missing investment transactions

Wiley Won

I failed to download from my Fidelity retirement account for over 3 months. Now I'm missing about 50 transactions from the months of March, April, and May. I can see them on the website, but Fidelity allows me to manually download only in CSV format.
How can I reset the date pointer in Quicken to download all transactions after 3/1/2021?

Boatnmaniac

The Fidelity website cautions Quicken users to run OSU at least once every 60 days because that is the number of days that they limit their Quicken OSU downloads to.

@Chris_QPW correctly notes the 2 most commonly used ways to fill in missing transactions but there is also a 3rd way to get the missing transactions downloaded and into the account register.  If you go this route, be sure to back up your HDD before proceeding.:

1. Deactivate the current Fidelity account and remove the Financial Institution information from the upper right quadrant of the General tab of Account Details.
2. Add a new Fidelity account in Quicken and link it to Fidelity
   
3. Download the transaction history into that new Fidelity account.
4. Manually move the missing transactions from the new Fidelity account to the original Fidelity account.
5. Delete the new Fidelity account.
6. Reactivate the original Fidelity account.
7. Risk:  After reactivating the original account there might be new transactions added to the account register that are duplicates of what is already there.  These duplicate transactions will need to be manually deleted.
   

Regardless of which process is utilized, it is very likely that the Fidelity account in Quicken now has Placeholder transactions entered into the register.  As the missing transactions are added to the register these Placeholders should be resolved and go away.  But after completing make sure that no Placeholders remain.  If any remain they will need to be resolved.

Chris_QPW

You can use the following procedure to reset it, but I don't think it is going to matter, it is up to the financial institution on how far back they will allow for downloading transactions and 90 days is typical.  Quicken sets the download date to about a week before your last download date, so it was already set the date you needed when you did your download.

Tools -> Online Center
Hold down the left Shift+Ctrl and select Contact Info
Select Fidelity from the pull down menu and then Reset DTSTART
Put in the date you would like.
Select Refresh and the Update/Send...

If that doesn't work then there is only two ways you can go.  The first is manual enter the missing transactions.  Depending on the number of transactions that might be the best thing to do.

The other is using a program like the I created to convert from CSV to QIF so that you can import them.  But note there isn't any standard in the columns or the action type names so this conversion is quite difficult to get setup correctly.  You can find ImportQIF at: http://www.quicknperlwiz.com/

Boatnmaniac

The Fidelity website cautions Quicken users to run OSU at least once every 60 days because that is the number of days that they limit their Quicken OSU downloads to.

@Chris_QPW correctly notes the 2 most commonly used ways to fill in missing transactions but there is also a 3rd way to get the missing transactions downloaded and into the account register.  If you go this route, be sure to back up your HDD before proceeding.:

1. Deactivate the current Fidelity account and remove the Financial Institution information from the upper right quadrant of the General tab of Account Details.
2. Add a new Fidelity account in Quicken and link it to Fidelity
   
3. Download the transaction history into that new Fidelity account.
4. Manually move the missing transactions from the new Fidelity account to the original Fidelity account.
5. Delete the new Fidelity account.
6. Reactivate the original Fidelity account.
7. Risk:  After reactivating the original account there might be new transactions added to the account register that are duplicates of what is already there.  These duplicate transactions will need to be manually deleted.
   

Regardless of which process is utilized, it is very likely that the Fidelity account in Quicken now has Placeholder transactions entered into the register.  As the missing transactions are added to the register these Placeholders should be resolved and go away.  But after completing make sure that no Placeholders remain.  If any remain they will need to be resolved.

Wiley Won

Great answer. Thank you. Is it really possible that Fidelity makes my transactions no longer available for download after only 60 days? That seems irresponsible and there is no valid technical reason for it.

Boatnmaniac

Wiley Won said:

Great answer. Thank you. Is it really possible that Fidelity makes my transactions no longer available for download after only 60 days? That seems irresponsible and there is no valid technical reason for it.

The older transactions are still available for download, just not via OSU.  It is just that Fidelity limits OSU downloads after the initial account activation to the transactions of the last 60 days.  (For the initial account activation Fidelity will download 1-1/2 to 2 yrs of transactions.)  Fidelity is not alone in limiting the time period that can be downloaded via OSU after the initial account activation.    All, and I do mean all, Financial Institutions (FIs) limit the number of days/weeks/months of transactions that they will download via OSU after the initial account activation.  

Each FI defines the time period that they will support for OSU downloads and, unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about that.  If we do not run OSU frequently enough then we need to go through other processes to fill in the missing transactions in the register. It is recommended to run OSU and update all accounts in Quicken at least once every 30 days to avoid encountering this problem of older transactions not getting downloaded.

Wiley Won

The Fidelity website also says this: "Customers using Quicken 2010 and 2011 can download up to 24 months of transaction history."
Why would that be? Why would those two versions be able to download 8x more months of data than everybody else? That sounds like a limitation imposed by Quicken, not Fidelity.

Wiley Won

Thanks for the help, both of you. I have decided to create a single entry to cover all securities bought and sold over that 90 day period. Because it is a retirement accounts, lots and gains and losses have no significance.

volvogirl

Fidelity must not have updated their website since you can no longer import or download to Quicken versions that old.  Only to current supported versions like 2017 and newer.  

Chris_QPW

Wiley Won said:

The Fidelity website also says this: "Customers using Quicken 2010 and 2011 can download up to 24 months of transaction history."
Why would that be? Why would those two versions be able to download 8x more months of data than everybody else? That sounds like a limitation imposed by Quicken, not Fidelity.

That is a very old out of date message.

It is impossible to download transactions from fidelity in any version older than Quicken subscription.  

Boatnmaniac

Wiley Won said:

The Fidelity website also says this: "Customers using Quicken 2010 and 2011 can download up to 24 months of transaction history."
Why would that be? Why would those two versions be able to download 8x more months of data than everybody else? That sounds like a limitation imposed by Quicken, not Fidelity.

I don't think anything has really changed since Quicken 2010 and 2011 in this regard.  Customers could download up to 24 months then and now...just that the 24 months download applies only to the initial account activation, not the follow on OSUs.  If you read a little further in the paragraph that Fidelity quote you posted came from it also says, "On subsequent downloads, Fidelity will transmit up to 90 days of new transaction history since the previous download. Therefore, we suggest customers download account information at least every 90 days.'  So, the 24 months is only for the first download during account activation.  Here is another Fidelity FAQ note that might help to clarify it further:  "In Quicken®, you can export your investment holdings and account balances, along with 90 days of transaction history for your personal accounts. In addition, you can get transaction history up to 24 months."  90 days can be downloaded but you can access up to 24 months of online transactions history.

But I think this 90 days is no longer accurate.  I believe Fidelity has changed that to 60 days.  I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere on the Fidelity website or maybe it came from a discussion I had with a Fidelity tech person once when I was having some problems getting Quicken to work with Fidelity.  Regardless, whether it is 60 days or 90 days, the point is that it is limited.  And no, the limitation is not set by Quicken.  It is set by the FI.  As mentioned earlier, every FI sets their own limits.  While many will download 60-90 days of transactions there are some that will download only 30 days and others will download 6 months or more.

BTW, it is not unusual for FIs to have out of date information regarding Quicken in their FAQs.  Here is perhaps one of the most blatant out of date comments by Fidelity:  "To download your account data, you must have the following: Any one of the three most recent versions of Quicken® and QuickBooks®—available from stores or direct from Intuit at 800-4-INTUIT or www.intuit.com"  But Intuit spun off Quicken in 2016...5 years ago.  If you go to the Intuit website now you will not find anything about Quicken, there, much less be able to buy it there.

Boatnmaniac

Wiley Won said:

Thanks for the help, both of you. I have decided to create a single entry to cover all securities bought and sold over that 90 day period. Because it is a retirement accounts, lots and gains and losses have no significance.

I think that is a good and very simple solution.  The only thing it will mess up is getting a good investment returns/performance calculations for a while but if you are OK with that it is certainly a very viable solution.

Boatnmaniac

One last comment:  I have been a Fidelity customer since the mid-1990s and have been using Quicken since 2008 (and MS Money before that).  If you have an issue with downloads/connectivity with Fidelity, unlike many other FIs, there are people you can talk to there who actually know something about the program and will take ownership in helping you resolve them.  With many FIs it can be difficult to get that kind of technical support without having to jump through a ton of hoops.