Tracking Mutual Fund when the broker doesn't use ticker pricing.

ARaUser

I've been a user since Quicken 6, I believe, and have used the forums for answers over the years. Thank you, community, for the help.

I've searched and not found an answer to this one, and I'm sure someone out there has had a similar issue. Hopefully there is an answer.

My wife and I have 401(k)s from different employers that are now at the same brokerage house. We each have investments in some of the same funds. The tracking problem arises because her account uses "group variable contract" pricing (or some similar wording). So, both our accounts download correctly, and my daily pricing updates are correct. Her pricing is way off as it is a pooled investment whose price isn't the same as the ticker.

Today, my VIMAX shows correctly as $212.09 both on the brokerage site and dowloaded into Quicken. Her Quicken share pricing is the same as it shares the ticker, but the brokerage has pricing at $159.96. (So Quicken reflects a lower than actual value for the investment).

Another example, VSMAX. Quicken and my broker show $76.63, whereas the wife's actual per share pricing is $164.06. (It looks like she's killing it in this investment in Quicken, but, again, doesn't reflect the reality seen in her statments).

The only way I can properly know what her 401(k)'s value in Quicken is, would be to stop using the ticker and enter the pricing manually periodically. Which I likely would do, but I think that would mess up the quarterly web connect download purchase history which really simplifies data entry. Or, I could get rid of the similar investments in one of our accounts (which would be a lot easier, but not the right investment choice at the moment).

I'm pretty sure there isn't another solution, but if someone can follow what I've said and have a good solution, I would love to hear it.

Thanks for your time.
Archie

NotACPA

For that Vanguard fund that you're talking about ... see if you hold the same CLASS of shares.  Even thought they may have almost the same name, different classes of a fund usually have different tickers.

Jim_Harman

The non-publicly-traded version of the the fund in your wife's account should be set up as a different security in Quicken. Give it a distinctive name to avoid confusion. If you leave the ticker blank, Quicken's quote downloads will not attempt to update the prices for that secuirty. 

If you can download transactions to her account, the download should update the prices correctly, but probably only for the dates of the download and of any transactions in those securities. You may be able to download the price history as a CSV file, or you might have to enter it manually if you need the intermediate dates.

Quicken has a hierarchy for which of the various price sources "wins" and gets recorded in the price history. See here 
https://www.quicken.com/support/how-update-security-prices
for more info:

ARaUser

NotACPA - Good thought, but it is, in fact, the same ticker and class in each account: Admiral shares with both accounts having the tickers listed above.

Jim, I guess that will be the way to do it. The challenge, I imagine, is the download will come with the ticker and the correct security name. The download would then add the transactions as the ticker named fund, not the created name, right?

I currently "accept all" after the web connect. I guess with your method, I could select each transaction and change the name of the security before pressing accept? That would certainly be easier than manually enter every transaction, but still a pain. Am I misinterpreting your suggestion?

As to manually entering the prices, I used to do that from fine newspaper print in the '90's! I can certainly do that for two securities.

Thank you both for your replies.
Archie

Sherlock

ARaUser said:

NotACPA - Good thought, but it is, in fact, the same ticker and class in each account: Admiral shares with both accounts having the tickers listed above.

Jim, I guess that will be the way to do it. The challenge, I imagine, is the download will come with the ticker and the correct security name. The download would then add the transactions as the ticker named fund, not the created name, right?

I currently "accept all" after the web connect. I guess with your method, I could select each transaction and change the name of the security before pressing accept? That would certainly be easier than manually enter every transaction, but still a pain. Am I misinterpreting your suggestion?

As to manually entering the prices, I used to do that from fine newspaper print in the '90's! I can certainly do that for two securities.

Thank you both for your replies.
Archie

Price quotes obtained from the brokerage do not use ticker symbols to match the securities.  Your brokerage should be using a unique identifier for each security to allow Quicken to associate the data with the appropriate security in the file.  (This identifier is referred to as the CUSIP ID in Quicken and may be the same as the CUSIP Number if the security is publicly traded.)  

The ticker symbol is used when Quicken pulls quotes and historical prices from a third-party service provider.  The securities that are not publicly traded or are not supported by the third-party service provider should not have ticker symbols or be setup to download quotes from the third-party service provider.

ARaUser

Thanks for the replies. Sounds like manual work for the wife's account is the solution.