Dividend reinvestment shares showing as stock split in investment

deanbaker

I use update to track investments from Merrill Lynch. For accounts with dividend reinvestments, Quicken had downloaded the data as a cash dividend and zero cost basis Added shares. Due to the error, I could not track investment return in Quicken, but at least I had the correct number of shares. However, since January 2023, Quicken now shows the cash dividend and a 100:100 or 101:100 stock split for each dividend reimbursement. Now there is an error in the number of shares for every security that does dividend reimbursement. I have to manually correct every dividend entry from the ML website. Quicken help staff have not been able to help so far. Anyone with this problem and any solution to fix this ongoing error?

q_lurker

I am not a ML client so I don’t know what they are sending. I would not hesitate to delete their Stksplt transactions and enter the proper DivReinv transaction specifying the proper cost (amount of divided) and the proper number of shares.

deanbaker

I do manually delete the stock split transactions and enter the proper DivReinv transaction, so my number of shares is correct. However, I hope to find out the cause of the error, so I do not have to correct every DivReinv transactions. I have looked carefully ML activity log. Both prior to this year and currently during this year, the activity is explicitly labelled as a "Reinvestment Share(s)" transaction. It shows the dividend amount, the stock price, and the number of shares. I can't envision how the Quicken program could recognize this information as a stock split. It has to be a Quicken error, but I cannot get the Quicken help staff to understand the issue or provide help. Hence, I contacted the Quicken community.

q_lurker

I do not have an investment firm using EWC+ communications, so my following comments are speculative.

You may be able to get a better feel for the culprit by accessing the Cloud Sync Log file. (Help / Contact Support / Log Files). It may take some sleuthing to find the reinvestment transaction in the file. It is helpful to save the file to a txt file and their access with Notepad or similar. Doing so, you can insert line breaks to make the data more readable.

That tool should at least tell you how the aggregator (Intuit) is sending the transaction to your program.

nancyprudente

I have the same problem with Merrill Lynch - I am just manually correcting now - but it is a pain.

Tom Young

@deanbaker @nancyprudente

According to the fidir.txt file ML uses Direct Connect as the downloading method:

05550 05550 05550 Merrill Lynch Investments http://www.ml.com/index.asp?id=7695_15125 1-800-637-7455 https://olui2.fs.ml.com/Login/Login.aspx?SITESRC=MLD ACTIVE INVESTMENT,ACCOUNTINFO&DIRECT INVESTMENT&WEB-CONNECT NOT_QBP NA

Is that in fact what your ML Accounts are using? (Clicking (Tools > Account List > Investments) will show this information.

Mbz300

I talked to Quicken, they know about the problem and are working to fix it, hopefully soon.

The problem started in the middle if April 2023

This is a major headache for all of us

Mbz300

Talked to Quicken support again, they are aware of the issue but no plan to fix it

Tom Young

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20377689#Comment_20377689

Did they articulate what the problem was, and the source? With Direct Connect the Financial Institution is responsible for coding each transaction, correctly, using the OFX protocol. That suggests that that the error is on ML's end, not on Quicken's end. Have you opened the OFX file to look at what ML is actually sending to you?

Mbz300

Quicken knows about the issue since June July 23 and it is sitting there. Should take about few hours to fix and test.

My portfolio is a mess due to this issue. Every day when I update a windows pops up and tells me about discrepancies. I complained several times, but the standard answer is we are aware of the issue and are working to fix it. Sorry they are aware of it and ignoring the users. I have several portfolios with many shares and it worked fine for years until June/July.

I am looking for an alternative, any suggestions?

NotACPA

Q can't fix it because it's an ML screw-up.

Go bug them, because ML is SOLELY responsible for the content of a Direct Connect download,

Mbz300

Not ML fault, I looked at the file and it shows reinvestment not splits.
I was a programmer at one point and can parse those xml downloads and understand exactly what they mean.
Quicken admitted that they need to fix it, in addition a company like them can talk directly to ML and resolve the issue if it was ML problem, which it is not.

NotACPA

Looked at WHAT file? Direct Connect doesn't leave a file that you can inspect.

Tom Young

The OFXLOG?

Mbz300

I exported the activities to the quicken file format, which should be the same.
when I import that file I got the same results as direct connect with the reinvested dividends loading as splits.

Mbz300

All you have to do is load using direct connect, check the results, restore your backup, export the xml and load to quicken.

You will get the same results