Transaction Functions not working

EBM

The " Adjust Share Balance" & " Remove Share" functions are not working to eliminate a growing number of small residual position errors

EBM

I have been using Quicken for many years and the rounding errors and fractional residual shares are becoming problematic and a nuisance. Is there another way to eliminate them ?

Frankx

Hi @EBM,

So it seems like you are having issues with your investment tracking, which is a common problem.  One way to deal with those problems - that Quicken just implemented - would be to switch to "Simple Investing". 

If you haven't heard of this you should take a look at this information from the Quicken Help Menu which summarizes the difference between "Simple" tracking and "Complete" tracking:

Simple Investing tracks positions only With Simple Investing, Quicken keeps track of the positions (number of shares for each security) over time, and your cash balances. Quicken’s tracking is based on information provided by your broker.  You portfolio value, net worth, and investment returns over time will be available, but Quicken will not be able to calculate capital gains and losses or investment income. Quicken will display an account summary rather than an investment transaction register when the account is selected. Complete Investing tracks positions and transactions With Complete Investing, Quicken keeps track of transaction detail as well as the the positions over time, based on information provided by your broker.  This is the tracking approach that Quicken has always provided in the past. With Complete Investing, in addition to portfolio value, net worth, and investment returns, Quicken is able to tracks and displays capital gains, and capital losses, and investment income. Quicken will displays the investment transaction register when the account is selected.

Let me know if you have any followups.

Frankx

q_lurker

My method of managing to avoid almost all issues with small residual shares:
I am diligent at keeping share quantities in all transactions limited to three decimal places or less.  That precision is consistent with what my financial institutions maintain. 

The first issue some users run across is entering transactions with Total and Price thereby letting Quicken fill in share quantity.  Need to provide Shares and total letting Quicken compute price/share.

Spinoffs, mergers, share class conversions, and some stock splits may all create circumstances that require individual manual edits to the transactions to prevent overly-precise share quantities (more than 3 decimals in my case).    

EBM

> @q_lurker said:
> My method of managing to avoid almost all issues with small residual shares:
> I am diligent at keeping share quantities in all transactions limited to three decimal places or less.  That precision is consistent with what my financial institutions maintain. 
>
> The first issue some users run across is entering transactions with Total and Price thereby letting Quicken fill in share quantity.  Need to provide Shares and total letting Quicken compute price/share.
>
> Spinoffs, mergers, share class conversions, and some stock splits may all create circumstances that require individual manual edits to the transactions to prevent overly-precise share quantities (more than 3 decimals in my case).    

I understand and have been much more vigilant now and moving forward. In some cases Quicken refuses to allow a complete sale of the entire position due to some previous rounding, share split, or other activity. I now have over 8 positions with " .0000XX " shares remaining and several with " .XX " remaining. Have you found any method of successfully cleaning these up - they are a nuisance !

Frankx

Hi again @EBM

I believe the best way to get rid of those situations is to go to the last transaction for each of those positions that have fractional shares remaining (which obviously is a "Sell" transaction) and click on the "Sell all shares in this account" checkbox > and then "Enter/Done". 

That should close out the position and rid you of those pesky fractional shares.

Let me know how that goes.

Frankx

EBM

> @Frankx said:
> Hi again @EBM
>
> I believe the best way to get rid of those situations is to go to the last transaction for each of those positions that have fractional shares remaining (which obviously is a "Sell" transaction) and click on the "Sell all shares in this account" checkbox > and then "Enter/Done". 
>
> That should close out the position and rid you of those pesky fractional shares.
>
> Let me know how that goes.
>
> Frankx

I have now tried that for about six. When editing the original sale transaction to " sell all " it comes up with the correct amount of shares. When going to process it comes back with an error message indicating that you need two transactions as the qty ( as defined by the system ) is more than what the position is and a residual amount will be a short sale ! Most of these result from previous stock splits, however several are entirely straightforward purchase & sales. Over time could different versions of Quicken have calculated differently or used different rounding precision ? Should this be reported to Quicken ?

Frankx

Hi again @EBM

That is very strange, especially if some of the transactions are - as you say - "straightforward purchases and sales".  Have you validated your Quicken datafile since you've been receiving those error messages?  It sounds like there could be corruption.

Frankx

EBM

Have validated and it shows everything is fine and the errors still exists and the transactional functions of " remove shares " or " adjust share balance " create placeholder entries however they do not remove the fractional residual rounding error.

EBM

@Frankx Thanks for your help ! Stock splits with any multiple of 3 ( 6, 9, 12, 15, 150 ) DO NOT WORK due to rounding and the infinite number of decimal places .33333333. I used your advice went back and changed the original stock split to something not evenly divisible by 3, and adjusted the new number of shares to be correct. A little cumbersome and time consuming but better than nothing. The other straight forward ones without splits I am still trying to FORCE something to fix them.