Vanguard web connect not importing properly – adequate resolution

fpsiv

This is a follow-up to this discussion -

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7957013/vanguard-web-connect-not-importing-properly

I've managed to get the vanguard 403b accounts up to date in quicken and into a state where new transactions are recorded correctly using web connect (.qfx files).

It looks the precipitating event for this mess was a change to the .qfx files that vanguard generates. Prior to to 09/2024, each fund was uniquely identified in the file by the CUSIP ID – the same identifier was used for the both individual transactions and holdings information.

Starting last September it appears that the transactions are identified by the CUSIP ID but the holdings by a version of the vanguard fund number. As an example, VSIIX (https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vsiix#overview) has CUSIP ID = 922908785 and associated security name ‘Vanguard Small-Cap Value Index Fund Institutional Shares’, but an alternate ID = ‘VGI000865’ and associated security name ‘Small-Cap Value Idx Inst’. I’m assuming this change in how a given fund is represented in the .qfx file is what broke the import process.

To get things working again I did the following – as always back up everything and your mileage may vary…

• Delete ‘Unknown Security’ from the quicken security list.
• For all funds in the affected accounts, uncheck ‘Matched with online security’ in the Edit Details dialog.
• Generate vanguard .qfx files – one for each account, and only for the time period not already covered by the entries in quicken for a given account. I don’t know how important this is in the long run, but this way I didn’t have to work through multiple accounts in a given .qfx file, and didn’t have to rely on quicken to accurately match existing transactions.
• Back up quicken file – seriously, do it.
• Pick one of the .qfx files and import the contents into quicken. This time the security matching appears to work – ended up with entries covering the specified time period with the expected ticker and name (associated with the CUSIP) – and most importantly no ‘unknown security’ entries.
• Review everything carefully before accepting. In my case I had number of ‘Near Match’ entries that were new transactions, not matches.
• Rinse, repeat for any other accounts.
• I had to do some cleanup for the transactions that correspond to vanguard fee entries – they came in as miscellaneous transactions that were not actually affecting the share balance.

As a result of this process, the Quicken security list now has both the CUSIP related info and the alternate ID related info for the same fund (ticker symbol) as two separate entries. Also, with the holdings in the .qfx file being specified with the alternate ID, the security comparison is out of sync – for each fund there is a paired set of entries where the ‘Shares Reported’ are listed under the short security name associated with the alternate ID, and the 'Shares in Quicken' under the long security name associated with the CUSIP ID.

Thanks for the replies and comments on the original thread – pieced together this resolution from those and other community threads.

-Frank

[Edit - Fixed Link]

Quicken Kristina

Hello @fpsiv,

I'm glad to hear you were able to find a resolution. Thank you for coming back to the Community to share the solution you found!

Hopefully this will help others who encounter the same issue!

Jim7

Thanks for sharing your workaround. Using a process similar to what you're described above I've managed to fix most securities so that transaction downloads are now correctly identified. My approach was to create a new version of the security, get that identified by CUSIP, and then change prior VG transactions to refer to new CUSIP identified security. Unfortunately I have a few securities that are stubbornly still a problem - I'll try your recommendations to see if they will fix the laggards.

My problem occurs only with my 401K account and began sometime between my manually initiated 6/11/24 and 8/31/24 .ofx data file downloads from the Vanguard website. I did a full review of the two data files and found some changes in data format… They renamed the Vanguard funds <SECNAME> which may be one reason why Quicken asks if the fund is the same. (e.g - from"Vanguard Cash Reserves Federal Money Market Fund Admiral Shares" in June to "Cash Res Fed MM Adm" in August.) Although the data file references both CUSIP ID and Vanguard Fund ID # it seems the download now assumes CUSIP ID for Vanguard fund transactions instead of using the prior default of Vanguard Fund ID so transactions don't get matched to existing securities identified by Vanguard Fund ID and are listed in Quicken as "Unidentified Security." For those, I have to go through a manual process to change the "Unidentified Security" transactions to relate to the actual security involved.

In speaking with the 401K Cust Svc and Tech Support teams, they say they made no changes that would have affected Quicken data downloads. On the other hand, the retail side of Vanguard is making lots of changes in the customer-facing web technology associated with Vanguard's migration to a new brokerage platform and that is likely where the changes occurred.

I've had multiple conversations with Vanguard to make them aware of the issue and see if they can suggest a workaround, or even better to highlight the problem internally so they will fix the problem for their Quicken customers, but without success. They're not set up very well to take customer input.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @fpsiv & @Jim7,

We have forwarded this issue to the proper channels to have this further investigated. In the meantime, we request that you please navigate to Help > Report a problem and submit a problem report with log files attached and (if you are willing) a sanitized copy of your data file in order to contribute to the investigation.

While you will not receive a response through this submission, these reports will help our teams in further investigating the issue. The more problem reports we receive, the better.

We apologize for any inconvenience!

Thank you.    

(CBT-560)