Quicken shows Incorrect number of Shares for Sale Transaction

WyoDave323

My brokerage account shows a correct total of 900 shares for a stock I sold. I sold all 900 shares. However, when I click on "Enter Transactions" and enter the sale information, Quicken says "Number of shares selected is more than available". Based on the number of shares Quicken says I have available, the 900 shares is over by 320.013 shares. The 900 shares which Quicken shows in the account is correct, but "Enter Transactions" is incorrect. I have no idea how to correct this. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Frankx

HI @WyoFave323,

By any chance, are there any placeholder entries in this Quicken account?  Also, are there other securities in this Quicken account, or is this one you sold the only security?

Let me know.

Frankx

WyoDave323

Hi Frankx,

There are no placeholder entries in this Quicken account. There is currently one other security in the account, plus there was another security that was sold at the same time as the security with 900 shares that I sold. Currently there is one other security in the account plus I repurchased (at a later date) more shares of the security I sold for 900 shares. So there is currently more shores of the security I sold plus one more security.

WyoDave323

Frankx

Okay - so when you were trying to enter the sale of the 900 shs - did you make sure that the date (in the date field) for the Quicken transaction you were trying to enter was the date of the sale (and not a later date)?

And just to make sure - can you open the Quicken account, then click on the "Holdings" box just above the register, and then change the date in the "As of:"  box to one day prior to the sale date.  Does the number of shares shown in the "Shares" column for this security equal 900?

Frankx

WyoDave323

Yes, I made sure I was entering the date of the sale, and not a later date.

I changed to date in the "As of" box to 1 day prior to the date of the sale. The number of shares shown are the shares that were in the account prior to the date of the sale. On the day before the date of sale, there were three different securities in the account, and the shares shown for each security was correct.
The shares shown for the security I sold is correct on the day before the sale. As of now, there are two securities in the account: the 900 shares I have sold, plus the additional shares of the same security I repurchased at a later date; plus the shares of one other security.

Frankx

Try this, but backup before you do just in case. In the brokerage account - enter a sell transaction (a "Sell - Shares Sold" transaction) dated as of the actual sale date but instead of of entering the number of shares sold in the field, click on the "Sell all shares in this account" check box. Then leave the "Price received per share" box empty and enter the "Total sale" amount in the box at the bottom and click "Enter/Done".  This should remove all shares from the account and close out the holding in that security as of the sale date.

After you do the above, check your holdings in the account as of 1 day after the sale date - and as long as there are no shares of that particular stock you will be good to go.  Also, this won't cause any problems with your capital gain/loss computation because you will have entered the correct total sales price (or stated differently - the per share computation doesn't affect the gain/loss computation, nor does it appear on a tax return).

Let me know how this works out.

Frankx

WyoDave323

Frankx,

I want to give this some thought to make sure I understand what I'm doing. I'll most likely give it a try sometime tomorrow.

WyoDave323

Frankx,

Question: If I'm to click on "Sell all shares in the Account" box,and leave the "price received per share" box empty, how will Quicken know what price to apply to the shares in the account being there are three different securities?

Frankx

Hi @WyoFave323,

My understanding was that you sold 900 shares of stock in one company - i.e. they were not shares of 2 or more companies - is that right?  If so, when you follow the directions above, you'll insert the name of the security sold in the "Security name:" field.  Does that make sense?

Frankx 

Frankx

And to answer your question - Quicken will take the "Total sale amount" divide it by whatever number of shares it has in its "memory" and will insert the "per share" amount in that field.

BTW - my guess here is that Quicken likely has a different # of shares because of "fractional shares" which may have been caused by the original purchase transaction, a stock split, or come other transaction, so it thinks you actually have more or less than exactly 900 shares of this security.

Frankx

WyoDave323

Frankx.

I have a feeling you may be right about the number of shares Quicken will use to to arrive at per share amount. The number of shares that Quicken said were available was 579.987 (short 320.013 shares to the 900 shares sold). I think Quicken will use this to arrive at "all shares in account". Like I said, I want to wait until tomorrow to give this a try. I'll get back to you after I try it. Thanks for your help.

Frankx

Hi @WyoDave323.

One more quick question - do you mind telling me the name of the security and the approximate date of purchase?  I am wondering whether there may have been a 3 for  2 split or some other restructure type of transaction while you were holding the stock that may not have been entered into Q.

Frankx

WyoDave323

Frankx,

The security is BAC, and the 900 shares was purchased in Nov 2008. I don’t recall any split or other restructure type of transaction since that time. I’m pretty good at entering this type of information in Quicken, but like I said, I’m pretty sure BAC never had a split since 2008. By the way, Schwab has the same share count I do. So If there was a split or some other type of restructure type of transaction that I failed to record in Quicken, my Quicken account should be out of balance with Schwab . . . I would think.

Frankx

Nope - no splits since 2004.  Strange...  

Frankx

Okay - one more question - any chance you had shares of Merrill Lynch prior to February 2009?

WyoDave323

In the early 1990s I was investing in BAC's dividend reinvestment program . . . this was before I retired. . The BAC shares I have held since 2008 were not a result of any dividend reinvestment program.

WyoDave323

Frankx,

Yes I did hold shares of Merrill Lynch and after checking my Excell spreadsheet, I find the 900 shares are part of the shares I picked up from Merrill Lynch. If I recall correctly, there may have been some fractional share involvement, and if there was any leftover fractional shares upon completion of he merger, I believe I would have received a cash payment. This goes back to Nov 2008, so my memory isn’t that great. In what way do you think this affected Quicken’s calculation of the share count?

Frankx

Well the merger transaction was .8595 shares of BAC for 1 share of ML held - and the deal closed in January 2009.  So my guess is that somehow - in whatever transaction you entered into Quicken at that time - you mis-recorded in Q the approx 320 shares.  But this solves the mystery regarding the number of shares, and the suggested approach I outlined above is - in my view - the proper approach, unless you intend to go back and recalculate what the correct recording of transaction should have been in 2009.

The key question would be whether, when you recorded the BAC/ML merger you carried over the correct tax basis of the ML stock and added that to the BAC holdings tax basis.  The number of shares really makes no difference from an income tax perspective, nor from an accounting perspective (except that Q has been incorrect with respect to the total value of your BAC holdings).  If you carried over the ML basis and added that to your BAC basis at the merger date, your gain/loss on this transaction you are trying to record - the sale of all of your BAC shares - will be correct.

Mystery solved...

WyoDave323

Frankx,

If I missed the 320 shares, wouldn’t my share count be out of line with the number of shares that Schwab shows for my account . . . wouldn’t I be short to Schwab by 320 shares? I’m not sure I can go back that far to check the entries I passed for those shares. I’ll give it a try in the morning to see how many Merrill shares I had and how I passed those entries in Quicken.

WyoDave323

Frankx,

I'm going to call it a day . . . I'll get back to you tomorrow.

WyoDave323

Frank,

I tried your suggestion to use the "Sell all Shares in this Account", left the number of shares blank, didn't enter a share price but entered the the total proceeds of the sale in the bottom box and pressed "Enter/Done". The register showed the 579.987 shares for the number of shares sold. I then clicked on "Holdings" and changed the date to one day after the dale of sale. Unfortunately it showed 320.013 shares still in the account. I kind of expected this would happen, but it was worth the try.

At this point I'm not sure if there is a way to delete all 900 shares. I think there may be a glitch in Quicken that is part of the process of recording a securities sale. I may be wrong on this.

When I processed the Merrill Lynch merger, I'm sure I did it correctly, using
Merryl's basis, and the appropriate .8595 shares to convert to BAC shares in Quicken. The number of shares Quicken arrived at was identical to what Schwab had on file for my account. So I don't see how I did anything wrong since Quicken and Schwab have the same share count.

Thanks again for your help. If you come up with any other thoughts on how to remove the 900 shares, let me know.

Dave

Frankx

HI Dave,

Let's try one more thing - Open up your Security list in Quicken - go to "Tools" > "Security List" and in the Search box at the type "Bank" then enter...

Are there 2 listings for Bank of America?

WyoDave323

Hi Frank,

I tried what you suggested, going to "Tool" and "Security LIst" and typing " Bank of America" . . . I did this instead of "Bank" as I have a "Bank Account" in the listing. To answer your question, no there is only 1 listing for Bank of America. Now I have already deleted the "Sell all Shares in the Account" entry since we know what the result was. Did you assume that entry had not been deleted yet?

Dave

Frankx

Hi Dave

I was assuming that you had not deleted that entry, but was mainly trying to figure out why Quicken would still show shares when you had just checked off the "sell all shares in this account".  I thought that somehow there were 2 similarly titled "securities" in your Q file.

But I have actually one more thing I need you to do:  
Open up your Security list in Quicken - go to the very bottom of that window and click on the "Show hidden securities" check box.  Then search for Bank of America again.

Let me know what happens...

Frankx

WyoDave323

Hi Frank,

I went to the bottom of the Security List in Quicken and found that " Show HIdden Securities" already had a check mark in it. So I typed Bank of America,
and BofA only came up once. I tried both ways . . . with and without the check mark in "Show HIdden Securities" box and BofA only appears once.

Dave

Frankx

Hi Dave,

Well, given everything we've tried, I am left with only one conclusion - that your Quicken Data File must be corrupted.  I would suggest that you do a "validate & repair".  Here's a link to instructions: https://www.quicken.com/support/quicken-performance-troubleshooting

You should go right to the heading: "Third, try Copying and Validating your file"

Again, let me know how this goes.

Frankx

WyoDave323

Hi Frank,

I've started the "Third Copy and Validating your file". I've done the first two steps "Go to File>File Operations > Copy" and clicked OK.

The next thing said is "After the Copy is complete, choose to "Open New Copy".
I'm having trouble finding "Open New Copy". I go to "File > File Operations" but I don't see "Open New Copy"; all I see in "File Operations" is"Copy"; "Year-end Copy"; "Validate and Repair" and "Find Quicken Files". Am I looking in the wrong place?

Dave

Frankx

Hi Dave,

Yes that instruction is not as clear as I'd like it to be - What they want you to do is simply to open the copy of your file that was just created in steps 1 and 2 in the Quicken program.  So if you have the Quicken program open you would:

1) go to "File" > "Open Quicken File..." > then navigate to the "copy" that you just made and click on it > hit "Open" > enter the password (if any) > then continue with the instructions...

Frankx

WyoDave323

Hi Frank,

OK, I've gone to "File" > "Open Quicken File" and opened this file "My Financial DataCpy.QDF". If this isn't the copy, let me know.

Thanks.

Dave

Frankx

Dave,

Is that the name you gave to the copy that was just made?  if not, you should look for a QDF file dated today instead.

WyoDave323

Frank,

I didn’t give the file a name, Quicken did. The QDF file I sent you has today’s date (4/6/2020).

Dave