The "What’s the difference between entering sales section totals or one by one?" help section says "if you have to adjust any information on a sale (especially the purchase price, called cost basis), then entering them one by one is better."
Yes, it is less time consuming if you can report your transactions as a summary rather than listing each one on Form 8949. Reporting a summary--which is just reporting the sales totals--is acceptable provided you have no adjustments to make. Sometimes, the cost basis for a transaction needs to be adjusted because of the wash sale rule. Your 1099-B will reflect a wash sale by including a "W" next to the transaction that results in a loss. Sometimes, if you were awarded a restricted stock unit, or you purchased shares in your company, your cost basis might not be accurate on your 1099-B and therefore will need to be adjusted. However, if you have no wash sales, and did not receive or purchase stock in your company, then perhaps nothing needs to be adjusted on your 1099-B which means you can just report a summary.
If you find that there are some transactions where you need to adjust the cost basis, you can report those transactions separately and report all the rest in summary. As noted above, it's better to report sales section totals because it's easier.
Yes, it is less time consuming if you can report your transactions as a summary rather than listing each one on Form 8949. Reporting a summary--which is just reporting the sales totals--is acceptable provided you have no adjustments to make. Sometimes, the cost basis for a transaction needs to be adjusted because of the wash sale rule. Your 1099-B will reflect a wash sale by including a "W" next to the transaction that results in a loss. Sometimes, if you were awarded a restricted stock unit, or you purchased shares in your company, your cost basis might not be accurate on your 1099-B and therefore will need to be adjusted. However, if you have no wash sales, and did not receive or purchase stock in your company, then perhaps nothing needs to be adjusted on your 1099-B which means you can just report a summary.
If you find that there are some transactions where you need to adjust the cost basis, you can report those transactions separately and report all the rest in summary. As noted above, it's better to report sales section totals because it's easier.
I don't have any sales marked with a "W" in my "Short-Term Transactions for Which Basis Is Reported to the IRS" section so I assume I can use the summary totals for that section. But I do have a bunch of sales marked with a "W" in my "Long-Term Transactions for Which Basis Is Reported to the IRS" section, so from what you're saying it sounds like I should enter the individual sales for that section. Darn, that's a lot of sales to enter!
Alas, the 1099 import didn't work for this particular brokerage. It's Cetera Advisor Networks. The import does support Cetera, but apparently not specifically for Cetera Advisor Networks (CAN). Part of the import process asks for a document ID from the 1099. Unfortunately, according to Cetera customer support, CAN apparently doesn't provide the document ID, but Cetera Advisors (CA) and Cetera Financial Specialists (CFS) DO provide a document ID. They told me I should still be able to use NetXInvestor to import, but the account I got a 1099 for apparently isn't on NetXInvestor, so that's not an option either. I'm not expecting you to have an answer for this -- just sharing my pain lol.
The final word on this ... I discovered that even though I had wash sales I was still able to use summary totals. On the page for entering totals there was a field for entering the total of the wash sale adjustments and a "W" code that I could also check to specify that the adjustment was for wash sales. TurboTax then made me upload my 1099 since the IRS apparently needs that when specifying adjustments for wash sales, etc. The weird thing is that TurboTax was saying my PDF file was not valid when trying to upload it even though it was definitely a valid PDF file. I then printed my 1099 using the "Save to PDF" destination to create a new PDF file, and I was then able to upload that one.