Investments match brokerage holdings

800FRobHall

If quicken knows that my holdings match the brokerage on one new account; why can it not give me some guidance on differences in other brokerage accounts? At what level do the records have to match? I used to get this message on two of eight accounts, then there was a stock spin off and now I only get it on one. Advice?

Tom Young

"If quicken knows that my holdings match the brokerage on one new account; why can it not give me some guidance on differences in other brokerage accounts?"

It does.  It's not clear to me whether the comparison of holdings "per the broker" to Quicken's records happens with each download - I've had instances of Quicken telling me of mismatches several days after the mismatch occurred - but the comparison of holdings should be happening across all Investment Accounts.  If Quicken notices a mismatch that's when it suggests entering a placeholder to make the numbers agree.

"At what level do the records have to match?"

Since nobody here has access the the inner workings of Quicken it's not perfectly clear how Quicken does things but, grossly, I'd say if the number of shares shown in an Account's Holdings window doesn't agree to the brokers figure, the mismatch window should come up, and it doesn't really matter HOW that Holdings window figure was derived.  That is, any sequence of Buys, Sells, Adds, Removes, Placeholders, etc. that comes to the right number (i.e., agrees to the broker's number) should satisfy the program.

"I used to get this message on two of eight accounts, then there was a stock spin off and now I only get it on one. Advice?"

Without any detail to look at here it's hard to know what's going on.  First, you should not be getting the mismatch message all the time, which is what you seem to suggest here.  When Quicken notices a mismatch it suggests entering a Placeholder to bring the two numbers in line.  That's your cue to go into the Account and see what has created the mismatch and to make the appropriate entries to the Account.  Or, you accept Quicken's suggestion to create a Placeholder to "fix" things.  (You're not really fixing anything, you're just entering a plug number to get the numbers in line.)  If you have been constantly getting mismatch warnings on two Accounts and now only are seeing the warning on one Account, maybe you accepted the Placeholder?  Again, without any details it's really impossible to know the role, if any, the stock split played in this.

[Deleted User]

@800FRobHall - I don't know if I am remembering incorrectly, but in the past when you downloaded investment transactions and your share balances were off, a pop-up box would alert you to the difference and ask you how you would like to proceed (ignore or create placeholders).  That doesn't seem to happen anymore.  Now, I do a "Reconcile Shares" every once in a while, to verify that shares are in balance between Quicken and my FI.

Rocket J Squirrel

This is a user preference which can be set per account.

[Deleted User]

@rocket j squirrel  I have all my investment accounts set to compare, but it doesn't seem to work for me.

Rocket J Squirrel

@Damian that's odd. It works for me. I have a money market fund which downloads interest as IntInc when it should be ReinvInt and the discrepancy pops up for me every month as it should.

[Deleted User]

@Rocket J Squirrel - the times I had issues with share differences is when transactions were not downloading and there were no error messages.  In those instances, when I did an OSU, I didn't get notice of any discrepancies.  But when I did a "Reconcile shares" that is when the discrepancies surfaced, and I knew that transactions were missing.  Maybe that is a not a good example because there might have been more going on with the error situation I was experiencing.

Tom Young

@Damian @Rocket J Squirrel

Prior to the Schwab changeover from DC to EWC+ I would, not infrequently, get mismatch popups immediately after accepting some downloaded transaction that changed the number of shares of a security.  Invariably the difference between the broker and Quicken would amount to the non-inclusion of the transaction I'd just accepted in the broker's share number.  This was easily resolved by just dismissing the popup and the next download would not report any mismatch between the broker and Quicken.

This sort of thing certainly didn't happen with every download of a transaction affecting the number of shares so I just mentally dismissed these popups as some sort of timing difference - at Schwab's end - in their updating of share balances that got included in the OFX file.

The changeover to EWC+ has created a steady dribble of missing share-affecting transactions in my Schwab Accounts, some of which have never been caught by the comparison process or, if it does catch one of these mismatches only comes up many days after the fact.

The Quicken Help file does state that the compare process happens with each download and I don't know if that's changed or it's some error artifact associated with the EWC+ method.

[Deleted User]

@Tom Young  It seems like the share compare process changed when the user was able choose whether or not to compare via "Download Transactions" in Preferences.  Before this change, you were not given a choice - the comparison was always done.

Chris_QPW

How Quicken does this comparison is bit strange/inconsistent.

First off, you have to be downloading a transaction or the compare will never happen.
Next you have to enable the compare for the account as @Rocket J Squirrel pointed out.
You also have to not be using automatic entry because if you do it will never do the compare on the download.

What's more depending on a few things about on how the financial institution sends the security information it is possible for Quicken to warn on the compare while doing the download, but not when you run Compare Shares.  Note I haven't figured out the details of this but see it on securities that Chase sends that are only "cash/transfer" securities used for transferring cash in and out a various "sweep accounts".