Home → Investments →

Security xfer between accounts

• Edit

Don Mohle'

20 Mar, 2025 11:34 PM

I cannot seem to get securities transferred from one account to another and have them show up in the new account portfolio. I have tried XFER and SELLXFER and neither seems effective.

1. 1 Posted by dwg on 20 Mar, 2025 11:45 PM

   

   You cannot just move securities between accounts in Moneydance. You need to "sell" them in one account, move the funds to the other account, then "buy" them in the new account, after adding the security definition to the new account, you generally do this at cost price in order to not realise any capital gains.

   Any transfer or sell/transfer just moves funds to a different account

   • Edit

2. 2 Posted by Don Mohle' on 21 Mar, 2025 12:00 AM

   

   Thanks for the clarification! I gather that a transfer is just for cash, and a sell/transfer for securities. Seems like an awfully clumsy way to do things! In the real world this is usually not necessary.

   • Edit

3. 3 Posted by dwg on 21 Mar, 2025 12:16 AM

   

   In the real world a lot of things get hidden.

   The issue is that the shares have value, so to move the shares in a program like Moneydance, that follows accounting practices, you have to move the value that gives rise to the shares, which in practice means the transactions that gives the current value.

   There is no way in Moneydance to do this and I suspect it would need re-architecting to do so. At the moment buys and sells are reflected in a security subaccount, but any income and expenses I believe are only reflected in the Investment account itself as are the movement of funds. So there is quite a complex relationship between various transaction for any security.

   • Edit

4. 4 Posted by Don Mohle on 21 Mar, 2025 04:54 AM

   

   Thanks! I understand that the value underlies the shares and not the
   other way round. Tidy for accounting too, clean boundaries.

   Don

   On 3/20/2025 5:16 PM, dwg wrote:

   • Edit

5. 5 Posted by cexiljhoub on 26 Mar, 2025 06:52 PM

   

   I've had issues like this before. Sometimes, it just takes a while for the transfer to process, even if it looks like nothing is happening.

   • Edit

6. 6 Posted by Sara Cabrol on 12 Apr, 2025 07:13 PM

   

   I was having the same question because I regularly do partial ROTH IRA conversions, and each time I have to enter in Trad IRA as SELLXFER and then go to the ROTH and buy the shares back for the same cost sold.

   Unfortunately, this also obscures the income as a txfr, but it should be tracked as a misc. ordinary income for tax purposes!

   Would love to see a real fix for these issues in the next update, rather than just relying on work-arounds.

   • Edit