How do I fix the doubling of my Fidelity retirement account value?

Erickling2000

I was prompted to update my Fidelity connection (on my Mac). After I did the value of the account doubled. What happened and how do I fix this?

Jon

Hopefully you've been reconciling your account - either to your monthly/quarterly statements or to the online balance. If so, then it's fairly simple to look at your transaction register and delete any unreconciled transactions that shouldn't be there. Make sure you check the entire register all the way back to the beginning. That should get your account back to normal.

If you have not been reconciling then you'll have to start comparing past statements to the portfolio listings for the account. You can set the date on the portfolio screen to a time in the past to see what you had & what it was worth on that day. Comparing that to your statements will let you narrow down where & when the extra transactions were added to the register.

dvoeks

I just experienced this issue myself today after updating with the new fidelity authentication. After I did so, the account value was doubled. When I investigated this, it seems that Fidelity is now reporting a different name and asset type for one of my existing securities (with the same ticker symbol). Quicken then added a "placeholder" transaction to add shares for this "new" security. When I tried to delete the placeholder transaction, it would just come back every time I updated the account with Fidelity. The fix would seem to be to "merge" the two duplicate securities. However, when I first tried to merge them, Quicken would not let them merge, since Fidelity was reporting a different asset type for the "new" security that did not match the "old" security. So what I did was to manually edit the "new" quicken duplicate security in the Quicken "securities" panel, override its asset type to match the "old" security, and then merge the two. After I did this, and deleted the placeholder transaction, it no longer came back after updating the account. So this seems to be a data issue with how Fidelity's systems are coding some securities.

schwaggy

@dvoeks This was extremely helpful for me to try and figure out the issue in my Fidelity account. I followed your steps and found 3 funds that had gone wonky after the connection update. I'm closer to an accurate balance now, but still some work to do.

Greig

Thank you dvoeks. This was extremely helpful. I hope Fidelity gets its act together soon.

NASA

I’ve been having this issue with my cash management account. The transactions total to the correct value, but then quicken doubles the “market” value. Other than creating phantom transactions what is the solution? My other fidelity accounts update accurately so far.

Quicken Kristina

Hello All,

Over the past few years, several large investment firms have moved their connections to EWC+, which, once fully implemented, functions the same as Direct Connect.

Each firm’s transition may include unique challenges, and occasional issues can occur during the process. To ensure a smooth implementation, Fidelity began their migration in phases, starting with an optional migration period in late July.

At this time, Fidelity has paused the migration for additional users while both their team and ours work to resolve the issues that have been identified. Throughout this process, Fidelity has been a strong partner to Quicken and continues to work diligently to address customer concerns as they arise.

tmistretta

@Quicken Kristina the same thing happened a few years ago with Fidelity and it took months to resolve. This is not acceptable as a repeat occurrence, and it's perplexing to read about confidence in the partnership. As as a long time customer of both Quicken and Fidelity it's very disappointing.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

I understand that it's very frustrating for there to be so many issues with the migration to the new connection with Fidelity. The current issues have a different underlying cause than the issue you're referring to from a few years ago. Our teams are working with Fidelity to resolve the reported issues, and hopefully the issues will be resolved soon.

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience!

tmistretta

@Quicken Kristina I suggest you view this from a customer perspective and not an internal one. It doesn't matter whether or not the internal details are different, the customer experience is identical. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to understand that duplicate securities are an failure condition during these changes and that there should be tests established by Quicken and Fidelity to exercise that case.

Another consistency between these events is the length of time it takes to address it. Fixing problems like this should be measured in days not weeks. Where's the urgency?

schwaggy

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20506050#Comment_20506050

I couldn't agree more. What is the delay here? It's been 2 months since my accounts went haywire. I finally disconnected my Fidelity account and am fearful of reconnecting just to test and be frustrated again. I attempted to manually update wrong balances from erroneous contributions and dividends only to be even more frustrated that I was having to do it that way. An update would be appreciated @Quicken Kristina

Quicken Kristina

Hello @schwaggy,

Thank you for coming to the Community to provide your feedback. There is a Community Alert for the most commonly reported issues with the Fidelity connection. If you haven't already done so, I recommend bookmarking the alert, linked below, to be notified of updates, once available, and to know when the issues are resolved:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7965464/ongoing-9-5-25-fidelity-updates

Thank you!

jacobs

@tmistretta said: Where's the urgency?

@schwaggy said: What is the delay here?

I'd bet that the teams inside Quicken who deal with connectivity want this fixed yesterday. But they are at the mercy of some combination of Intuit (who provides their connectivity services) and Fidelity. And there's a good possibility that the problems are on the Fidelity end… and Quicken can't get them to move faster than they're willing to work on this.

Solving a connectivity issue with an external software provider like Quicken often falls pretty far down the priority list for the IT departments at major financial institutions. I have no firsthand knowledge about this situation, but I did get firsthand knowledge about a different issue with another major financial institution earlier this year. The problem was with the financial institution, who made a change, and made an error in how they implemented one particular field involved in authenticating a user — accepting a string of characters from Quicken shorter than the OFX standard calls for. Once the issue was identified by Quicken, the IT folks at the financial institution told them they would fix it — in several months! The Quicken Mac team was able to figure out a way around the issue by truncating the number of characters Quicken was sending, and the problem was resolved with that workaround long before the financial institution would have addressed it. But not all connectivity issues can be worked around like that one; most require the financial institution to make a change.

And Quicken will never throw a financial institution under the bus and tell us publicly that "it's Fidelity's problem!" Quicken depends on financial institutions cooperating with them to make connectivity and downloads work; if Quicken ever becomes too much of a pain for a financial institution, they can just terminate connectivity.

Look, I get that this is a super frustrating issue for Quicken users with Fidelity accounts. But it's important to understand that Quicken didn't drive Fidelity to change their connection standard, and likely had limited or no access to live customer data for testing before the change went live. So faulting Quicken for lack of urgency in getting the issue is very likely misplaced blame. And I understand when users say "I don't want excuses, I just want the problem fixed", but the reality is that it's typically out of Quicken's hands and at the mercy of getting cooperation from the financial institution.

schwaggy

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20508809#Comment_20508809

I appreciate the delicate nature of the relationships with the financial institutions, as well as your thorough explanation of the situation but "and likely had limited or no access to live customer data for testing before the change went live. So faulting Quicken for lack of urgency in getting the issue is very likely misplaced blame." Is absolutely crazy. At this level they should have figured something out. Asking for beta testers. Asking internal employees who perhaps have Fidelity accounts to test their own files, etc.
It's pretty clear there was limited or no testing done and that's not acceptable.
The last time there was a problem with Fidelity, I lost YEARS of history in my Quicken data.
In my book, that's considered data loss.
Who knows what this issue will ultimately pan out to be, but as of today, my balances are off by thousands of Dollars. If I have to start a new account in my file to solve this, I will once again have lost data. I realize the historical limits from Fidelity are the reason I can't download years of data, but had this change been vetted before implementation, many of us wouldn't be so upset.

jacobs

I don’t know (and you don’t need to recount) how/why you lost years of data. As frustrating as this connectivity issue is, it shouldn’t cause any data loss. For some people, entering transactions manually until the Fidelity issues are resolved is a plausible temporary work-around; for some people, just not updating their Fidelity accounts for a while is a less-than-desirable but tolerable way to wait it out.

I don’t have accounts at Fidelity, but I have no basis from which to conclude there was no testing by any employees or beta testers. Sometimes testing of systems like this is done with a staging site which has sample data rather than live customer data.

bgl101

@dvoeks Thanks much. Your suggestion cleared up the issue. I also then took the time to align the security names reflected in the investment account and in Quicken since those were not always exactly aligned.

Overall, I agree with other's sentiments that more testing should take place before release. This is something that should have been easily identified as an issue and either fixed, or if user intervention needed, at least forwarn so users know to take the steps needed.

amiddlek

@dvoeks Thank you for posting your fix on July 30. It worked perfectly for me.

jmbr0cks

[Removed - Rant]