Fidelity download consistenty overwrites manual transaction with wrong number of shares

Michael Schmitt

I'm connected to Fidelity Investments as Direct Connect. One account is a 401(k) via NetBenefits. Quicken does download transactions for this account, but starting this year there's a problem: it is consistently changing the number of shares purchased in transactions to the wrong amount. What happens is this:

Every two weeks on Friday, there's a 401(k) contribution, which is always for the same dollar amount.

On Saturday I can see the transaction in Fidelity, but it doesn't yet sync to Quicken. I manually enter the transaction, buying the correct number of shares for a security.

Two weeks later, there's another contribution. I update the accounts, and it updates the previous transaction (the one two weeks ago) with the number of shares purchased by this week's transaction. So I have to go back and correct the previous contribution AND manually enter this week's.

I suspect this started happening this year because the company changed to a biweekly payroll schedule; before it was semimonthly, so the contributions were more than 14 days apart.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Michael Schmitt,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and telling us about this issue.  I'm sorry to hear you're running into this problem. With these transactions that are being overwritten with incorrect information, do you see a blue pencil icon to the left of the transaction? If so, then what may be happening is Quicken is incorrectly matching the newly downloaded transaction with the older one already in the register. If that is what is happening, you can unmatch them by right-clicking (or control+click on your keyboard) the matched transaction and selecting Reject automatic transaction match or Unmatch transaction in the menu list that pops up after right-clicking.

Thank you.

Michael Schmitt

I don't think there's a blue pencil, but I'll try downloading each day and watch closely.

I was thinking what's going on is that when I download on the Saturday after a payment, the most recent transaction that it hasn't matched to is the one I entered 2 weeks ago, so maybe it is matching it. But that doesn't explain why if I download a few days after the transaction is posted nothing happens: either a match or a new transaction.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

If Quicken thinks a transaction was already downloaded, then it wouldn't download it into the same account a second time. So, if it is incorrectly matching, then when you download again, it still "sees" that transaction as downloaded and doesn't pull it in again.

If it is a transaction that has not previously downloaded into Quicken, the delay may be on the financial institution's end. Does this happen with only some transactions, or does it happen with all posted transactions from this financial institution?

Thank you.

Michael Schmitt

The other accounts with this institution are fine.

I think you're right: what I'm expecting to happen is that next week when there's another contribution posted on Friday, Quicken will incorrectly match it, but this time I'll un-match it. Hopefully that will become a new transaction and henceforth everything will work.

Michael Schmitt

As predicted the new transaction on Friday matched against the one I manually entered two weeks ago, changing it to a blue pencil. I rejected the match, and it created a new transaction.

Now the next test will be what happens in two weeks. Hopefully it will create a new transaction.

Michael Schmitt

The new 401(k) contribution posted correctly this time. Thanks for your help.

I think I would have figured it out in Quicken 2007, where the download matching was more of an overt process.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

I'm glad to hear it posted correctly this time.

Thank you.