Yes, what @DannyB says will work but make sure you just use Transfer. For if you do a transfer of $500 to another account, say Brokerage, it cancels out. So you have to do a transfer that is included on one end but excluded on the other end. So you must use Transfer. This way you won't have to categorize it as a contribution. If Brokerage downloads the Payment/Deposit as an expense, just change it to Transfer as the category so it will exclude it. Exclude it yourself if necessary.

It is somewhat counterintuitive until you get used to it.

One benefit of using a category of say Contributions is that it will show up as a monthly bill instead of in the Transfers section. It really depends on what you prefer and what is easier to keep up with. As I say, I prefer just to do a transfer and not think of it as a bill or outflow. And you can always do recurring transfers as well as recurring bills.

Until my wife retired, she paid into a retirement account. Her monthly contribution came out of her paycheck, which I did as a split. And of course I had to include the whole transaction in the Spending Plan so I had a Transfer Amount of $674 in the Spending Plan for her contribution. I tried different things, but I finally just left it alone and considered it a monthly expense. Really it went into her retirement account but the day she retired, it was annuitized so that emptied the account anyhow.