In order to keep records of your online investing activities, you’ll need to get a personal record-keeping program such as Quicken or Microsoft Money. Both programs work well, but Quicken is the more popular and more powerful tool, so we’ll discuss how record-keeping works with Quicken.
NOTE:
The steps for Microsoft Money for investment record-keeping closely parallel those described below. For this reason, even if you are using Microsoft Money, you may still want to read through the following paragraphs.
Downloading Investment Records
Quicken supports online investing for many of the popular online brokerage services. This means that you don’t have to record the transactions you effect with an online investment account. Instead, you can tell Quicken to retrieve these transactions directly from the online investment broker.
To work with your online investment account, start Quicken, click the Investing menu, and click Online Investing Setup. Then follow the onscreen instructions for setting up your account. To download investment instructions from your online investment service, click the
Investing menu, click Online Investing, and then click Update/Send. With the help of your Web browser, the online broker’s Web site downloads the investment transactions directly into your register.
NOTE:
The Online Investing command doesn’t appear on the Investing menu until you’ve successfully set up an account for online service. All of the transactions shown were downloaded directly into the register from the online broker’s Web site.
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