Vanguard 401k transactions still not downloading

davecad

Quotes come in and so on but transactions do not. I have monitored all the various Vanguard threads here, and I've tried all the workarounds for the past year or so with no real evidence that Quicken has any answer, other than try things that we've tried before. Deactivating/Reactivating, resetting the FI info and so on, ad nauseum.

Every once in a blue moon I'll get the transactions to download properly.

I've no interest in speaking with tier one support for extended periods on the phone to work through this as I have seen other brave souls do here - I don't think providing the same information that most certainly has been reviewed by every tier one support agent with the same unsuccessful solutions to attempt.

Updates from Quicken support and assurances that people who can actually work to correct the issue are on the case, or at least provide guidance and details on what is actually happening with Vanguard would be useful and helpful for your paying customers.

Mark1104

what version of Quicken are you using? what version of Windows are you running? 

davecad

This has persisted through all recent updates - but currently R33.24 Build 27.1.33.24 on Win10 Enterprise

Jim_Harman

Do you have other Vanguard accounts that download OK? Investing accounts at other brokers that download OK?

Do you get an error message when the download fails?

If you try again immediately after it fails, does it work OK? That has been my experience recently when Vanguard downloads fail.

Please do not reject my answer, I am just trying to gather information.

davecad

@Jim_Harman Thanks for your reply, I only have the one account with Vanguard, it's a 401k brokerage. Currently I have an E*Trade account that works fine as well, and in the past I had a couple other brokerages that didn't have issues, although that's been a few years. Incidentally Vanguard worked fine for many years, the problem seemed to start at some point after updating to the new subscription version - I had been running Quicken 2016 H&B and earlier iterations without problems for years.

Unfortunately when trying to connect again immediately, I get the same result. No error message - at one point or another I was getting the OL-304 or "downloading to an account that no longer exists" but haven't seen any of that for quite some time.

Basically says 1 account updated, 0 new transactions irrespective of how I connect, including after resetting the online services and so forth. I know they're in there somewhere! I'm not a developer but have been in IT infrastructure and application support and security for many years - any ideas how to view detailed logs, or enable debug logging? I don't mind digging into it myself if that's a possibility. Like I said in the initial post, I don't want to simply attempt the same attempts at 'fixes' while stuck on a support call, especially given that they've proven fruitless.

Sorry for the wordy post but appreciate your interest in trying to help solve the problem!

Jim_Harman

There have been numerous reports of problems downloading from Vanguard, which the developers are tracking as CTP-1144. See this thread for more info.
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7881217/vanguard-account-gets-a-ol-293-a-error

Does this sound like the issue you are seeing? Recent reports indicate that this issue may be have been fixed in the past few days.

Susan Warren

I have had problems downloading transactions from my Vanguard 401K for years. I pay for a subscription so I always have latest version of Quicken using Windows 10. I wish someone would fix this.

Chris_QPW

Here is my take on this.  Investment accounts are downloaded using Direct Connect.
That means that Quicken is directly talking to Vanguard's OFX server.

There is three "phases" to this, getting connected, getting the account information to decide on what account the transactions should go into, and then finally processing the transaction/balance/price information sent.

If no errors are being put up, then most likely the first two "phases" have been done successfully.
That leave processing what is sent.  Clearly the first step would be to make sure that what is expected (transactions) are even being sent by Vanguard.  If not then only they can fix the problem.

If the information has been sent, then it is possible, but unlikely, that Quicken is processing the information incorrectly.

The connection log give information about the initial connection, and then the OFX log gives the send/receive parts of the communications.  Both can be found in Help -> Log Files...

Since the information is added to the end of the log file the best way to do this is to update only for Vanguard and then look at the end of the logs.

For the most part if transactions aren't coming down you just have to determine if there are any transactions.  Vanguard doesn't format it for human consumption so it is all on one line and such, but you should be able to look for the <FITID> field.  Every transaction has to have this field to give the transaction unique Id.

Jim_Harman

@Susan Warren
Do you have other Vanguard accounts that download OK?

What happens when you attempt to download your 401(k) transactions? Do you get an error message? If so, what is it?

Mark1104

one of the things I figured out with Vanguard (and I do NOT have a 401(K) via my employer at Vanguard), is that if you customize the view on the Vanguard website, the accounts removed from the customized view will NOT download to Quicken - that is controlled by Vanguard. 

Dodds

I'm having a similar problem. My Vanguard transactions downloaded properly for years but some time after April of this year one of the Brokerage accounts stopped updating with new earnings transactions. The other Vanguard accounts work fine. I was able to dance around the issue by manually connecting the account using the Quicken account setup screen. But the process didn't work great. I would get an error message saying Quicken couldn't connect to Vanguard but the new transactions would somehow be posted to the account. It was a pain - but it worked. Now - I still get the error message but the transactions no longer come through. That's not really what I would consider progress. The last time I called about the issue I spent about 2 hours on the phone with no results. I was expecting Quicken to have fix the problem by now. I'm really not willing to spend hours on this. If it doesn't get fixed soon I plan to use the time I would spend troubleshooting to research and purchase different software. After I'm done here I plan to remove the automatic purchase feature from my account.

Mark1104

how do you know it's a Quicken problem and not a Vanguard problem? 

do this test: set up a brand new Quicken file and set up your Vanguard accounts to be downloaded.  Download your transactions.  Does it work? if yes, then there is something related to your quicken file itself.  If no, then inconclusive - could be either Vanguard or Quicken.

As I mentioned in my post above, if you have customized your VIEW on the VANGUARD website, those transactions will not download - that is a Vanguard issue and not a Quicken issue.  Have you called Vanguard to confirm you didn't inadvertantly customize the view??? 

Dodds

Thanks for the input. I really don't know if it's a quicken or vanguard issue. Based on the traffic surrounding this issue I would think quicken would be investing time in figuring out why something would just stop working. Regardless - I was just venting and that's really not appropriate in this community. I'm very sorry for wasting your time.

Mark1104

Since Quicken is unlikely to change anythinginadvertantly  (as it would impact all 10,000 financial institutions simultaneously), it's more likely a Vanguard issue.