Account balances report shows different balances at different times

Mary Ann Edson-Plumb

I have an investment account from which all the assets were transferred to a different account. The old account shows zero balance. If I run the Account Balances report on just that account, it properly shows zero balance. However, if I include all my investment accounts in the Account Balance report, it shows the old account with a balance of one cent. How do I get rid of the fictitious 1 cent when I include other accounts in the report?

Jim_Harman

Somewhat tongue-in-cheek answer: Customize the report to exclude the empty account.

Mary Ann Edson-Plumb

That would work except that I'm trying to create a report that shows account balances over time. So for times preceding the change, there are valid numbers for the now empty account. So the report just looks weird and it makes me think there is something wrong under the covers.

Mark1104

yeah, I've run into that too, I've always thought it is an issue of rounding.

can you look at the investment view and determine which security as the penny as the market value? just do a miscexp transaction for 1 cent to remove it.  does that work? 

Jim_Harman

My more serious guess would be that there is a tiny fraction of a share left in the account.

If you want to track this down, go to Edit > Preferences > Reports and set the number of decimal places to 6. Now open the Investing > Portfolio Value report and subtotal by account. Is there a small holding of one or more securities left in the problem account?

If so, go to the account and find the final sale for the problem security(s). Edit that transaction so that instead of selling a set number of shares, the "Sell all shares" box is checked. Let Quicken calculate the price per share.

Getting the shares held down to zero should remove any remaining pennies in the account.

Mary Ann Edson-Plumb

Thanks to both of you! There were no shares in the account, even rounding to 6 decimal places. I was able to determine what security and what month this spare cent showed up, so I did a Miscexp and removed 1 cent and all appears to be well.