Unfixable very small rounding error in mutual fund conversion

BrianR

Quicken 2017 Premier vR17.4 build 26.1.17.4 on Windows 10 [all current updates applied].

Fidelity did a mutual fund share class conversion. I executed Quicken transaction type "Mutual Fund Conversion". The old fund/share class had 375.816 shares, the new fund had 375.819 shares.  Quicken did the conversion, injecting all the transactions for the new share class, but ended up showing 375.818999 shares.  I tried doing "Adjust Share Balance" to 375.819, but Quicken refused to change the total (and see to be in a moderately confused state afterwards - the transaction continued to be highlighted even after "Enter").  I also tried just adding .000001 shares, but Quicken rounded that to 0.

It's not horrible, but I'm sure whenever I sell out of that fund, I'll have some lingering unfixable not quite zero holding.  Also, it's annoying when I reconcile holdings between Fidelity and Quicken I'll need to think about that entry, since they'll have different numbers. <end whine>

Unknown

Well I tried the buying of .000001 shares and it worked for me, but it did "look strange".
Note this is in the subscription version of Quicken so it might be different.

When I entered the .000001 buy transaction everything looked fine in the Enter Transactions dialog.



But once in the register I notice the number of shares in the transaction got to "blank", but the number of shares in the register is correct.


Select another transaction so the total shares are visible.

Portfolio view:


And editing the transaction:


But if I delete this transaction it will reduce the number of shares by .000001.

So it "works", but there is definitely a bug in what it shows.

BTW there really shouldn't be a problem getting a zero amount when you sell.
You just need to select "Sell all shares in this account"

Unknown

try this
back up data file.
write down the name and symbol for the new fund 
delete download transactions dealing with the conversion
on conversion date use stock split for old security  - new shares 375.819 old shares 375.816
then use either mutual fund conversion - price is closing price on that date  
or 
corporate acquisition stock for stock - for new shares issued (the conversion ratio) use 1.0 

Michael Farley

I had the same problem with the Fidelity 500 Index conversion.  I sold xxx.923 shares of the old and bought xxx.924 shares of the new.  Grrr.  I did the Mutual Fund Conversion and it added a tiny (out to 6 decimals) amount of shares to every average cost transaction, resulting in a xxx.923999 share balance for the new, not xxx.924.  I have not tried B Zark's or QPW's solution, but it would be nice if you could set the number of decimals for share balances. Fidelity and most other brokerages use only 3 decimal places.   Not a crisis, but annoying.

Rich_M

In the past year I had several mutual funds go through this type of conversion in my IRA account and had the same issue with some of the securities.  In my case I had an even more miniscule discrepancy and many lots from years of reinvesting.  I chose the oldest lot with the largest number of shares and just edited the fractional share portion an amount that would bring my security holdings precisely equal to my brokerage statement.

q_lurker

Similar to Rich M, my approach to this would be to


A). Let the MF conversion first do its thing,


. I would review every generated Add Shares transaction editing the number of shares to my desired precision (3 decimal places). Note I would do this step for any MF conversion.,


C). I would choose which lots I might want to round up to get the added 0.003 shares, and edit those accordingly.



Basically, I don't want Quicken ever trying to track shares to the 6th decimal position.

Michael Farley

Rich M said:

In the past year I had several mutual funds go through this type of conversion in my IRA account and had the same issue with some of the securities.  In my case I had an even more miniscule discrepancy and many lots from years of reinvesting.  I chose the oldest lot with the largest number of shares and just edited the fractional share portion an amount that would bring my security holdings precisely equal to my brokerage statement.

Rich M, This was the best solution for me!  I had one older large transaction and I added .000001 to the share amount and the share balance went to xxx.924.  And it was such a small change that Quicken did not want to change the price.  q.lurker's solution would have worked also, but it would involve many more transaction edits.

BrianR

Rich M said:

In the past year I had several mutual funds go through this type of conversion in my IRA account and had the same issue with some of the securities.  In my case I had an even more miniscule discrepancy and many lots from years of reinvesting.  I chose the oldest lot with the largest number of shares and just edited the fractional share portion an amount that would bring my security holdings precisely equal to my brokerage statement.

Rich, I ended up using this solution, thanks!

BrianR

Thanks for all the excellent responses! I also agree with q.lurker that tracking shares to the 6th decimal position doesn't seem to make sense.  Or, at least, having that level of precision showing up in the register doesn't make sense.

mbterry9

Simple solution:  In the course of doing a MUTUAL FUND CONVERSION, Quicken should change it's system to show the new holdings rounded to 3 decimal places.  That simple enhancement of the sytstem would relieve we customers of the problem.  So why don't they do it?

NotACPA

Because some funds track positions to 4, or even 6, decimal places.