Merrill Lynch accounts are not downloading accurately

Unknown

My Merrill Lynch accounts are not downloading accurately into Quicken. They are off by large amounts. All of my other investment and bank accounts are downloading properly. Merrill Lynch says it is a Quicken issue. I am using Quicken Premier 2017, R15, for US PCs. Also the sign in box keeps popping up even though I correctly sign in. Any ideas? Thanks.

Jim_Harman

Can you provide more detail on the nature of the problem?

Are there incorrect numbers of shares, incorrect share prices, unexpected cash in the account, duplicate transactions, or what?

Have you downloaded successfully in the past, or are you just setting this account up for online access?

Have you entered transactions manually that are not matching to the downloaded ones?

Unknown

Thanks for responding Jim.  I have used Quicken for many years without a problem like this.  I recently transferred several accounts from one investment firm into Merrill Lynch (ML) and set up new ML accounts within Quicken.  There was never a problem downloading from that investment firm's accounts into Quicken.  Now after going to the ML website and downloading into Quicken all of the new ML accounts in Quicken are off by large amounts.  The interesting thing is that the cash account within the accounts are correct but the total investment values are way off.  No duplicate transactions and everything looks right in the way of individual mutual funds and shares.  I think it might be in the way Quicken is recording them as there are a lot of "Added" without a change in total value of the account.  However like I said, the Quicken total value is way higher than the ML website total values.  I have not entered any transactions manually.  The good news is that I was able to solve the sign in problem that I and others have been experiencing by following some tips from this site.  Thanks again.

Jim_Harman

Do you have about twice as many shares in the new ML account in Quicken as you should?

There have been several recent discussions here about transfers like this. You can search to find the details.

Generally what you want to is do is make a backup first, just in case. Then do a Transfer Shares between Accounts in Quicken to move all your holdings from the old acct to the new. This will Remove the shares from your old account and Add them to the new, preserving all the tax lots and cost basis.

Then when you download in the new account, do not accept the transactions that add shares to the account, because they are already there. If you have already accepted these transactions, carefully delete them. They will have "c"s next to them, unlike the Adds you entered manually.

Unknown

The shares were automatically removed from the old investment firms accounts and added to the new ML accounts through the automatic downloads.  Unfortunately when I looked at the new accounts, every transaction has a "c" next to them.  I deleted all of the adds but that did not do anything to the total value.  I think I will just quit using Quicken and use more user friendly software.  I only used it to track daily value changes in my accounts and it seems that it can no longer do that accurately.  Thanks again for taking the time to try and assist me.  Have a good week.

Jim_Harman

Before you go...

If deleting the Adds did not reduce your balance perhaps you have Placeholder transactions in the new account that account for the discrepancies. Go to Edit/Preferences/Investment Transactions and make sure Show hidden transactions is checked.

If you have deleted the downloaded Add transactions, it should be safe to delete the placeholders as well. That should get the balance in your new account to zero if there have not been any other transactions.

Now you can go to the old account, delete the Remove transactions to restore it to its original state, then enter the Transfer Shares as described above to move the holdings to the new account.

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:



Jim Harman has already given you the important basics. I submit this just in case it may help you to uncover the problem.



I don't think there's enough information in your posts to determine that Merrill Lynch is downloading incorrectly ... or that Quicken is acting incorrectly.



There's pretty much only one way that security values can be incorrect in Quicken: either the number of shares is incorrect and/or the price/share is incorrect. Determining which is true is a good place to start - it may even give you insights into why the discrepancies exist.



But, to come at the problem from another direction:



When you transfer your real-world investment holdings (that you have been tracking in Quicken) to a new real-world financial institution (that you intend to track in Quicken), I think the process should go something like this (at the least, this may give you a clue about the cause of your problem):



1.) Create a new Quicken investment account. Tell Quicken you want to "enter my transactions manually" (do NOT set the account up for downloading at this point). See the "Advanced Setup" at the foot of the Add Brokerage Account dialog. When you get to the "What securities are in this account" dialog, do NOT enter anything, just click "Next" ... then tell Quicken you DO "want to create this account without any security holdings". Skipping that dialog will prevent Quicken from creating Placeholders for your holdings - which you don't need.



2.) After the new investment account is created, initiate a "Shares transferred between accounts" pseudo-transaction in Quicken (in either the old account or the new) and transfer the all the holdings from the old account to the new account. That will remove all shares from the old account; and create one Shares Added transaction in the new account for each LOT of each security held in the old account. [If you Edit one of those Shares Added transactions in the new account you should see its cost basis and acquisition date from the old account.]



3.) Transfer any cash in the old account to the new account.



4.) Activate the new account for downloading. That should (at least eventually) download some "Shares Added" transactions from the financial institution. If those downloaded Shares Added transactions are correct, Accept them ONLY as exact "Match" transactions to your existing Shares Added transactions - otherwise, delete the downloaded Shares Added transactions (you do not need the downloaded "Shares Added" transactions - the Quicken holdings in your new investment account should already be correct).



If there is more than one new real-world account, repeat the above for each one.

Unknown

Thanks for taking the time to respond and the assistance.