vanguard holdings value doesn't match statement

jswafa

My Vanguard mutual fund downloaded holdings value is off by a few cents from the statement.  It appears to be rounding differences that result in a different value for a couple of the funds even though the share price and quantity match the statement.  This doesn't happen in any of my other investing accounts.  Any suggestions to fix?

Chris_QPW

There might not be a fix, but maybe there is a buy/sell where the number of fractions of shares is off.
The truth is there isn't any standard on how to do the rounding.  The number of digits to round to changes with different financial institutions.

In fact I have seen where (and it might have been Vanguard, I forget) Vanguard sent Quicken say 1.25, but when I looked at the financial institution's website it was recorded as say 1.2475.

NotACPA

Also, Q rounds dollar amounts using 5/4 rounding.  Fidelity, my brokerage, truncates anything past the 2nd decimal.

SO, my holding are frequently off, in both directions, from what Fidelity shows.  It's not worth it for me to worry about the matter.

jswafa

Thanks to both of you!  I agree that it's trivial - just a few cents - just bugs me enough to see if it's a common problem.  As I said, I've never seen it in many other accounts over many years - and not in my Vanguard accounts either until recently.  The amounts for prices and shares do match, including the same decimals.  But looking more closely at the math, I see Vanguard is the culprit.  They're using something other than their printed numbers, and not rounding or truncating!  Just for fun I'll follow up with them and report back if I get a logical solution.

Chris_QPW

I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised is that the answer is that internally they store the numbers to a much higher precision than what they display at (or report to Quicken).  And as such there isn't anything really "wrong", as far as they are concerned.

jswafa

Just an update on this - the final answer from Vanguard was essentially "that's the way we do it - get over it."  They say they get their data for their statements from multiple sources, so the math doesn't necessarily add up.  Amazing that a financial company doesn't think the math on their statements matters!!  It's the only account I've ever had that works like this.  It means that, when I reconcile the account every month, I just have to ignore the fact that my account valuation doesn't match theirs - or double-check that all of the individual holdings are in agreement.  So annoying!