Tracking BitCoin in Quicken

[hawks5999]

If you like to keep track of all your financial instruments in one program, Quicken goes a long way in meeting that need. However, it can be a little tricky to set up a new instrument such as BitCoin (or physical metals for that matter).

Recently, I started accumulating BitCoin and setup my Quicken to track my purchases and their value. Here's how you can setup your Quicken (and likely other PFM software).

1) Add a new account - the important thing to do here is to setup a Brokerage account under Investing, not a Cash or other type of Spending account. While BTC has properties like Cash - to Quicken it looks like a security.
a) Enter the name of your Brokerage - eg BitCoin. Quicken will try to look up a brokerage but obviously won't find one. So just go with your manually entered name
b) Enter a cash balance and statement date as you might with any brokerage. If you are just getting started with BitCoin, set the date to just before your first purchase and your Cash balance to $0
c) When prompted for securities in the account, add a ticker symbol such as BTC$ (Quicken can't parse the bahtcoin symbol). Again, Quicken will try to look up and fail. Add it manually.
d) Indicate your number of coins. Again, if you are just getting started, put this at 0. We'll add them in later. If prompted, answer No to this being a single mutual fund account.
Done

2) Transfer money into your brokerage account - now for each purchase that make of BTC transfer from the account you purchased with into your Brokerage cash account. This is easy if you used PayPal and are tracking that account also in Quicken. You probably have the PayPal side of the transaction downloaded. Just make it a transfer into your BitCoin account. If you go through LibertyReserve, Dwolla, MoneyBookers, etc. into mt gox or other, just track the cash from your bank account into those accounts as though they are transferring to your BitCoin brokerage.

3) Buy "shares" of BTC - enter the transactions from whatever source where you purchased BTC. Each entry will ask for a share price and number purchased. Pretty straightforward there. You can go into the properties of the BitCoin security and add current pricing since downloads from mt. gox are probably not coming any time soon.

4) Analyze your portfolio - Setup in this fashion you can track the value and cost basis of your BTC.



Notes:

If you play any games of chance, like Double Trouble:http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=12096.0 that could generate additional BTC in your portfolio without a purchase per se, you can track the winning using the ReinvDiv entry. Just enter the number of shares gained in the ReinvDiv transaction and it will increase your holdings without adjusting your cost basis.

If you start accumulating "Cash" in your Brokerage due to not having a clear tracking of fees. You can do a MiscExp and track with whatever category you may use. For example, I have a Bank Fee category that I use for such fees.


Hope this helps!

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[Andre Jensen (World Bitcoin Exchange)]

If you like to keep track of all your financial instruments in one program, Quicken goes a long way in meeting that need. However, it can be a little tricky to set up a new instrument such as BitCoin (or physical metals for that matter).

Recently, I started accumulating BitCoin and setup my Quicken to track my purchases and their value. Here's how you can setup your Quicken (and likely other PFM software).

1) Add a new account - the important thing to do here is to setup a Brokerage account under Investing, not a Cash or other type of Spending account. While BTC has properties like Cash - to Quicken it looks like a security.
a) Enter the name of your Brokerage - eg BitCoin. Quicken will try to look up a brokerage but obviously won't find one. So just go with your manually entered name
b) Enter a cash balance and statement date as you might with any brokerage. If you are just getting started with BitCoin, set the date to just before your first purchase and your Cash balance to $0
c) When prompted for securities in the account, add a ticker symbol such as BTC$ (Quicken can't parse the bahtcoin symbol). Again, Quicken will try to look up and fail. Add it manually.
d) Indicate your number of coins. Again, if you are just getting started, put this at 0. We'll add them in later. If prompted, answer No to this being a single mutual fund account.
Done

2) Transfer money into your brokerage account - now for each purchase that make of BTC transfer from the account you purchased with into your Brokerage cash account. This is easy if you used PayPal and are tracking that account also in Quicken. You probably have the PayPal side of the transaction downloaded. Just make it a transfer into your BitCoin account. If you go through LibertyReserve, Dwolla, MoneyBookers, etc. into mt gox or other, just track the cash from your bank account into those accounts as though they are transferring to your BitCoin brokerage.

3) Buy "shares" of BTC - enter the transactions from whatever source where you purchased BTC. Each entry will ask for a share price and number purchased. Pretty straightforward there. You can go into the properties of the BitCoin security and add current pricing since downloads from mt. gox are probably not coming any time soon.

4) Analyze your portfolio - Setup in this fashion you can track the value and cost basis of your BTC.



Notes:

If you play any games of chance, like Double Trouble:http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=12096.0 that could generate additional BTC in your portfolio without a purchase per se, you can track the winning using the ReinvDiv entry. Just enter the number of shares gained in the ReinvDiv transaction and it will increase your holdings without adjusting your cost basis.

If you start accumulating "Cash" in your Brokerage due to not having a clear tracking of fees. You can do a MiscExp and track with whatever category you may use. For example, I have a Bank Fee category that I use for such fees.


Hope this helps!

can i get this free

[hawks5999]

Well, you have to buy Quicken or get it free from torrenting (I'm not endorsing this). But the process I describe is clearly free.

[HowlingMad]

Hawks5999,

Thank you for the information.  This helps alot.

Additionally with precious metals this works out to be the same type of 'workaround' although instead of shares it is grams or troy ounces.  If you were to purchase metals in grams and ounces, you would want to setup each as a different stock and enter the prices individually, and not drive yourself insane performing gram/ounce conversions.

Thanks again

[domob]

can i get this free

You can try Gnucash, which is free (as in freedom) software.  It already has precious metals predefined (as all ISO currency codes) as XAU, XAG and co, and you can use bitcoins with some tricks, too.  It works very well for me, both for managing my "ordinary" finances and also keeping track of my bitcoin and PM assets.

[mertliti]

Thanks for sharing your ideas.

I do a similar technique as the original poster, however, I named my security "mBTC" because bitcoin denominations have so many decimal places. I just multiply all my trade quantities by 1000 and divide the price by the same. This works well because Quicken is setup to handle lots of decimal places in a security's price, but not so many in its shares.

For example, buying 5 bitcoin for $250.45 would go in as:
5,000 mBTC @ $0.25045

The other difference in what I do is that I mark network transfer fees using ShrsOut transactions in the investment account. This workaround isn't ideal because they show up as cost basis related transactions when you generate a capital gains report, but it's the best I could come up with. I'm curious to hear if anyone else has a better solution here.

[mertliti]

I named my security "mBTC" because bitcoin denominations have so many decimal places. I just multiply all my trade quantities by 1000 and divide the price by the same. This works well because Quicken is setup to handle lots of decimal places in a security's price, but not so many in its shares.

For example, buying 5 bitcoin for $250.45 would go in as:
5,000 mBTC @ $0.25045

The other difference in what I do is that I mark network transfer fees using ShrsOut transactions in the investment account. This workaround isn't ideal because they show up as cost basis related transactions when you generate a capital gains report, but it's the best I could come up with. I'm curious to hear if anyone else has a better solution here.

An update to my suggestion here... I have found a very workable solution for the last point on withdrawal fees, network transaction fees, etc. Instead of using ShrsOut, I now enter these as ordinary SellX transactions. I enter the number of bitcoins taken in fees as the amount for "shares sold" and use an approximate price based on a historical quote service or another transaction the same day. Then, the key point is that I enter the full value of the transaction into the commission/fee field so that the transaction amount ends up as $0.00. This way Quicken correctly recognizes that I've lost some bitcoins, asks me to identify the lot(s) for cost basis purposes, and then shows that the whole profit went to fees. It works out perfectly for accounting at tax time.