Investing: Account balance report doesn't match account balance

Question

I have a few old investment accounts that were closed 20 years ago and show zero shares, zero dollars in the account registers.  When I run the account balance report and include those accounts, they each show a balance of $-.01. These accounts, for reasons I no longer remember, were closed using the "Remove Shares" transaction rather than the "Sell" transaction.  I have the report set to only show 6 decimal places, so I'm not sure where this negative half cent is coming from.  I've tried things suggested in this Community, but none of them have worked.  Is a Validate or Validate/Repair the best next step?

Mary Ann Edson-Plumb · Answer

Tried that also with no different result.  I actually have 3 very old accounts that either show a plus $.01 or a -$.01.  All of these were processed using "Remove Shares" not "Sold".  Since I used Remove Shares, there is no "Sell All" option.  All of these were mutual funds that were being transferred from a 401(k) to an IRA.  None of these show any holdings.  I could change the transaction to a Sold and a Buy but I'm guessing I had trouble with that initially, since I processed this in this unusual way. The funds were added to the IRA via the Add Shares function.  I appreciate your help.  Do you have any other thoughts?

Boatnmaniac · Answer

You might want to go to Edit > Preferences > Investments > check the box for Extended share precision (8 digits vs. rounding to 6) > Done.  Does that make any difference in what you are seeing?

You could also try pulling the Portfolio Value report.

* Date Range = Earliest to date
* Subtotal by = Account
* Sort by = Security

Scroll through the report to find the accounts in question.  Do you see the offending securities or cash now?

Mary Ann Edson-Plumb · Answer

Thanks, unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work in this situation.  This account only had a single mutual fund in it.  So there is only one security in Holdings and it shows as zero dollars, zero shares. In fact, it doesn't actually show the security at all, although I did as you suggested with the Show Hidden Securities.  Update Share Balance is not an option that comes up when I click on the gear option in the holdings window of the account.  The one other odd thing, which may or may or may not be related, is that there are a few transactions in the account register the first year 1997, but most of the subsequent transactions show that they are something like Reinvest Dividend but there is no data in those transactions.  The share amount and dollar amount doesn't change. It is as if I had only entered the action, but no actual associated information. So the balance both in shares and in dollar amount is the same for four years, despite all these apparent transactions showing.  The one exception is a transfer from another account in 2001 which has actual shares and dollar amounts.