How do I reconcile a share balance?

Lenard M. Hughes

How do I reconcile a share balance in an investment account? When I hit reconcile, all I get as options is a cash amount in my investment account which shows share balances.

Sherlock

The approach I use is to select Holdings, set the As of: date to the closing date of the statement obtained from the financial institution.  When we're all good (shares, market value, etc), I proceed with the reconcile (Ctrl + R).

Lenard M. Hughes

I understand the first part of what you said  but when I try to reconcile it wants a cash amount, not the number of shares.

Lenard M. Hughes

The Quicken help file says you can reconcile by cash or by # shares, but they do not explain how to do this by # shares.

Sherlock

Lenard M. Hughes said:

The Quicken help file says you can reconcile by cash or by # shares, but they do not explain how to do this by # shares.

To Reconcile shares, you would open the investment account, press Ctrl + Shift + N, and select Reconcile Shares....  This compares the balance of the holdings in the account with the most recent online posting obtained from the financial institution.

Sherlock

Lenard M. Hughes said:

I understand the first part of what you said  but when I try to reconcile it wants a cash amount, not the number of shares.

If you've already reconciled the security holdings, all that is left to reconcile is the cash balance.

Lenard M. Hughes

When I press Crtl +Shift + N, and select Reconcile, there is no option to Reconcile shares, only cash. I am using Quicken Premier 2017.

Tom Young

To the best of my knowledge and belief, there's no share "reconcile" function within Quicken that's analogous to the cash reconcile used, say, in a bank Account. 

While there is a "Share reconcile" that shows up in an investment Account's drop down Action menu:

all that does is bring up a suggested placeholder entry if the ending balances don't agree:

I reconcile my investment Accounts in the same way that I'd bet most people do:

1. Reconcile cash transaction for a period
2. Determine that the market value for each security (shares x quote) agree

If the broker has a good cost basis figure - simply not possible in every case - then you see that those numbers also agree.

If you're having a problem with share balances then one approach is to run Report > Investing > Investment Transaction for a period that starts with the last time Quicken and the broker were in agreement as to number of shares, limiting the "Actions" within that report to only transactions that affect the number of shares.  Then you start the process of comparing each transaction on that list to what the broker has reported, making a list of transactions that need fixing or aren't there at all in Quicken.

Lenard M. Hughes

I have never seen a Reconcile Share in any of my drop down menus. I use Quicken Premier 2017. Am I missing something?

Sherlock

Lenard M. Hughes said:

I have never seen a Reconcile Share in any of my drop down menus. I use Quicken Premier 2017. Am I missing something?

Not really...  You can get to the same window by using the Online Center (select Tools > Online Center, the financial institution from the pull-down menu, the Holdings tab, the account from the pull-down menu, and Compare to Portfolio...).

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:

"When I press Crtl +Shift + N, and select Reconcile, there is no option to Reconcile shares, only cash. I am using Quicken Premier 2017."

The Reconcile Shares option is not available from the investment account in Q2017; but you can get the same thing by going to Tools > Online Center, selecting the financial institution and account, clicking the Holdings tab then clicking Compare to Portfolio.

That's not really what I want when I am reconciling an investment account since the share balance being compared to is "as of" the most recent download (so also not even available for anyone manually maintaining an account). And it also does not mark any transactions as reconciled.

Sherlock's earlier suggestion to use a Quicken display (or a report; I use the Investing > Portfolio Value report) is the way to go. 

In a Quicken display or report, you can control the As of date. If the display (or report) with the same "as of" date as your statement, shows you holding the same number of shares as your statement, you're good to go. 

Then the regular account reconcile dialog (CTRL+r) can be used to mark all the affected transactions as reconciled.