Delays in Accepting New Transactions

Steven Herman

Is there also a related problem here with the amount of time it takes to download and then accept new transactions as the security list grows ever larger? There are times where Quicken does not recognize a downloaded security matches no prior security and attempts to suggest an incorrect match which 90% of the time or more you need to reject, Then there are times they match and you need to accept it or you won't have a closing transaction end end up with offsetting items incorrectly. Then after all the downloads are done accepting the transactions is a problem particularly if you have day trades while selling short as you need to accept them one by one or by accepting all the true trade of short sell and then cover short gets mismatched, Is there any way to speed up Quicken with this process? Sometimes Quicken can take minutes per item to download and identify a security and also that time or more to then accept a transaction. Will archiving prior years help this process at all? Or is there another approach?


Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: Delete Expired Option Trades.

Unknown

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Investments.


You are 100% correct.   And what is even worse, if you accidentally make the wrong choice, good luck going back and fixing it.    Because of this i have numerous mismatched buys and sells, so my Quicken Security list has become pretty much useless.   Certainly cannot depend upon using it for tax purposes....

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: Delete Expired Option Trades.

K.O. (Win-Premier)

Hi Steve.  I requested this be moved to a new thread as I think there could be some good conversation around your post but it's not really related to the original post of deleting expiring options.

I suspect the delays you are seeing in accepting new transactions is related to the number of transactions in a given account and not the number of securities in your security list.  I have >4,000 securities (many options) but I only see the big delay in transaction entry (clicking enter or accepting a download transaction) in one account I've had for >20 years.  An account I opened 3 years ago I do not see the delays.

I also have seen the case when a downloaded security is new but Quicken thinks it matches an existing security.  I've been working on getting Quicken to show CUSIP (what should be used for matching) so we can see why this is.  Currently I do not understand the matching rules for securities that Quicken uses but I'm trying to figure it out.

wrt Accept All, is this a function of transaction being listed in the download window in the same order they were executed at your broker?  Or, is this related to Quicken's use of tying buy to sell and sell short to cover short instead of just using buy/sell and letting the current number of shares determine if its long or short or close?  Or both? 

I'm not sure it's possible (w/o the broker providing the information related which opening position a closing transaction is closing) to match closing to opening transactions automatically when Accepting All because if you had 2 buys and 2 sells of the same security and the same quantity there is no way to know if Sell A goes with Buy A or Buy B.  That said I do get annoyed at not having the downloaded transactions not come into quicken in the same order they occurred at the FI (broker or bank).  If they did this would help the situation.

And there are bugs related to Buy, Sell, Sell Short, Cover Short where you can get the number of shares out of sync with what Quicken is expecting. For example, Quicken will let you buy 200 shares of XYZ and then sell short 100 shares of XYZ which should not be possible as you can't be short and long the same security in the same account at the same time.  Do this and your share balance will be 100 (correct in quantity) but then if you do a sell and select "All shares" it will try to sell 200 shares when you only have a quantity of 100 in the account.  IMO Sell Short and Cover Short needs to go away and let the Buy/Sell and share balance determine the rules around if the account is short or not.

K.O. (Win-Premier)

Bill Stuart said:

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Investments.


You are 100% correct.   And what is even worse, if you accidentally make the wrong choice, good luck going back and fixing it.    Because of this i have numerous mismatched buys and sells, so my Quicken Security list has become pretty much useless.   Certainly cannot depend upon using it for tax purposes....

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: Delete Expired Option Trades.

Bill - Even if you get your buy/sell matched perfectly I'd recommend caution in using the Quicken capital gains report for tax reporting.  It doesn't handle wash sales, section 1256 contracts, doesn't deal with short sales or covered calls/puts accurately.

Steven Herman

K.O. (Win-Premier) said:

Hi Steve.  I requested this be moved to a new thread as I think there could be some good conversation around your post but it's not really related to the original post of deleting expiring options.

I suspect the delays you are seeing in accepting new transactions is related to the number of transactions in a given account and not the number of securities in your security list.  I have >4,000 securities (many options) but I only see the big delay in transaction entry (clicking enter or accepting a download transaction) in one account I've had for >20 years.  An account I opened 3 years ago I do not see the delays.

I also have seen the case when a downloaded security is new but Quicken thinks it matches an existing security.  I've been working on getting Quicken to show CUSIP (what should be used for matching) so we can see why this is.  Currently I do not understand the matching rules for securities that Quicken uses but I'm trying to figure it out.

wrt Accept All, is this a function of transaction being listed in the download window in the same order they were executed at your broker?  Or, is this related to Quicken's use of tying buy to sell and sell short to cover short instead of just using buy/sell and letting the current number of shares determine if its long or short or close?  Or both? 

I'm not sure it's possible (w/o the broker providing the information related which opening position a closing transaction is closing) to match closing to opening transactions automatically when Accepting All because if you had 2 buys and 2 sells of the same security and the same quantity there is no way to know if Sell A goes with Buy A or Buy B.  That said I do get annoyed at not having the downloaded transactions not come into quicken in the same order they occurred at the FI (broker or bank).  If they did this would help the situation.

And there are bugs related to Buy, Sell, Sell Short, Cover Short where you can get the number of shares out of sync with what Quicken is expecting. For example, Quicken will let you buy 200 shares of XYZ and then sell short 100 shares of XYZ which should not be possible as you can't be short and long the same security in the same account at the same time.  Do this and your share balance will be 100 (correct in quantity) but then if you do a sell and select "All shares" it will try to sell 200 shares when you only have a quantity of 100 in the account.  IMO Sell Short and Cover Short needs to go away and let the Buy/Sell and share balance determine the rules around if the account is short or not.

wrt Accept All, the transactions are in alphabetical order within the list of transactions so that first all buys, then covered short, then short sells and then sold and Accept All accepts them in that order. Thus any day trades with a starting short sale needs to be entered first before Accept All can be applied. If not Quicken does not understand the trade transactions because they are out of order. I agree that entry should be time based within the transaction list and that would eliminate most problems. I don't know if that information is provided by the brokers or not in the download. If it is, why can't Quicken be changed to use it!