Delete and reinstall financial institution to fix multiple transaction errors

Faithyt

<p>Occasionally we update an investment account and not all
transactions get downloaded.  </p>

<p>Unfortunately, we’ve neglected to keep on top of the
problem and now have dozens of stocks listed in Quicken with incorrect information.  In the past we’ve corrected the error manually
item by item, but that will be very time consuming.</p>

<p>Instead of doing that can we delete that financial
institution (after doing a backup) and reinstall it?</p>

Scooterlam

Depending on how long you've owned the account and how long its been since you last reconciled those missing transactions, you might find that cracking open monthly statements and reconciling each holding maybe the way to go.  Sorry no silver bullet solution I can offer here.   But, there are some options you can consider.  They may or may not solve your issue.

As you recognized, backup often.  And, make sure you take a step-wise, methodical approach here to avoid a worse situation!

If you delete the FI account in Quicken as you asked, upon recreating and reconnecting the account to online services, the FI will generally limit the history of transaction downloads to say 90 days. Depends on the FI.  So you may still find an incomplete record.  Or,  a worse-off position because you have owned the account more than the number of days the FI is downloading.  Thus, you find you're missing even more transactions that originally started with! Be cautious about deleting accounts!

If you deactivate / reactivate or reset the FI account in online services (but do not actually delete the account in Quicken), you might find that some of those transactions will download. But again....FIs will limit the download history to a certain number of days or months.   With this approach you still have your account intact, where you started.

In either the above cases,  you might find....if the transaction download from the FI was missing originally, you may very well find it still missing today.  Unless, the "missing transaction" was not a result of the FI failing to download it (or Quicken failing to correctly parse the FI data),  but of you deleting the downloaded transaction in Quicken's transaction window where you can accept, delete or edit said transaction.  Or some combination of the two : ).  It happens!

Perhaps before deleting any accounts....to can get a sense of what will download without affecting your current data file, you can create a new Quicken data file, follow the setup instructions, sign in with your Quicken ID and lastly "add an account".  Here, you can add only your problematic FI account, connect and download all of the transactions the FI will allow.   Then, assess just how much history will be downloaded and whether or not it makes your issue better or worse.  You can always reopen you original data file.

Another option might be to access your FI's website, find the "download data" area for the account in question and see if the FI will allow you to download a history of transactions in a Quicken format.  Again, the FI may limit your download history to less than you need.

Continuing with options... there is a dialog box in the "online center" in Quicken that might allow a longer history of downloads. Again, "how much history" is likely governed by your FI.    Its called "Refresh Online Transaction History".  I have little experience with using the controls in this dialog so I cannot advise.  Perhaps others in the community can or a call to the help desk might be useful as well.

Of course,  depending on FI, with these options, you do run the risk of downloading duplicate transactions and finding yourself still going through your register and reconciling record by record!

At the end of the day, I would try to get to the root-cause of the missing downloads issue, either with your FI or with Quicken or both depending on the online connection type.  Call them both and be persistent.  In the mean time, keep current with manual updates, or simply be in the same situation in the future.

Myself, I've found a half dozen missing or mis-categorized transactions with my various Fidelity accounts in the last 4 months.  Not much comparatively, but also not acceptable to me.  But in the mean time, I keep current with reconciling the missing data.

Perhaps others on the community can further question and recommend additional or modified approaches to your problem.

Scott

2019 QW HBR