Quicken sharing prices across accounts causes problems in reconciling

Apparently Quicken uses a common price history for all accounts. When you enter transactions, it often will ask if you want to change the quantity or change the share price get to the correct transaction total. Quicken itself recommends altering the price, which makes sense to reconcile to totals.

However, I have three Fidelity accounts which all contain individual lots of the same securities. I enter transactions in the first account and take the recommended calculated price which can go to multiple decimal places. Account is reconciled to the statement using the Holdings page.

Then I enter transactions into the second account. Lots may differ resulting in different price calculations to several decimal places. So I take the recommended calculated price which, due to different lot sizes, may be different from the transactions in the first account. The second account is reconciled to its statement using the Holdings page.

Then I return to the first account which no longer matches the statement balance because the prices calculated for the second account have caused the holdings for the first account to be priced differently.

Quicken needs to maintain price history per account per security to avoid this problem that they lead you to create by letting them calculate a security price on a buy.

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Faithful Q user since 1986, with historical data beginning in 1943, programmer, database designer and developer for 42 years, general troublemaker on Community.Quicken.Com

Comments

  • GeoffG
    GeoffG SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    For what you are saying to be true, Fidelity would have different prices for the same securities across your various accounts. This obviously is not the case. You need to enter one price per day and reuse that price for the various accounts that hold the same security. To reconcile investment accounts, you must match the number of shares and the cost, not the market value to what Fidelity states.
  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2019
    To further complicate matters, the share prices for a given day may change again if you download quotes, because that records the official closing prices. The heirarchy of prices is given here
    https://www.quicken.com/support/how-update-security-prices

    These discrepancies are very small, right?

    Usually for performance and capital gains tracking purposes it is most important to have the number of shares and the total amount paid recorded accurately, and let Quicken calculate the price per share, as the Bought dialog recommends.

    When reconciling an investing account, I find it most useful to compare the number of shares for each holding to the statement rather than the total value, which can be off by a little due to the rounding errors you are observing.
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  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2019
    Also if you are buying individual stocks or ETFs where the price varies during the day, it is perfectly OK to have a different share price for each lot. These prices are recorded in the transaction list(s) and in the Portfolio views if you group by account and click on the + next to a security to view the lot info. 

    What Quicken shows as the market value in the account's Holdings view is based on the price recorded per the hierarchy I referenced above.  
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  • q_lurker
    q_lurker SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    I am missing something here.  Are the cited examples transaction entries in the transaction list of the two accounts, or are they presentations for what the holdings or portfolio views show for the two accounts?

    I know of no circumstance where entering a transaction in account 2 changes a transaction entry in account 1. 

    Entering a transaction in account 2 will change the portfolio/holdings view for the account 1 holding within the hierarchy of price entries.  (https://www.quicken.com/support/how-update-security-prices)
    ________ 

    Hierarchy for prices entered

    1. Manual price entry
    2. Current Price (Quote)
    3. Historical Price (Quote)
    4. Price downloaded with broker data through One Step Update or Update Now
    5. Import Price (CSV)
    6. Transaction Price entered when manually entering a transaction in the brokerage account list. 
    Each entry method overrides the price(s) received by the method just below it. This means that the price displayed after entering a Buy transaction (for example) would be replaced by the price imported from a CSV downloaded from an investing site (such as Yahoo! Finance), which would be replaced by the price transmitted by the broker when performing One Step Update, and so forth.
    __________

    That says that each time you enter a transaction with a price, Quicken updates the price history information for that security UNLESS one of the other price sources has already been applied to that security for that date.  

    If that is the circumstance you are complaining about, the solution is to enter 9.09 as a manual price entry for that security for that date (or do a download quotes or a One-Step Update or similar).  

    Now to your example, 221.044 * 9.09 = 2009.2899.  Quicken is going to show that as 2009.29.  That your FI shows it as 2009.28 surprises me.  Similarly, 499.894 * 9.09 = 4544.0364.  Quicken is going to show that as 4544.04.  I am again surprised your FI rounds down on that.  

    The bottom line (for me) is that if 9.09 is the closing price for that security for that date, that is the value that should appear in the price history of that security for that date.     
  • Tom Young
    Tom Young SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2019
    "I'm not saying that any TRANSACTION is changed, never even hinted at that."
    Actually, you did, and that's why I was finding the conversation so confusing.
    "When you enter transactions, it often will ask if you want to change the quantity or change the share price get to the correct transaction total."
    "Transaction" dollars are COST numbers and subsequent transaction entries for the same security in a different Account don't affect any other transactions' COST figures.  Plus the reference to "reconciling" which, for an Investment Account boils down to per share cost and number of shares also requires that you look closely at transactions.  So while it was clear to me, later, that you were referring to market prices I was trying to relate that to what seemed to be a "transaction" lead off.
    I'm an accountant by training and probably have at least a touch of OCD, so I sometimes do spend time tracking down errant penny differences, on the cost side..  But I recognize that fair market value calculations can frequently result in a penny difference if the presentation of "per share FMV" is to two decimal points but the product (price times shares) is based on more than two decimal points in the per share FMV number.
    I live with it because I also have the concept of immateriality.
  • NotACPA
    NotACPA SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2019
    My brokerage is Fidelity Investments.  In determining the value of a position, Fido TRUNCATES to the penny amount while Q ROUNDS, using standard 5/4 rounding.
    Thus, the value of several of my positions as reported in Q, frequently vary from what Fido reports by a penny ... possibly several pennies in an account if multiple securities have this issue.
    I determined a long time ago that, in this situation, the pennies simply weren't worth worrying about.

    Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
    Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
    Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP

  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    Using your example I think you should be reconciling by entering the closing price as $9.09 as reported by Fidelity for both accounts and confirming that Quicken says you have the correct number of shares in each account.

    You don't say what share class of this fund you hold, but I think if you look it up on Yahoo Finance or elsewhere you will see that $9.09 is the official month-end price and that is what should be recorded in Quicken's price history.

    As @NotACPA notes, Fidelity truncates the total in its statement while Quicken rounds, which accounts for the discrepancy you are seeing.
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  • q_lurker
    q_lurker SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    @NotACPA:  Curious if you can identify whether Fidelity's penchant to round down also applies on buys and sells.  If 221.044 shares were sold at 9.09/share, would the seller get 2209.28 (the round down value) or 2209.29, the 5/4 round pattern value)?
  • NotACPA
    NotACPA SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    I'll do some more research ... but so far (5 or 6 examples) I haven't found any evidence of truncation.
    BUT, the research is far from complete, because I usually buy/sell in lots of 100 ... which makes this difficult to determine.

    Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
    Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
    Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP

  • Tom Young
    Tom Young SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    I understand exactly what you're referring to here. 

    I'd make 3 points:
    1. After your quote price manipulation you're off by a penny in Account 1's Market Value.  That's a miss of .0005%.  It's immaterial.  Live with it.
    2. Your cost basis, they really only "solid" dollar amount is still correctly stated
    3. You'll never get the price recorded in Q when you sell, except by pure dumb luck.  The price changes all the time.  "Market Value" numbers by their nature - relying as they do on past prices -are simply "estimates" or "approximations" of what you might get when you sell.  As such a little "fuzziness" the the Market Value number is acceptable.
  • q_lurker
    q_lurker SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    @skeleton567 : It appears to me that everyone responding to you has a clear picture of the situation.

    As I see it, AQR establishes the NAV (Net Asset Value) of its fund, a specific class, as 9.09 on a specific date.  They are saying that for trades requested for that date, that is what one share of the fund is worth (excluding loads and commissions that may or may not apply; I have not check out that specific fund).  But they - not Fidelity, not you, not me, not Quicken establish the value of one share of their fund.  They report that NAV to pretty much everyone and anyone.  It is public knowledge.  It is in that regard an absolute.  

    Fidelity knows you have 221.044 shares of that fund in an account.  You've agreed with them.  You've made sure Quicken agree with that.  For that date, that too is effectively an absolute that all agree upon.

    Now Fidelity comes out and says 221.044 shares at $9.09/share is worth $2,009.28.  Quicken takes the same two values and gets a value of $2,009.29.  We've established (I think) that the difference is due to how these two entities treat the fractional cents caused by the fractional shares.  How is it that Fidelity is right and Quicken is wrong?

    "I never would have gotten away with this during my years in financial institutions."
    How is it that Fidelity is getting away with this (truncating rather than rounding) today?   

    "We're trying to talk about a Quicken design anomaly here that causes my accounts to go out-of-balance."
    I would suggest we are talking about a difference in approaches to a basic mathematical problem.  I don't see this as a "design anomaly".  Quicken appear to be operating in a sound mathematically sensible manner. 

    I checked the Mutual funds in my portfolio - 39 holdings, 9 accounts, 25 different funds, 3 financial institutions.  Not one penny difference between Quicken's presentation of holding values in the account vs the FI's presentation.

    You have a Fidelity issue, not a Quicken issue.  Quicken is using a sound mathematical approach.  Fidelity is not (IMO). 

    What you are asking Quicken to do - a separate price history for each account holding a security - would not make Quicken a better program.  It would make it more confusing for users and more prone to error both within the program and from the user base.  

    'Nuf said.  I'm done with this.
  • NotACPA
    NotACPA SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    " How is it that Fidelity is right and Quicken is wrong?"

    Well, Fidelity is the one who has the money.
    I agree with q_lurker, and I've disagreed with Fidelity for 40+ years about this.
    Rounding is much more defensible than truncation.
    And rounding gives a much more accurate picture of your holding.
    BUT in any event, it's a FRIGGING PENNY. Quitcherbitchin.

    Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
    Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
    Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP

  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    And the penny was in your favor!
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  • NotACPA
    NotACPA SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    Out of curiosity, how does Vanguard, and the other fund/brokerage companies handle this?
    Because I don't recall this issue EVER coming up with regard to Vanguard.
    SO, I suspect that Fidelity is the outiier in this practice and Q is doing the same thing as non-Fidelity fund/brokerage companies.

    Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
    Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
    Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP

  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2019
    You should be recording the official closing price for the security in Quicken's price history ($9.09 in your examples), not a computed price based on Fidelity's reported total value of one of your holdings divided by the number of shares or the price recorded by a transaction. This price will be recorded for you if you download quotes after the market has closed and the fund has posted its NAV for the day (typically around 7PM Eastern). The cost basis and proceeds of any transactions will not be affected.

    Because Quicken rounds rather than truncating as Fidelity does, the total value of the holding in Quicken may be a penny different from Fidelity's reported value.
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