Securities Comparison Mismatch for E*Trade account

Brian Biggs

I have been downloading transactions for a few years from E*Trade. At some point in the past, I started getting a message that the balance in Quicken for some securities did not match the balance from E*Trade. This was the "Securities Comparison Mismatch" screen and typically shows up after a new transaction (e.g., dividends) are downloaded.

I have no idea how they got out of balance, and I always just ignore the notice because I don't feel like dealing with it. I know, maybe not the best choice.

So I decided to look at it this morning, and when I click on the DETAILS button in that comparison window, to look at the specifics for the out-of-balance security, I get the message in the attached screenshot.

I have been downloading regularly, so I don't know why I am getting this message. Should I just create the placeholder transaction and move on? Or is there something else wrong here?

Thanks!

Frankx

Hi @Brian Biggs

The answer to your question depends on whether you want to do the work to find out why you have 0.198 of a share more than the brokerage firm's records.  It also depends on when you last reconciled this account.

If I were to guess, this is likely a duplicate transaction in your Quicken file and it also is probably a "dividend received" transaction.  It could be as easy as scanning the account register for entries, within the time frame from 9/5/2017 to today, with a share number of 0.198 . Or, you could decide that you don't want to spend your time looking, and just accept the placeholder.  Either way, my suggestion going forward would be to reconcile your accounts on a regular basis.  If you do that, it is much less likely that you'll have these issues crop up.

Let me know if you have any followup questions.

Frankx

Frankx

Hi @Brian Biggs

The answer to your question depends on whether you want to do the work to find out why you have 0.198 of a share more than the brokerage firm's records.  It also depends on when you last reconciled this account.

If I were to guess, this is likely a duplicate transaction in your Quicken file and it also is probably a "dividend received" transaction.  It could be as easy as scanning the account register for entries, within the time frame from 9/5/2017 to today, with a share number of 0.198 . Or, you could decide that you don't want to spend your time looking, and just accept the placeholder.  Either way, my suggestion going forward would be to reconcile your accounts on a regular basis.  If you do that, it is much less likely that you'll have these issues crop up.

Let me know if you have any followup questions.

Frankx

q_lurker

It could also be that a sale of 0.198 shares (for administrative services?) was not recorded or was deleted from your Quicken file. On that path, you’d need to review the fund’s records. 

Brian Biggs

It was 5 years of transactions. Part of me wanted to just balance it out and be done. Part of me wanted to go back and find out the root cause. The latter part won.

I had a variety of things going on. I had several $0.01 and $0.02 transactions that were somehow entered and threw off my cash balance. There was also a mutual fund exchange that took place in 2017 that was not entered into the register correctly when I downloaded the transactions. Along with a couple of transactions that were flat out missing, and one that was duplicated.

No idea how any of that happened, but the solution was to bite the bullet and investigate all of the discrepancies. Time-consuming, but eventually got to the right answer.

@Frankx , yes, the solution going forward is to carefully pay attention to the balances with each transaction download and address issues when they occur.

Thanks to both of you for your help.

Frankx

Hi again @Brian Biggs

Congratulations!!!  Glad to hear that you got it done.

To be honest - most folks who see an out-of-balance warning involving 0.198 of a share difference would just accept the placeholder, or make an adjusting entry to balance, and call it a day.  But, as you found out, the causes involved numerous issues and some of those may have had tax effects which might raise other problems in the future.

Nice work!

Frankx