Results after Archiving Investment Account

jah47Ed

I archived one of my taxable investment accounts with "Fido". I wanted to get rid of all common stocks and ETFs with Zero Share Balance. Now, when I open up Investing Tab and look at this particular account/portfolio, I see stocks I no longer own with negative share balances. Why? How do I clean up these "errors"? Obviously, this investment account should agree with Fidelity's records. I did make a back-up file (QDF?)! (I know of one solution that might work, but I will remain silent about it for now - I want to know what you in the Community suggest...)

UKR

Why do I remember something about changes to Quicken a year or two ago regarding calculation of fractional shares causing leftover small numbers of fractional shares (e.g., 0.000012) in some instances?

Before you archived investment transactions, did you check your Portfolio view with shares set to display 6 decimal places, to ferret out these rounding errors?

The way to correct these errors would be to change the last Sell transaction to "sell all remaining shares" instead of a manually entered number of shares and without changing the total transaction amount.

Did you check the account for Placeholder transactions and eliminate/correct them? 

About Placeholders (Quicken Windows)

"N/A" in certain fields of an investment transaction indicates that you have Placeholder transactions in your account that need to be deleted and replaced with the correct Buy / Sell / etc. transaction that should have been recorded here.
For more about Placeholders please go into Quicken Help (press the F1 key from anywhere in Quicken) and perform a Contents search for "placeholder".
Alternatively or in addition to the above, please read https://help.quicken.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=3216694

jah47Ed

No fractional shares. I've leanred to check for them as sort of a routine. I think I've resolved all Placeholders. Under Investments tab, when I look at the account, I see negative share balances, zero share balances and positive share balances. It is curious that archiving would genberate negative share balances. What I would like to do is delete all transactions prior to CY 2020. I do not need 'archival" data - I can find it at Fidelity. I tried to delete some transactions, following Quicken's instructions, and I found the Security Report window empty. Very interesting. I hope a Quicken developer is reading this posting.

q_lurker

jah47Ed said:

I archived one of my taxable investment accounts with "Fido". I wanted to get rid of all common stocks and ETFs with Zero Share Balance. Now, when I open up Investing Tab and look at this particular account/portfolio, I see stocks I no longer own with negative share balances. Why? How do I clean up these "errors"? Obviously, this investment account should agree with Fidelity's records. I did make a back-up file (QDF?)! (I know of one solution that might work, but I will remain silent about it for now - I want to know what you in the Community suggest...)

I suggest not bothering. I see little to be gained by archiving transactions. Too many resultant headaches as you are seeing. I am happy to have 30+ years of data in my primary file. I have at times adjusted Quicken investment accounts to improve performance. YMMV especially if you are a very active trader. 

jah47Ed said:

… I hope a Quicken developer is reading this posting.

Not happening. There is not a direct communication path to them. The Help / Report  a problem path is the recommendation to get a problem to them, but that is still a one-way street. You won’t get feedback. 

jah47Ed

I restored a back-up file - dated prior to the "failed" archive attempt. Investing tab (taxable account) portfolio that was displaying old stocks, some with negative share balanaces, now shows current portfolio at "Fido". Quicken not as flexible as I'd like. I would rather have just the current investments (transactions) and not have records of transactions that date back to 2014, unlike q_lurker. To each, his own preferences. If I no longer own it, then I want to delete all transactions. Historical records are available at Fidelity; I also keep hard copies of each year-end investment report. Thanks to all that commented.

q_lurker

jah47Ed said:

 … Quicken not as flexible as I'd like. I would rather have just the current investments (transactions) and not have records of transactions that date back …

Here’s a thought. Maybe even the current transactions (buys, sells, dividends, etc.) are also of little value to you. If that is the case, then the Simple investing format within Quicken may be more to your liking. That is more oriented toward just reporting current holdings. 

You can enable Simple investing through your Preferences, and then apply it as desired on individual accounts. With a good backup on hand, you might give it a look.