Value of shares is incorrect on Capital Gains and Tax Summary reports (updated title)

EZduzit

Both capital gains and tax summary reports show cap gains for my money market acct held in a brokerage account. The value of each share is always constant so capital should always be zero but range from 15-900%.

Any idea what the problem is?

Thank you for any insights.

EZduzit

Yes, the value is always $1 and I accept the download with average values.

I do need to track the balance so not downloading is not a solution.

I deleted the entire account and re-downloaded. The problem remained so Quicken is apparently not understanding.

My workaround is to uncheck Money Markets in the reports and ignore the problem.

EZduzit

This is now fixed. Installing the value of the account at the placeholder location is not what needs to be done. Each subaccount has to be individually valued.

So I resurrected the exact number of shares/prices for each security and made a "buy shares" transaction sourced from the account cash balance for each at the beginning of the register. That made the capital gains for money market accounts zero as they should be.

However the cash balance remained wrong so I changed the cash balance at the beginning of the register to force the end value to zero. So now the cash balance at the beginning is wrong but hopefully that will not be a problem.

As a result of this flail I lost >25 years of transactions for that account but that's a minor annoyance as long as still have the last few years.

Thanks to all who offered advice.

Jim_Harman

Check the price history for the money market fund. Is it always $1.00? Sometimes bogus quotes get downloaded for MMFs. Since the price of the MMF should not change, it is best to un-check Download Quotes in the Securities list fo MMFs. 

EZduzit

Yes, the value is always $1 and I accept the download with average values.

I do need to track the balance so not downloading is not a solution.

I deleted the entire account and re-downloaded. The problem remained so Quicken is apparently not understanding.

My workaround is to uncheck Money Markets in the reports and ignore the problem.

Tom Young

"I deleted the entire account and re-downloaded. The problem remained so Quicken is apparently not understanding."

If you've had that account for any length of time there's an excellent chance that what was downloaded didn't go back in time to the start of the account, meaning that you only got a subset of all the transactions.  If you are also allowing Quicken to automatically make placeholders in that account Quicken will get the balance (i.e., number of shares) correct but the balancing entry - that placeholder - will have no associated cost.  That could give you a capital gain in a security where there should be none.

NotACPA

Expanding upon @Tom Young's reply.  A download into Q, initiated from within Q, typically only goes back 30-90 days.

SO, his reference to "any length of time" can actually be fairly short.

Double-check your "OPENING BALANCE" in this account because not having this correct can lead to the dreaded placeholders that he references.

EZduzit

The download for that account was 562 days. An incorrect opening balance should effect balances but not cap gains on a fund that always has the same buy and sell price of $1.

Things are much worse than I thought though. An Income/expense report shows tens of thousands as uncategorized. When I click on those entries I see that they were in fact categorized.

It also shows my income off by tens of thousands but I will ignore that for now.

q_lurker

@EZduzit. You are assuming that all transactions downloaded were fully complete and accurate from the brokerage. I would not make that assumption. 

In your shoes, I would be looking for hidden placeholders, reviewing each purchase to be sure cost basis adjusted correctly, and especially reviewing each sale with respect to lot specification. It may be necessary to respecify First-in for each sale. 

NotACPA

"The download for that account was 562 days. An incorrect opening balance should effect balances but not cap gains on a fund that always has the same buy and sell price of $1."

If your opening balance is wrong, Q would have created a placeholder that MIGHT have had an incorrect $. (non-$1).  That would lead to CapGains in a MMF.

EZduzit

This is now fixed. Installing the value of the account at the placeholder location is not what needs to be done. Each subaccount has to be individually valued.

So I resurrected the exact number of shares/prices for each security and made a "buy shares" transaction sourced from the account cash balance for each at the beginning of the register. That made the capital gains for money market accounts zero as they should be.

However the cash balance remained wrong so I changed the cash balance at the beginning of the register to force the end value to zero. So now the cash balance at the beginning is wrong but hopefully that will not be a problem.

As a result of this flail I lost >25 years of transactions for that account but that's a minor annoyance as long as still have the last few years.

Thanks to all who offered advice.