Removing a closed account from a group you use for reports is a bad idea 99% of the time. Granted it can be confusing to see long-dead accounts listed on the end of PortfolioCenter reports, but the benefits far outweigh the negatives.
At this point, the only way to omit a closed account from the list is to remove it from the group. Removing it from the group also erases its performance and transaction history. If you use this group for long-term performance reporting, losing the account changes your performance history. Changing your performance history is likely to greatly confuse your clients and may annoy the SEC and/or GIPS.
Here are my recommendations for handling dropped clients in PortfolioCenter.
- Never, ever delete an account. Treat PortfolioCenter as a “data graveyard”: what goes in never leaves.
- Always check the “Closed” field when an account is closed. Be consistent. Your sets and account values will be worthless if you only mark some of closed accounts.
- Take advantage of the new “Date Closed” field. This field defaults to the date you check it. Change it to the actual termination date if necessary.
- Use the Transaction Writer to empty the closed accounts if you didn’t receive closing transactions from the broker.
- Use Smart Sets and Views to work with only the active accounts (as opposed to having a separate dataset for inactive accounts).
- If you use a master accounts, you may need to update the household group.