Share balance suddenly changed for sold stocks - QUICKEN CANADA

Ram

I using Quicken Canada – year 2020 version 28.15 build 27.1.28.15

I do not use quicken to download my transactions. I use only to update my stock quotes.

Sometimes stocks and ETF declare capital gains which is not paid to shareholders but added to cost basis. However this is taxable.

Quicken tech have been providing solution to enter this transaction as follows
- If I have 1000 shares of ABC
- On “income invested “ enter this amount and shares = 1 ( now total shares = 1001)
- Then under “stock split” – new shares = 1000, old shares = 1000.99999999
This worked fine for 10-15 years

Recently strange things happened. Several shares where above transactions were used start showing balances like 0.00001, 0.000099 in portfolio.

This happened to stocks that I have already sold and there should be no balance left.

Here is an example or one of these transaction

I bought 500 shares of ZUB (tsx) on 15 Jan 2013 total cost $7374.95

On 05 Jan 2018 capital gain of $ 686.25 was declared but was not paid out (used to increase share value)

Using Quicken suggestion

- On “income invested “ enter this amount and shares = 1 ( now total shares = 501)
- Then “stock split” – new shares = 500, old shares = 500.99999999

It worked perfectly for years and showed share balance of 500 for years.
I sold all 500 shares on 26 october 2018

All of a sudden my portfolio view started showing share balance of 0.000001 !!!!


I did quicken file validate, super validate, made copy of data file – but no luck

I tried to “remove shares” and “adjust share balance” – but no luck

This is not an isolated case. This happened to several of ETFs

What suddenly happened?

Frankx

Hi @Ram,

What happened was that, sometime around July of last year, Quicken changed the number of decimal places for the "Number of shares" and "Share balance" fields from 4 to 6 digits.  As a result, in situations where a position was closed-out (i.e. all shares were disposed of) all of a sudden, small share balances - beyond 4 digits started to appear in Quicken.  

The recommended way to fix this issue is to go back - for each security where these fractional shares have popped-up - and find the final sell transaction.  Once found, you should click on "edit" the transaction and check the "Sell all shares in this account" box (which is immediately below the "Security name:' field.  Then click "Enter/Done".  This should zero out those minor share balances.

Let mw know how that goes or if you have any followups.

Frankx