QM 7.2.0 still problems with Net Worth report

Steve Taff

I don't think this is new behavior, but it's a different slant on oft-reported problems with calculating net worth. In essence, it's screwy and inconsistent. I traced my problem to one (not-online) brokerage account, but darned if I can figure why there are issues.

In my case (QM 7.2.0), these "reports" agree with my brokerage: SideBar accounts, Accounts Summary (deprecated), account Portfolio, account Dashboard.

These reports do not agree with my brokerage: (Net Worth, Net Worth over Time (deprecated), Net Worth on Home Tab.

No hidden transactions (can we even do that in QM?), no "unusual" transactions around the date the inconsistencies start showing up, no shadow transactions that I can find.

So there seem to be (at least) two different ways that QMac calculates net worth. Anybody else seeing this?

jacobs

First, I'd ignore the deprecated reports, since they clearly haven't been updated as the program has been tweaked over time.

There are several reasons for discrepancies between what you see in the left sidebar (which is now summed to "total" rather than "Net Worth"). You may want to check to see if any of these apply to your data:

1. Do you have any accounts in a different currency? In the Net Worth Dashboard card and Net Worth report, only the home currency is shown; in the left sidebar, accounts in other currencies are converted to the home currency and added to the total.
2. Do you have any scheduled transactions not yet marked as Paid or Deposited? These are counted in the left sidebar, but are not counted in the Net Worth card and report. 
3. Is your Sidebar Settings is set to display Projected Balance or Online Balance? Set your Sidebar Settings to display Today's Balance instead.

Steve Taff

I take your point about not using the old reports, although it's interesting that the Account Summary report does correctly reflect my brokerage holdings.

No non-US currency, no scheduled transactions, no uncleared transactions, sidebar set to Today's Balance. No hidden transactions.

The problem is with a single investment account. Portfolio View for this account is identical to brokerage numbers, but Net Worth for that account shows incorrect values for the same dates. It looks like the net worth panel on Home tab pulls from the (incorrect) net worth report, too.

But I remain confused: from where is Quicken getting those incorrect account numbers to populate the new worth report? Is it generating them on the fly? Is it using a computation different from that used by the portfolio view?

jacobs

@Steve Taff I'm intrigued by where the discrepancy in your report lies. In my data, I've never noticed a difference between a Net Worth report and the Portfolio view set to the same date. I suspect it's something with a specific transaction or set of transactions, but I'm not sure what to suggest you look for. Here's what I'd suggest to try to hunt this down…

Fortunately, the discrepancy is just in one account. Look at the transactions in that account and note the year you started that account. Do a New Worth report as of December 31 of that year, and look at the Portfolio for that account as of that date. If they're different, there's something with the opening of the account or a possible placeholder transaction at the start of the transactions which is the culprit. If they're the same, we then know the divergence happens between that first year and today. So now pick a date about halfway in the middle. For instance if you opened this account in 2014, jump forward to December 31 2019. Again, compare a Net Worth report and the Portfolio on that date. If the discrepancy ahas appeared, move back in time by half the distance and check again; if still no discrepancy, move forward in time by half the distance and check again. Continue moving forward or backwards at half intervals until you eventually find the month where things diverge, and you can narrow it down to one or more specific transactions.

Even if you have 20 years of transactions, it shouldn't take long using this approach to zero in on the source of the discrepancy. Post back here on what you find! 😀

Steve Taff

@jacobs Thanks for sticking with me.

So here's where things stand: my portfolio reports are exactly aligned with my (external) brokerage reports, but the QMac NW reports come up with different (not a huge difference) totals for one of my investment accounts.

I did you one better and generated a weekly NW report for a few months where things diverged. Couldn't come up with anything. I checked all the security price series, thinking it might be a matter of one routine grabbing a year-end price from before the end-of-day, but I couldn't find anything untoward.

I'm now thinking that we need to find out how Quicken populates the cells of its NW reports; the adding up to NW itself is correct, given the incorrect numbers for that one account.

it shouldn't be that hard, should it—price*quantity=value. But the program seems to be using prices and/or quantities that don't show up in obvious (for me) places.

We've both spent too much time on this, I suppose. Let's leave it as a Challenge for the Reader.

jacobs

As best I know, there's only one set of data for the program to pull from; that is, there's only one table of security prices and one table of transactions. It is possible for a transaction on a specific day to have one security price which is slightly different than that security's closing price for the day. But if your Portfolio view each month-end matches your brokerage statement at month-end for both shares held and market value, then Quicken has the correct price data.

I haven't seen any other users reporting the discrepancy you're experiencing, which still makes me fairly confident that there's some small glitch in your data which is the culprit, rather than a general bug in the program. If you feel like pursuing it just a little further, I'd go back to where you zeroed in on the discrepancy first showing up. And then I'd go day by day, Portfolio view versus Net Worth report, to find the exact day that thing diverge, and look to see if there are any transactions that day.

Or if it's minor enough that you want to just drop it, that's fine too! 😀