How do I buy a security?

Use the Shares Bought dialog to record the purchase of shares of a stock or mutual fund. Quicken tracks purchase price and lots; these will be important later when you use the Capital Gains Estimator to minimize the tax liability incurred by sales. Similarly, cost basis information can be captured at the time of sale.

Open the account you want to use.
Click Enter Transactions.
In the Enter Transaction list, select Buy - Shares Bought.
Use the dialog to record the purchase of a security. Click a link below for more information.
- Transaction date
  Enter the date of purchase. This is important if you want to track complete investment performance and tax information.
- Security name
  If you accessed this dialog from the investment account transaction list, select the security that you're purchasing shares of.
- Account
  If you accessed this dialog from the Security Detail View, select the account that you're purchasing shares for.
- Number of shares, Price paid, and commission
  Enter the number of shares you purchased and the purchase price. Enter any commissions or other fees separately in the Commission/Fee field.
- Choose whether you want to use money from a Quicken account to acquire these shares
  - Select From this account's cash balance if you're buying the shares with money from the current investment account; this decreases the cash balance of this account. Quicken enters this transaction in the transaction list as a Buy.
  - Otherwise, select the Quicken account you're using to fund this purchase in the drop-down list. This decreases the cash balance of that account. Quicken enters this transaction in the transaction list as a BuyX.
  When you access this dialog to resolve a placeholder entry, you won't be asked to identify the account you're using to fund the transaction.
Click Enter/New to enter another transaction, or Enter/Done to finish.

Notes

There are separate procedures to handle the purchase, or exercise, of:

Employee stock options (ESOGs)
Employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs)
Exchange-traded options
All bond types except U.S. Savings bonds: use the Buy Bond dialog. (Use the above procedure for U.S. Savings bonds.)
For a 401(k) accounts, see Entering updates to a 401(k) account.

Recording a transaction in Quicken does not execute a real-world trade, transfer, or other transaction. Contact your broker to execute trades or transfers, and then manually record the transactions in Quicken—better yet, download them directly from your participating financial institution.