Wells Fargo Advisors brokerage cash account balance discrepancy

Question

I have been tracking a cash balance issue for months. I can't say exactly when it started. Use to be a couple cents from time to time. Now it's never correct and can be anywhere from a few pennies to several dollars out of balance, day to day. I have recently noticed that the balance downloaded for corrections, does not match the current cash balance shown by Wells Fargo Advisors.

I only update after all transactions (pending etc..) have cleared and markets are closed to avoid confusion. No errors are reported or indicated. I have run the Quicken Validation process several times with no issues. The security's value for the account is and always has been, correct.

I am using Windows 10, Quicken R50.16 Build 27.1.50.16.

Quicken Screenshot of downloaded Wells Fargo cash balance.

Wells Fargo Advisors screenshot of Cash Balance

Any help with this issue will be greatly appreciated.

Tom Young · Answer

That is bizarre and frankly makes no sense!  If the cash is truly available - you can withdraw it - then it should be in the download.  If it's not really available - you can't withdraw it - then it shouldn't be showing at their site.

So it seems like you can make daily downloads, assume the difference in cash between the downloaded online balance and the balance show at their site is interest, make a daily entry for the interest and, assuming you got all your daily entries right, delete the downloaded IntInc entry at month end, or completely ignore the difference throughout the month and just wait until month end to get things in sync.

pkelley · Answer

Just FYI,

Working with my Wells Fargo advisor and IT folks, we confirmed interest earned is made available to a cash account daily. There is not a transaction created for this event. A monthly interest deposit transaction is made on the last day of the month, which totals all interest earned that month offsetting the daily interest credited to the cash account balance.

The cash account balance sent to Quicken does not include the interest made available to the account daily. Therefore, the account balance shown in Quicken will only be in balance with the balance shown on the Wells Fargo website, the last day of the month when the interest deposit transaction is posted. The very next day they will be out of balance again, until the next interest deposit transaction is posted.

I have other brokage accounts other than Wells Fargo and have not seen this behavior. I see the value in that the interest is available daily to reinvest but makes it difficult to impossible to keep Quicken in balance on a daily basis.

pkelley · Answer

Thank you for the quick reply. My cash account is not approved for margin transactions, so margin liability should not be a factor.

I agree with you that this is pointing to a Wells Fargo issue(s) rather than a Quicken issue. I'm surprised no other Quicken users have seen similar behavior or that this is unique to me. This morning, I noticed an $0.08 increase in my Online balance online with no transactions to explain the increase. I also noticed Quicken received the same incorrect balance from Wells Fargo as the previous day, so now Quicken is .08 cents further out of balance if the Wells Fargo website is correct.

I was able to show the discrepancies to my financial advisor at Wells Fargo this morning. He too cannot explain the discrepancies but agrees the website is reporting balance changes without corresponding transactions to support the change. He is taking the issue to IT Development for an explanation.

I suspect this is a secondary or perhaps unrelated issue to the balance being sent to Quicken via the OFX server. The balance received via the OFX server is different than what the website shows and does not always change at the same rate/amount as the website. My advisor and I agreed we'd tackle this one once we explain the website discrepancies.

Securities shares, cost basis, value, etc... still remain (as of this morning) in balance/sync with Quicken.

Thanks for your feedback.