Cash balance in a UBS investment account not downloaded

Yitzhak Zilberman

I am writing here on the advice of customer support. I am told that this is the only way to get the attention of the DEVELOPMENT TEAM.

I have some UBS investment accounts in my portfolio. They are connected to Quicken via “Direct Connect”. The accounts consist of security positions and cash balances. The positions are displayed and propagated through Quicken properly; the cash balances do not. After a lengthy analysis Quicken has determined that the issue lies within UBS and therefore nothing can be done on Quicken’s side. I brought the issue to UBS. They also ran their own analysis and determined that they communicated the data correctly, including cash balances. In summary, both parties “blame” the other party and I remain with no resolution.

I dug deeper into the issue. As I understand, “direct connect” refers to transfer of Open Financial Exchange (OFX) files through a data aggregation service provider. Furthermore, Quicken provides access to the OFX log through Help>”Report a Problem to Quicken”. I opened a new Quicken file, added my simplest investment account to it (2 positions and some cash) and generated an OFXLOG.txt file. I parsed the file, using the OFX Specification1 and found the correct cash balance identified as <AVAILCASH> as specified in section 13.9.2.7. This leads me to the conclusion that the issue lies within Quicken's purview.

I am asking you to either explain why in spite of the evidence, the issue must be fixed by UBS or take ownership and resolve it.

Thank you!

1https://financialdataexchange.org/common/Uploaded%20files/OFX%20files/OFX%20Banking%20Specification%20v2.3.pdf

Chris_QPW

Well, I can tell you that Quicken is looking for the cash balance in the LEDGERBAL BALAMT and LEDGERBAL DTASOF fields.

EDIT: After looking at this, and thinking about it, Quicken is right and the financial institution is wrong. None of the "Available" balances should be used. Quicken doesn't track "available". For instance, if I make a deposit the financial institution might only make part of that deposit available to be used but Quicken will only get the one transaction for the full deposit amount. There are other variations of this with an investment account for instance, what might be available to use for buying more shares just after you have sold some shares.

Yitzhak Zilberman

Wow! I am chasing this problem since March and this is the first coherent explanation I get. As I understand, if UBS were to report the cash balance in the LEDGERBAL field everything will work fine (?)

If this is the case, how do I get this answer from Quicken? I am looking for an official-looking response I can take back to UBS.

Thanks!

Chris_QPW

DELETED WRONG INFORMATION.

Sorry, I made a mistake, the information I gave you was for a non-investment account.

For an investment account Quicken looks at (AVAILCASH):

            <INVBAL>
<AVAILCASH>1000.0

                <MARGINBALANCE>0.0

                <SHORTBALANCE>0.0

            </INVBAL>

Chris_QPW

But let me further qualify the above. This is the reported cash balance. As in if I select the gear icon in the register and select Update Cash Balance:

Here is me testing a few transactions:

Yitzhak Zilberman

Equivalency to manually updating the Cash Balance is what I was looking for. At present I can update manually, but whenever I update the accounts (e.g., One Step Update) the cash balances are zeroed out.

Can you take a look at this excerpt? Is there anything wrong with it. This is from the OFX log that refuses to download the cash balance.

<INVBAL><AVAILCASH>2445.7400<MARGINBALANCE>0.0000<SHORTBALANCE>0.0000<BUYPOWER>0.0000<BALLIST><BAL><NAME>EQUITIES<DESC>EQUITIES<BALTYPE>DOLLAR<VALUE>19415.2000<DTASOF>20231205000000.000[-5:EST]<CURRENCY><CURRATE>1<CURSYM>USD</CURRENCY></BAL><BAL><NAME>MONEY FUNDS<DESC>MONEY FUNDS<BALTYPE>DOLLAR<VALUE>270.7400<DTASOF>20231205000000.000[-5:EST]<CURRENCY><CURRATE>1<CURSYM>USD</CURRENCY></BAL><BAL><NAME>VALUE<DESC>VALUE<BALTYPE>DOLLAR<VALUE>21860.9400<DTASOF>20231205000000.000[-5:EST]<CURRENCY><CURRATE>1<CURSYM>USD</CURRENCY></BAL></BALLIST></INVBAL>

Again, thank you!

Chris_QPW

You are trying to do this in Simple investment mode, correct? (It is the only mode that will update the cash balance automatically)

I didn't understand that before.

I took your excerpt and put in a QFX file I generated and Quicken had no problem with it.

I know that for certain financial institutions/account types (Fidelity/401K) simple mode was doing exactly what you describe, zeroing out the cash when running One Step Update with the account in Simple investing mode.

Whatever the problem is, it isn't in this section.

OFXHEADER:100

DATA:OFXSGML

VERSION:102

SECURITY:NONE

ENCODING:USASCII

CHARSET:1252

COMPRESSION:NONE

OLDFILEUID:NONE

NEWFILEUID:NONE
<OFX>

  <SIGNONMSGSRSV1>

    <SONRS>

      <DTSERVER>20231206154845

      <FI>

        <FID>10898

        <ORG>ImportQIF

      </FI>

      <INTU.BID>10898

      <STATUS>

        <CODE>0

        <SEVERITY>INFO

      </STATUS>

      <LANGUAGE>ENG

    </SONRS>

  </SIGNONMSGSRSV1>

  <INVSTMTMSGSRSV1>

    <INVSTMTTRNRS>

      <INVSTMTRS>

        <DTASOF>20231206154845

        <INVACCTFROM>

          <ACCTID>Test

          <BROKERID>BrokerId

        </INVACCTFROM>

        <INVBAL><AVAILCASH>2445.7400<MARGINBALANCE>0.0000<SHORTBALANCE>0.0000<BUYPOWER>0.0000<BALLIST><BAL><NAME>EQUITIES<DESC>EQUITIES<BALTYPE>DOLLAR<VALUE>19415.2000<DTASOF>20231205000000.000[-5:EST]<CURRENCY><CURRATE>1<CURSYM>USD</CURRENCY></BAL><BAL><NAME>MONEY FUNDS<DESC>MONEY FUNDS<BALTYPE>DOLLAR<VALUE>270.7400<DTASOF>20231205000000.000[-5:EST]<CURRENCY><CURRATE>1<CURSYM>USD</CURRENCY></BAL><BAL><NAME>VALUE<DESC>VALUE<BALTYPE>DOLLAR<VALUE>21860.9400<DTASOF>20231205000000.000[-5:EST]<CURRENCY><CURRATE>1<CURSYM>USD</CURRENCY></BAL></BALLIST></INVBAL>

        <CURDEF>USD

      </INVSTMTRS>

      <STATUS>

        <CODE>0

        <SEVERITY>INFO

      </STATUS>

      <TRNUID>0

    </INVSTMTTRNRS>

  </INVSTMTMSGSRSV1>

</OFX>

And in its minimum form:

OFXHEADER:100

DATA:OFXSGML

VERSION:102

SECURITY:NONE

ENCODING:USASCII

CHARSET:1252

COMPRESSION:NONE

OLDFILEUID:NONE

NEWFILEUID:NONE
<OFX>

  <SIGNONMSGSRSV1>

    <SONRS>

      <FI>

        <ORG>ImportQIF

        <FID>10898

      </FI>

      <DTSERVER>20231206160626

      <STATUS>

        <SEVERITY>INFO

        <CODE>0

      </STATUS>

      <INTU.BID>10898

      <LANGUAGE>ENG

    </SONRS>

  </SIGNONMSGSRSV1>

  <INVSTMTMSGSRSV1>

    <INVSTMTTRNRS>

      <INVSTMTRS>

        <DTASOF>20231206160626

        <INVACCTFROM>

          <ACCTID>Test

          <BROKERID>BrokerId

        </INVACCTFROM>

        <INVBAL>

          <SHORTBALANCE>0.00

          <MARGINBALANCE>0.00

          <AVAILCASH>1234.00

        </INVBAL>

        <CURDEF>USD

      </INVSTMTRS>

      <STATUS>

        <CODE>0

        <SEVERITY>INFO

      </STATUS>

      <TRNUID>0

    </INVSTMTTRNRS>

  </INVSTMTMSGSRSV1>

</OFX>

Chris_QPW

@Quicken Kathryn

I believe this problem, and the one reported for Fidelity/401K accounts/Simple investing mode is the same.

What was missing from the discussion above is that he was trying to do this in Simple investing mode.

Offline @Yitzhak Zilberman sent me the OFX log, which I turned into a QFX file to test with.

I changed the FID/Bid number to Chase because USB doesn't support QFX files, but other than that the QFX file is true to the OFX log data he sent me.

The result was that when importing that QFX file into Quicken the cash balance was imported correctly as shown on the Simple investing dashboard for that account.

Given that the exact OFX log information from Direct Connect is feed back into Quicken as Web Connect/QFX file and it works differently points to a bug in the Direct Connect processing.