Vanguard totals are not correct

Question

I've been downloading from Vanguard for years and now the totals are screwy on some accounts and some of my holdings don't show up in Quicken. The only change I made was that I recently changed some of my Vanguard accounts to brokerage accounts and made some trades. I am only downloading balances, not transactions as it was too much to manage in Quicken.

Jeremy J · Answer

Similar problem here. I have three positions in my Vanguard 401K account and only two appear in Quicken. With one of the connectivity changes in the last few months the option to use 'detailed' tracking disappeared for this account (I just reset it this morning, and 'detailed' is greyed out in the registration process). The share count and values for the two accounts that do transfer are correct.

Any other data we could provide to help troubleshoot?

Jeremy J

Frankx · Answer

Hi @Michael Wetter,

Thanks for the additional information, it is helpful to understanding the lay of the land.

Based on what your said, I think that your current problems are being caused (at least in part) by your change to "simple investing".  That switch actually is likely going to make it more difficult to fix.

First let me explain quickly what the differences are between the "simple investing' approach and the "complete investing" approach.  In the "complete" approach, your account shows all transactions as they historically occurred and details the transactions (including date, price, number of shares, cost, etc.).  The "simple" approach does away with recording any transactions and only focuses only on your holdings at specific points in time and their value at such time.  When things work, the totals for holdings and market values should agree, regardless of the method that is used. But often, especially when one moves from complete to simple, things get messed up.  That appears to have happened to this account.  In addition, since you are seeing problems with other Vanguard accounts (having also likely been caused by the change), that complicates your situation, or perhaps makes the solution easier, depending on how you view things.

So I believe that you have two options.  Since you seem to have switched to Simple Investing recently, you could (depending on how long ago you switched) change back to complete investing.  If you made that switch very recently (e.g. in the last few/several weeks/months), you could restore a backup file dated prior to the switch and then move forward by filling in the gaps in transactions for all accounts via download or manually, if necessary.

Otherwise, I expect that if you give the Simple Investing more time, it theoretically should eventually straighten itself out - remember it is effectively ignoring transactions and only focusing on balances (of shares) at points in time and the share price at that time - and that should work it self out.  So you could take a "wait and see" approach.

Give this some thought and get back to me with any additional questions.

Frankx

edcraven · Answer

Same problem as Michael Wetter. Is there a solution? When I tried to delete the account in Quicken, it won't let me due to "unprocessed downloaded transactions", of which there are none that I can find.