Schwab Brokerage downloads duplicate Quicken entries for Bond Purchases.

chipfish

20+ year Quicken user now on Windows release R55.15. Prior Post this year noted Bond Maturities sending two transaction neither selling the position requiring cancel of the two and inputing manual a sale. It still does this, New problem Bond Purchases today. (3/29/2024)sending duplicate purchases transactions and associated cash… Does any body test stuff at Schwab and Quicken?? What a mess it was fixing this one manually. I have a linked checking account so both cash and shares are out of balance.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @chipfish,

To assist with this issue, please provide more information. For the new issue you mentioned, is this the first time this has happened? Did you have a manual transaction in your register for this transaction (if so, did one of the downloaded transactions match with it)? Do you have more than one Schwab account connected in your Quicken? If so, does this issue affect all of them, or are you seeing it in only one account? Also, you mentioned that both cash and shares are out of balance. Are they still out of balance even though you manually corrected the issue?

For the earlier issue you mentioned, I can see that you recently spoke with support. Did you discuss this issue when you contacted them?

I look forward to your response!

chipfish

Kristina, this is the first time that I have had duplicate transactions created from a Schwab download. I have at least 5 other brokerage accounts and 2 bank accounts with Schwab. I have been doing downloads for 10+ years. None of them experienced duplicates. I did not have a manual transaction in my account during this download. On that download for that day (3-29-24) there was a total of 9 transactions 4 were duplicated on the Quicken side for this single brokerage account. On the Quicken side the duplicated transactions were all Bond purchases. But it is more complicated. There were four more transaction created called “MiscExpX” transaction that included a cash amount. These additional four transaction were also duplicated. I suspect the ‘extra’ transaction were required by some rule that Quicken and Schwab has a agreed to get the cash correct on a bond purchase.

The issue was fixed by identifying the 4 bond purchase transactions that were duplicated (and the four associated MiscExpX transactions). Deleting the eight transactions also corrected the issues in the linked cash account. This may give a clue I how the problem is created. Apparently there is a download rule for a Schwab and Quicken involving Bond purchase transitions that has an issue. So in summary when I looked at the history on Schwab I saw 4 transactions. When the I looked on Quicken I saw 16. Eight were needed. Eight needed to be deleted.

So in summary, at this time I have this issue open and two other. The issue with Schwab bank not sending all transactions. The original one of sending two transactions on a Bond Maturity but not selling the position. I would be happy to send screen shots. As an old programmer I continue to ask both entities ‘are you doing regression testing when you make changes?”

Ken Arthur

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

To help track down if this is happening due to a data quality issue or due to a more file-specific problem, I recommend that you backup your Quicken file, then create a new "test" file to see how the problem account downloads into that new file. Warning: Schwab is fussy about having the same accounts connected in multiple Quicken files. After you have tested how it downloads (to see if the same thing happens, if it downloads correctly, or if something else happens), please make sure to deactivate the account(s) in the test file before going back to your main file.

Please let me know how it goes!

chipfish

Kristin,

Before I even try your suggestion read on and I am frankly tired of me testing. Why doesn't Quicken run a test on its test bed to see what happens on Bond purchases when downloaded from Schwab? The last time on a missing Quicken transaction issue your staff gave me the solution of creating a 'new test file'. It fixed the issue (this was on missing transactions from a Bank of America Visa account). The new file had all the transaction. But your customer service agent did not understand what a new test 'good' file means to a user. All the thousands of transactions that I have had to manually assign the correct expense category for the past 5 years were gone. So while I have the transactions I now had to go back and re-check and re-enter expense categories a job that would have taken months. IF YOUR SOLUTION WILL BE TO USE THE NEW TEST FILE, IT IS NOT AN OPTION BECAUSE THE NEWLY UPDATED SCHWAB DATA DOES NOT HAVE CORRECT PAYEES, EXPENSE CATEGORIES, TRANSFER ACCOUNT #s, CUSIP #s ETC. THAT I HAVE ENTERED INTO QUICKEN. Please just assure me that you have tested on your end Bond Purchases and show me the results. I have manually corrected my file now. I seldom have Bond Purchases and also Bond Maturities. I just do not want these issues in the future. Sorry for the rant but I am old COBOL programer that did investor record keeping I understand what is a bug is and what might be needed to fix a problem.

PS. I am not sure what data quality means in the Quicken world????? I guess an example would help. We are just processing debits and credits to cash and shares. That quality should be 100% every day. In my current world of Quicken and Schwab interfaces that is just not happening.

Best,

Ken Chip Arthur

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

Starting over with a new file is a last resort when no other troubleshooting steps work. If it downloads correctly in the test file, but not in your main file, then we would first try to get it to download correctly in the main file. If it downloads incorrectly in both files, then that would indicate the most likely issue is data quality. Data quality, in this context, refers to the data being sent to us incorrectly formatted or incorrect data being sent.

Thank you!

mshiggins

There's no evidence in your posts that points to this being a Quicken problem (1). 

And given the fact that it is Schwab who selects, formats and sends the transactions that Quicken receives (2), I'd say it's more likely that Schwab is the culprit. If that's the case, only Schwab can fix the problem.

Also there is no reason to assume that what you see at the financial institution's web site is what you will see in Quicken. 

I know for certain that Schwab (and other brokerages) will, in certain situations, intentionally download transactions differently than what is shown at their web site (and in their statements). Pseudo-reinvestment transactions often fall in this category - one "reinvestment" transaction appears at the web site, but two transactions are downloaded: a Dividend and a Buy.

[I don't mean to suggest that there is anything in your comments that would lead me to believe that you "should" have received those duplicate transactions. Just pointing out that there is a process that begins at the financial institution which selects, formats and sends transactions - and that process can, intentionally or unintentionally, send data that is different than what is displayed at the financial institution web site.]

[ (1) For more evidence of the origin of the problem: I believe you have a log file that "may" shed some light on the party responsible for the Schwab transactions you received - or at least distinguish between Quicken's (qw.exe) involvement, and any upstream processing that occurred.  If you go to Help > Contact Support > Log files and select "Cloud Sync Log", you should see each of the downloaded transactions that Quicken received. It's a cumbersome file to decipher, but I think it's possible to determine whether the same transaction appears twice in that file.  To make the deciphering process easier, it might be worth it to create a New (test) Quicken file and setup the one Schwab account that got the duplicate transactions in that New file. A download to that test Quicken file should produce a Cloud Sync Log that has far fewer transactions to sort through.]

[ (2) For accounts that use the Express Web Connect+ (EWC+) Connection Method (as Schwab does), there is additional upstream processing before your Quicken software (qw.exe) sees the downloaded data. The financial institution initiates the downloading, but I believe the data then passes through Intuit servers and Quicken servers, before it reaches Quicken (qw.exe on your pc). In theory then, any one of the 3 upstream processors could have altered the data from what was visible at the financial institution web site. I think that it is more often the financial institution that is responsible for the differences, but I know of no way to verify that.]  

-JP