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Zeroed Out Investment Account Shows Non-Zero Balance In Left Summary Pane

Snap

Sold all securities, entered in Quicken ledger and withdrew all funds from investment account and transferred out of Quicken ledger. Ledger showed zero balance. Then a few days later the investment account posted late date interest after the securities sale and withdrawal, so that amount was withdrawn, posted in Quicken ledger and withdrawn from Quicken ledger. The ledger shows zero balance but notes $.03 market value which also shows up in left hand accounts summary pane.

I have tried to go back into the ledger and edit the security sale transaction to check "sell all shares" are read on another posting but apparently thaqt is not the issue as it did not clear the pennies.

I also tried to move the small interesting posting to before the sale (vs after) but that did nothing to help.

I want to keep the sale value accurate for tax records.

Any ideas?

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Frankx

Hi again @Snap

You could try editing the last sales transaction involving VFINX in the register. If you click on the "Edit" box for that sale and then - in the pop-up window - check the little box that says "Sell all shares in this account". That should get rid of the fractional shares that are now showing up.

Let me know how that goes.

Frankx

Snap

Frankx, That did it. Thanks.
Actually that transaction 4 years ago had left the .000074 of a share behind and it was unnoticed.

All comments

Frankx

Hi @Snap

You said "a few days later the investment account posted late date interest" - exactly what caused the late date interest? Did you own a bond? Was this account balance interest? Or something else?

You cannot have a 3 cent market value in an investment account unless you have some fractional shares hanging out somewhere. You need to look for some type of share mismatch. Or, maybe simply close the account - I would bet a dollar to a donut that the IRS is going to question you about the "accuracy" of your records, or tax return, or even consider calling you on any three cent issue.

Frankx

Snap

Frankx,
There is no tax reporting issue since that will be based on the investment company year end 1099.
I'll take you bet on the IRS; our professionally prepared tax returns always round to the nearest dollar in all categories, coming and going, so the three cents doesn't matter.

My issue is resolving the nagging Quicken reporting.

There were no fractional shares as it was full shares purchase, no drip and full shares sale.
It was entered in Quicken as such, following the reality within the investment account.

The thing Quicken seems to be stumbling on is last minute interest posted and withdrawal. At that point there were no shares in the investment account nor the quicken ledger.

What happened in the investment account is that the shares were liquidated and settled and funds transferred out and the earned interest was posted on the next day. Odd timing as the interest should have posted a few days earlier at the end of the previous month but apparently their system lagged and posted in the beginning of the next month.

That required an additional transfer out of the 3 cent interest to zero out the account.

Frankx

Hi again @Snap,

Sorry you misread my post (or maybe I wasn't completely clear).

I would never say that a 3 cent error would bring the IRS down on you or anyone else. If you re-read my post it may seem obvious that - from a logic perspective and from the pure language - I was not saying that a 3 cent error would every be an IRS issue.

You say that you are concerned about the 3 cent error. Well, I cannot - nor apparently can you - explain it. Likely it is a timing issue. So, I am not sure why you actually posted about it except maybe because you believe that there is a flaw in Quicken that you wanted to alert other users and Quicken to. If that was it, you've done that.

I am sorry that I got between you and your message. I was just trying to help.

Take care.

Frankx

q_lurker

Frankx said:

… I would bet a dollar to a donut that the IRS is going to question you about the "accuracy" of your records, or tax return, or even consider calling you on any three cent issue.

Frankx

Frankx - I think you left the word ‘not’ out of your sentence.

@Snap - I don’t think your $0.03 has anything to do with the late interest transactions which I presume are cash transactions. I read that you are seeing that three cents as security market value and that your Quicken transaction list showed a cash value of $0.00 after each of the two transfers out. For unknown reasons, Quicken sometimes manages to calculate 0-shares times a current price as some penny or two, even though the user has done as good as possible to sell all shares.

I suppose you could attempt to set the last price of each security to $0.00 but that could have consequences in other accounts. Not my recommendation but maybe a way to close in on the culprit.

I take it you took the 0.03 in the account bar down to 0.00 bay taking the cash in the account down to negative three cents. If so, you found a satisfactory solution for you.

Snap

No, the 3 cents in the account bar did not go away when the ledger was zeroed out with a withdrawal in the ledger. The account bar doesn't seem to respond.

I found something in a Quicken "Holdings" check that equals 3 cents though.
It's showing VFINX with .000074 shares at $442.29 per share.

I can't say that I ever saw that holding anywhere near that price when we had it and I have no idea how that portion of a share was calculated. The whole lot was sold many many years ago. Seems like creative accounting on Quicken's part because ledger input was never drawn out that far.

Is quicken really working to that number of significant figures?

Bob_L

I doubt it will help, but you might try going to preferences, investments and checking to see if the precision setting would make a difference.

Snap

Bob, "Edit, Preferences, Reports, Decimal Places". Didn't help.
It did answer my question though because apparently it can carry it out to 8 places. Mine was set set to 3 but I guess it didn't matter.
Thanks for the clue.

Snap

Maybe I can try to fiddle with a small sale of the obsolete holding in the program and see what happens.

Frankx

Snap

Frankx, That did it. Thanks.
Actually that transaction 4 years ago had left the .000074 of a share behind and it was unnoticed.