How to fix account errors with Vangard accounts MAC

Jim In Chicago · June 2019

after moving to Mac 2019 Deluxe, my Vanguard accounts have incorrect balances when compared with just logging into Vanguard. I was thinking of just removing those 3 accounts from Quicken and then adding them back in. I read about Quicken on the Vanguard site and I felt I needed to see if there might be some advice here first. Thanks!

lhossus · June 2019

Typically, financial institutions DO NOT permit you to download complete history of transactions. Thus, it is not advised to try to solve a problem by just deleting an account as that would loose older transactions.

However, you might do the following to see what happens;

Deactivate ALL your accounts with Vanguard. Do this by going into Settings for each account, Select Troubleshooting tab, and Click Deactivate Downloads button.
Now add a New Investment account to replace each Deactivated account. Use the + icon at the top of the sidebar (or Account > New > Investments ...)

Once you complete this process you WILL have what you proposed: fresh accounts with all account info from Vanguard.

If this meets your needs, then you can delete the three old accounts.

I strongly suggest you make sure you have a backup data file in case anything goes wrong during the process.

And one (or maybe two) other things: if not all transactions download to the newly created accounts:

In the Settings for the accounts, under the Troubleshooting tab, there is a choice of: a) Download all available transactions, OR b) Download transactions starting <date>. You can try switching from the current value to the other value and then running a download to see if you will get the rest of the transactions.
You can try to locate a place on the Vanguard website where transactions can be manually downloaded to backfill what automatically downloads. As to whether you can add these additional transactions, I don't have the answer. Hopefully someone here will be able to help.

lhossus · June 2019

Jim,

I don't know how Vanguard accounts are set up but I will assume multiple securities in each account.

1) You say incorrect balances.

a) Have you examined each security held in the accounts to see which ones are incorrect?
b) Have you examined the transactions in Quicken - for the securities in error - to see when in time they become incorrect? You say you "moved to Mac 2019 Deluxe" ... therefore I assume you can compare the transactions in QMac 2019 to those in whatever you moved from.

The procedure for examining transactions can be enhanced following the following process:

In an investment (Vanguard) account in Quicken:

Switch from Portfolio view to Transaction view.

Enable the following columns: Shares, Share Balance, Memo/Notes

Clear Filters: the filters should be All Dates, Any Type, Any Status. Click on the Clear Filters button if present.

Set the sort order to Date, by clicking on the header of the Date column.

Using the search box (upper right), find all transactions for the security.

Examine the following:

1) Does the Share Balance reflect each transaction, going up with acquisitions, down with sales, changing according to each stock split, etc.? If you have another list of the transactions - statements from broker, or another financial management program - compare transaction by transaction or just check balances on a - say - yearly - basis to see where things are correct (or incorrect).

2) Is there a Placeholder transaction? Examine the content of the Memo/Notes field of each transaction. Or search for the word "placeholder".

Jim In Chicago · June 2019

Version 5.11.0 (Build 511.25626.100) is what I am using and before I switched to Mac, all was fine. Can I just delete the 3 Accounts from Quicken, restart, and add these 3 back which would force Quicken to put back all 3 accounts by getting all account info from Vanguard again?

lhossus · June 2019

Typically, financial institutions DO NOT permit you to download complete history of transactions. Thus, it is not advised to try to solve a problem by just deleting an account as that would loose older transactions.

However, you might do the following to see what happens;

Deactivate ALL your accounts with Vanguard. Do this by going into Settings for each account, Select Troubleshooting tab, and Click Deactivate Downloads button.
Now add a New Investment account to replace each Deactivated account. Use the + icon at the top of the sidebar (or Account > New > Investments ...)

Once you complete this process you WILL have what you proposed: fresh accounts with all account info from Vanguard.

If this meets your needs, then you can delete the three old accounts.

I strongly suggest you make sure you have a backup data file in case anything goes wrong during the process.

And one (or maybe two) other things: if not all transactions download to the newly created accounts:

In the Settings for the accounts, under the Troubleshooting tab, there is a choice of: a) Download all available transactions, OR b) Download transactions starting <date>. You can try switching from the current value to the other value and then running a download to see if you will get the rest of the transactions.
You can try to locate a place on the Vanguard website where transactions can be manually downloaded to backfill what automatically downloads. As to whether you can add these additional transactions, I don't have the answer. Hopefully someone here will be able to help.

How to fix account errors with Vangard accounts MAC

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