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Incorrect Share Balance

Ralph

I am adding investment transactions and the share balance is not adding correctly. Out of the 5 investments that I am adding shares for 4 of them are wrong. This is an account that just opened last year and I am entering the first transactions, as an example I entered the first three buy transactions for one investment with shares of 9.211, 8.8964, and 8.8614. After I added the last transaction the share balance shows 26.9684 instead of 26.9688. The running balance prior to that shows the correct values of 9.211 and 18.1074. Similar issues are happening on other transactions and in each case the third transaction seems to be the issue.

Most of these transactions are ones that I manually added. I did download the first two transactions for all 5 investments but had to edit each of them manually so I decided to manually add the rest of the transaction. There are no Placeholder Entries. I have run validation on the file, I have copied the file using the File Operations\Copy option. I have run Validate on the new file. I have also tried to delete the first three transaction and re-add them but the share balance remains incorrect. Nothing seems to work.

I am using Quicken 2017 R4 (Build: 26.1.4.5) on Windows 10. The data file was upgraded from Quicken 2014 back in January.

And to just add to the frustration I had to re-type this issue in because I wasn't signed in initially and after signing in everything was lost, nice experience.

Example of share balances not adding correctly:

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Comments

unknown

I've had the same issue. Make sure when you enter an investment transaction you date them in order. If your buying and selling in one day this could mess it up. Enter buys then sells of the same equity first before any other transaction. Quicken has a problem organizing share balance if this order isn't followed. Hope this helps.

Ralph

These items were entered in date order and the dates are a couple of weeks apart. They are also all buys. I discovered the discrepancy not by the running share balance but after entering in the account's first quarter of information I looked at the holding balance and compared it to my statement. I assumed that I had missed typed a couple of numbers and that is when i started looking at the running share balance.

I can sort of understand, but not really, how entering entries out of order might have an impact on the running balance but I would expect that the difference would correspond to another entry and there are no entries for those amounts. I could live with the running balance being wrong but why is the holdings balance wrong? The holding balance shouldn't care about date order, just about the totals.

Jim_Harman

So the running share balance in Quicken is low by .0004 starting with the third transaction, which is the first one you entered manually. I would take a careful look at that transaction and make sure the number of shares and the total dollar amount are correct.

If necessary, try deleting and re-entering this transaction. Let Quicken calculate the price per share, which may end up slightly different from the price downloaded from your FI due to rounding differences.

Ralph

As I mentioned in the original post i have tried deleting the first three entries and reentering them. And for these transactions the only items I am trying to control are the number of shares and the total cost, the price per share I let Quicken calculate.

Because this is so persistent it really seems like there is a non-visible transaction or placeholder entry.

mshiggins

Did you tell Quicken your share balance when creating the account? Or did you at any time enter a share balance adjustment? If so, you may have a placeholder locking the number of shares.

See this FAQ post for more info on placeholders:

https://getsatisfaction.com/quickenco...

Ralph

No, this was a new account and I never provided any initial share balance nor did I create any adjustment transactions.

I decided to try and look at this from a different perspective other than the Account register and I have been able to track this down to Quicken thinking something happening on 7/30/2016. Looking at the Investing screen with the "As of" date of 7/29/2016 all values look correct. Then on 7/30/2016 is when the values get messed up. There are no transactions in the account register for 7/30/2016. The third transaction that I entered is on 8/1/2016. What is really interesting is that the shares on 7/30/2016 for the first transaction are reduced by the missing .0004 amount, the cost basis for the first transaction has been adjusted, and the overall Average Cost per Share has also been adjusted. Looking at the Security detail screen shows no transactions for the security on 7/30/2016 either.

q_lurker

No, this was a new account and I never provided any initial share balance nor did I create any adjustment transactions.

I decided to try and look at this from a different perspective other than the Account register and I have been able to track this down to Quicken thinking something happening on 7/30/2016. Looking at the Investing screen with the "As of" date of 7/29/2016 all values look correct. Then on 7/30/2016 is when the values get messed up. There are no transactions in the account register for 7/30/2016. The third transaction that I entered is on 8/1/2016. What is really interesting is that the shares on 7/30/2016 for the first transaction are reduced by the missing .0004 amount, the cost basis for the first transaction has been adjusted, and the overall Average Cost per Share has also been adjusted. Looking at the Security detail screen shows no transactions for the security on 7/30/2016 either.

I think you do have a placeholder involved. Be sure your Edit / Preferences for Investment Transactions is checked to Show Hidden transactions.

Further, I suspect your brokerage may only be reporting to Quicken to 3 decimal precision. Thus for 7/30 they reported 18.107 shares held rather than 18.1074 shares and a placeholder was created that reduced the share count.

Personally, I am comfortable and work with 3-decimal precision throughout for share counts, but the basic rule is to match the brokerage / mutual fund. Unfortunately, some of them are inconsistent.

Ralph

No, this was a new account and I never provided any initial share balance nor did I create any adjustment transactions.

I decided to try and look at this from a different perspective other than the Account register and I have been able to track this down to Quicken thinking something happening on 7/30/2016. Looking at the Investing screen with the "As of" date of 7/29/2016 all values look correct. Then on 7/30/2016 is when the values get messed up. There are no transactions in the account register for 7/30/2016. The third transaction that I entered is on 8/1/2016. What is really interesting is that the shares on 7/30/2016 for the first transaction are reduced by the missing .0004 amount, the cost basis for the first transaction has been adjusted, and the overall Average Cost per Share has also been adjusted. Looking at the Security detail screen shows no transactions for the security on 7/30/2016 either.

Thank you!! That showed me the transactions and let me get things corrected. And thanks to everyone else that also replied.

That is highly annoying to have placeholders and "hidden" placeholders, doesn't really make sense to me. I have been using Quicken for a long time and never knew about that preference setting. I don't even want to think about the number of hours I spent trying to figure out and correct this issue.

unknown

No, this was a new account and I never provided any initial share balance nor did I create any adjustment transactions.

I decided to try and look at this from a different perspective other than the Account register and I have been able to track this down to Quicken thinking something happening on 7/30/2016. Looking at the Investing screen with the "As of" date of 7/29/2016 all values look correct. Then on 7/30/2016 is when the values get messed up. There are no transactions in the account register for 7/30/2016. The third transaction that I entered is on 8/1/2016. What is really interesting is that the shares on 7/30/2016 for the first transaction are reduced by the missing .0004 amount, the cost basis for the first transaction has been adjusted, and the overall Average Cost per Share has also been adjusted. Looking at the Security detail screen shows no transactions for the security on 7/30/2016 either.

Ralph - I am suffering the same problems you described but with QCK 2016. It's a very annoying problem and it's very annoying to see advice that ignores what you clearly wrote. I didn't know about HIDDEN stuff. I'm not at home where the system with this QCK file is located, but, when I get there, I'm definitely going to try this approach. As stupid as (a) this design feature for QCK is and (b) the very need for having to have a fix, the approach makes sense. My fingers are crossed.

unknown

No, this was a new account and I never provided any initial share balance nor did I create any adjustment transactions.

I decided to try and look at this from a different perspective other than the Account register and I have been able to track this down to Quicken thinking something happening on 7/30/2016. Looking at the Investing screen with the "As of" date of 7/29/2016 all values look correct. Then on 7/30/2016 is when the values get messed up. There are no transactions in the account register for 7/30/2016. The third transaction that I entered is on 8/1/2016. What is really interesting is that the shares on 7/30/2016 for the first transaction are reduced by the missing .0004 amount, the cost basis for the first transaction has been adjusted, and the overall Average Cost per Share has also been adjusted. Looking at the Security detail screen shows no transactions for the security on 7/30/2016 either.

Worked like a charm. I didn't see this as a solution in QCK's help. WHY? Thanks LURKER + RALPH! Fixing this has taken a heavy load of stress of my mind.