Replacement of a Single Account

gwpotter

I have experienced more than a few issues with cash transactions in an IRA account at Fidelity. Currently, the Cash total agrees between Fidelity and my Quicken file. But the account totals do not. That difference (about $33,000) reduces to exactly $3.00 if I delete two types of entries in Quicken. The first one is Adjustments to balance created in multiple Quicken reconcile operations. The second is deletion of 3 transactions I created to accomplish the same results. (The Security/Payee I used was "Mystery to Balance")

This specific account is less than a year old.

I also observe in a Test File that a fresh import into Quicken of only the Fidelity IRA account, everything is balanced and in agreement.

The specific IRA account in question has only one entry that involves any other accounts in the Quicken file. (The problematic account was created about 11 months ago by a transfer of funds from another traditonal IRA account.)

I am wondering what the best way to eliminate the roughly $33K issue is. I can think of 3 options. And if something else is the best approach, tell me.

#1. Do I just delete the problematic Quicken account from my file and import a new account data set? (If yes, how do I do that?).

#2. Do I close the problematic account and create another? (I am assuming this is possible since I could download all the data into a new Quicken file.)

#3. Do I just delete all the transactions mentioned above and accept the $3.00 difference between Quicken and Fidelity?

jacobs

I think you should NOT delete the account and re-add it. Quicken maintains an invisible list of the transaction ID numbers for every transaction it has ever downloaded, to prevent duplicates on subsequent downloads; if you delete the account and re-add it, I think the transactions you previously downloaded won't re-download because of this.

From what you wrote, you had discrepancies int he past and rather than resolve them at their source, you created adjustment transactions to make things balance. And now you're seeing that cumulatively those adjustments have created a different discrepancy. I'm always in favor of not making adjustments during reconciliations and spending the time to discover why there is a discrepancy in order to deal with it properly so it won't bite you somewhere down the road. So I would be in favor of deleting all the adjustments you've made previously. (Be sure to make a backup before starting this, in case it unexpectedly makes things worse and you want to revert.) If that all leave you with a $3 difference, you can either try to pinpoint which month it occurred in and fix it, or just create a $3 adjustment and move on; in this case, the latter option might be fine.

mverzola

I have had this happen regularly (about once every couple weeks). When it happens, I add the adjustment so that everything matches. Almost always the next day or two, Fidelity wants to make another adjustment for the exact amount that balances the first one. I then delete both adjustments, and everything is fine. I never take the time to resolve the core issue, because it's pretty obvious that some data was delayed….I'm assuming because I have quite a few international securities which may be on the other side of the international dateline. So, I like your 3rd option.