Discrepancy in cash balance of brokerage account

rduda

I have a brokerage account at E*Trade.  In Quicken, there are two related accounts: the Brokerage Account, where transactions are recorded and a linked cash account.  Looking in my cash account, I see the correct current balance ($0.03). This matches my brokerage firms records.  When I go to the Investing: Portfolio tab, I see my securities and my current shares and market values.  These match my expectations. However, I also see a cash balance of $4.04. This is a discrepancy of $4.01. 

I cannot see why the cash balance displayed here is different from what is in Quicken's brokerage cash account.  Interestingly, back in 2013, I made a balance adjustment of $4.01 in my Quicken brokerage cash account.  This has not presented a problem before.  The balances have been the same between the Investing: Portfolio report and the cash balance.  If I delete the balance adjustment from the register, the amount in the Investing: Portfolio becomes correct, but the balance in the register is now  wrong.

Question: Why aren't these numbers the same in both places? How do I make them consistent?

FYI, I am on the latest subscription version of quicken.  I have only seen this problem since moving to the subscription version.  Also, I have done a super-validation with no effect.

Thank you. 

RmonDu

Tom Young

What was the exact entry you made back in 2013?  Did you record the $4.01 against some income or expense Category?  Did you record that $4.01 entry back into the same Account?  (Effectively, an entry to your "New Worth" account.)  Something else?

I take it that deleting the entry and then reentering it just brings back the problem?

rduda

Hello Tom. 

I tried it several ways. Typically, for a balance adjustment entry, I would use the [E*Trade Cash Account] as the category. I did also use a "Misc" category with the same results. 

One other thing that I tried was entering the balance adjustment as a MiscIncX transaction from the [E*Trade Brokerage Acct].  It put the expected matching transaction in the [E*Trade Cash Account]  but again, no difference in results.

Finally, deleting the transaction made the Investing: Portfolio report correct, but not the [E*Trade Cash Account] balance.

Thanks.

RmonDu

Tom Young

Do you have a backup of your Quicken file created with your old version, maybe one that's for the day before you opened your "live" file using the subscription version, and try opening it to see if the problem's there, too?  Maybe a stray cosmic ray hit at just the right (wrong) moment when you first opened your live file using the subscription version?

What version were you using before going to "subscription"?  Presumably the data bases are backwards compatible going back a few years, though I don't remember how far back.

rduda

Tom -

I do have a backup from before I converted.  Just opened it. In that case, the values match ($78.54) in both locations. 

Since I opened it, I will print out a register report and compare it to the current register.

RmonDu

rduda

Tom ---

Thanks for the suggestion.  I found the problem.  Several years ago, a stock I owned had a spinoff.  As a result, a fraction of a share was sold for cash.  Exactly $4.01.  When I compared the register entries from the backup file to the current file, I see that the current file did not have the cash entry in the [E*Trade Cash Account] .  However the [E*Trade Brokerage Acct] showed the stock sale and the cash.  The link between the two accounts for this transaction was broken at some point. 

To fix the problem, I deleted and recreated the entry for the sale of the fractional share in the [E*Trade Brokerage Acct].  This rebuilt the corresponding entry in the cash account.  I then deleted my previous "balance adjustment" entry.

So, the reason for the mismatch was that the Investing: Portfolio report was adding in the cash that was "stuck" in the [E*Trade Brokerage Acct] ($4.01) to the cash in the [E*Trade Cash Account] ($0.03) to create the cash balance. 

It was a needle in a haystack.  I couldn't have found it if you hadn't questioned me.

Thanks. 

RmonDu