ETrade info to Quicken inaccurate

Question

Quicken consistently gets ETrade stock split & other dividend info wrong, particularly as it concerns Brookfield companies.  Whether or not a Brookfield company pays out a stock dividend or spins off a new division, Quicken cannot seem to recognize what ETrade is telling Quicken and double enters, miscounts, gets the cost basis wrong, or just generally screws up some detail of the transaction.  I end up spending hours on the Quicken ledger ferreting out the errors so that Quicken will agree with the ETrade statement.  Is Quicken IT working on fixing the ability of Quicken to properly read ETrade info or do I just need to give up and cancel my Quicken subscription?

Tom Young · Answer

"I've had an accountant double-check all the ETrade info and it all adds up. There don't seem to be any errors there."

What you see on the ETrade site and what gets downloaded into Quicken absolutely, positively can be different.  I can say that about any broker.

Brokers generally are very capable of keeping very accurate records of your holdings and the changes in those holdings, but there can be a "translation" problem between what has happened in the real world and how you account for it in Quicken. Brokers, by and large, aren't accountants and (especially) neither are the programs who set up the programs that "translate" real world activities - Spin offs, stock for stock mergers, cash plus stock acquisitions, split offs , issuance of rights (some of which you must allocate basis and some of which that allocation is not required), acquisitions where the cash is considered a dividend, etc., etc. etc. - into Quicken-understandable accounting entries.

The point here is that you can't simply accept all entries downloaded from brokers as correct and accurate.  In many cases you need to understand the nature of the transaction as it took place in the real world - and that might require considerable research such as reading proxy statement, S-4s, Forms 8937 and so forth - and delete transaction downloaded from brokers and then make your own correct acounting entries to get things straightened out.

EBos · Answer

I've had an accountant double-check all the ETrade info and it all adds up.  There don't seem to be any errors there.  These are admittedly complex financial statements, but I didn't have this problem until 2-3 years ago at about the time Quicken switched to its subscription model.  I presumed it's a Quicken problem given the timing, but perhaps it's ETrade reporting in some way that Quicken can't understand.

UKR · Answer

Quicken just takes the information generated by E*Trade or other brokerages and loads it into your investment registers.

Have you ever thought about the quality and correctness of the transactions as downloaded from E*Trade?

Have you ever discussed this situation with E*Trade Support?