Missing transactions from One step downloads
Quicken Deluxe, now "Quicken Classic Deluxe", R52.28, Build 27.1.52.28 on Windows 10 Home.
This is an intermittent problem. I always use One Step Downloads. For many months, downloads are complete. Then every 2-3 months there are missing transactions that do not download from Morgan Stanley Brokers. They are usually all transactions that occurred around the 20-23 of that month.
The result is numerous placeholders that I need to insert manually from the monthly paper reports I get from the broker. The missing transactions are all present in the monthly paper broker reports but failed to download during the one step update. This is time-consuming and annoying. It has been going on for at least a year or two. I use a cabled Internet connection. So it is not a connection problem.
- I need this problem to go away. If I had a decent alternative I would leave Quicken.
- Is there an electronic way Quicken or some tool can download the missing transactions so I do not have to manually search and insert them one by one? The only reason I still use Quicken is because of its transaction downloads. If this download problem continues then Quicken has no advantage for me.
- Is there a report that shows what failed to download and will download the missing transactions? Repeating the one step update does not correct the problem.
Disgusted and frustrated.😡
Best Answers
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I'd suggest calling Official Quicken Support and see what they can come up with. Immediately before that call do a Validate and Repair as that probably will be the first thing they hit you with. The next thing I'd expect they'll ask is if you're on the latest and greatest release, so you probably should try that first if you haven't already. Intermittent download problems are impossible for anyone here to fix unless somebody else happens to have the exact same problem, has fixed it, sees this post, and chimes in.
Presumably, though I have my doubts about this, Quicken does a "compare" of securities per Quicken vs. securities held by the financial institution and should be alerting you to the problem in real time. Make sure "compare account portfolio after download" in Preferences is ON and make sure that "Automatically add to investment transaction lists" is OFF. That should help in immediately identifying the problem and being able to fix it without having to paw through a month-end statement.
Placeholders certainly are not a "Good Thing" (as Martha Stewart would say) and are no substituent for accurate transactions.
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How do I find out why quicken's 'one step download misses some transactions? Is there a log of what was in the download file or of errors that occurred during the download?
There is a download log file, but I'd rather you let Quicken Support review this file, to figure out what the real problem is. I suspect a syntax error makes Quicken skip some downloaded records. If that is the case, somebody at Support will have to work with the brokerage to fix the problem.
Wait for the problem to reoccur, on or after the 23rd, and call Support on the phone. They'll talk you thru the process of downloading the log file and whatever else they might need.
Alternatively, it might be better if you downloaded brokerage transactions more frequently than once a month, to reduce the number of transactions which need to be processed by you in one session.
BTW, you don't have to wait for the month-end paper statement to arrive from the brokerage. The broker's website will have a Transactions page you can view any time, showing all recent transactions up to date. You can use that to see the missing transactions.
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Thank you.
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Answers
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This sort of intermittent problem may take a while to fix.
In the meantime, if you are not already, you can easily tell if transactions are missing or the share counts are wrong, and for how many shares. Click on the gear at the top right of the account and select Reconcile Shares. This will identify any securities where the shares in Quicken are different from the downloaded share balances by more than .001 share.
Are the discrepancies you are seeing small fractions of a share, as might be caused by rounding errors, or are they larger amounts, indicating missing transactions?
If there are missing transactions, is there a pattern to the transaction types? Are they all reinvested dividends, or Deposits for example?
In any case, you should not be inserting Placeholders, you should be adding the missing transactions, or if it is a rounding issue, making a slight adjustment to the number of shares in an existing transaction.
QWin Premier subscription0 -
I'd suggest calling Official Quicken Support and see what they can come up with. Immediately before that call do a Validate and Repair as that probably will be the first thing they hit you with. The next thing I'd expect they'll ask is if you're on the latest and greatest release, so you probably should try that first if you haven't already. Intermittent download problems are impossible for anyone here to fix unless somebody else happens to have the exact same problem, has fixed it, sees this post, and chimes in.
Presumably, though I have my doubts about this, Quicken does a "compare" of securities per Quicken vs. securities held by the financial institution and should be alerting you to the problem in real time. Make sure "compare account portfolio after download" in Preferences is ON and make sure that "Automatically add to investment transaction lists" is OFF. That should help in immediately identifying the problem and being able to fix it without having to paw through a month-end statement.
Placeholders certainly are not a "Good Thing" (as Martha Stewart would say) and are no substituent for accurate transactions.
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Thank you for replying.
The missing downloads are shares bought or sold. Never dividends, interest or the like. Only occur in investment accounts.
For a variety of reasons I have many investment accounts at the same brokerage. The missing transactions will be in 3-4 accounts. I usually do a one step update at the end of each month. I then go through each account and accept the downloaded transactions one at a time. After I have finished an account I click on Done. If all is well that account's downloaded section closes and I can go to the next account.
It is at this point, if there are missing transactions after accepting the downloads of that account, that a screen opens up with a list of shares where the totals in quicken do not match what is at the brokerage. For each such discrepancy I can either 'ignore' or 'create a placeholder for the difference'.
When that happens, because the monthly printed statements have not yet arrived in the mail, I do not have the data to correct the problem. I therefore create placeholders. When the monthly statements arrive 3-4 days later I use them to discover why a discrepancy occurred and it is always because some buy and sell transactions did not download in the one step download. I can then manually add those missing downloads and the share discrepancies disappear. But that is time consuming and annoying.
I don't know why certain transactions do not download with the rest.
It happens more often in 2-3 investment accounts than in the others. I have in the past validated and supervalidated my quicken file without finding significant errors. The problem is not in my quicken file but in the one step download mechanism. If I go to a backup quicken file and download a transaction file (is it qik?) from the brokerage website to insert into quicken there are no missing transactions. But that is time consuming and should not be necessary.
How do I find out why quicken's 'one step download misses some transactions? Is there a log of what was in the download file or of errors that occurred during the download?
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Thank you.
I just made another backup followed by a Validation and repair. Validation found a few old stock split errors but none in the account that had the many missing transactions. So they were probably not the problem.
I will call Quicken support after the weekend to see if they can help figure ut why this happens.
I only use placeholders as a temporary measure till the printed monthly statements arrive and I then remove the placeholders by adding the missing transactions that did not download.
Is there a quicken record of what downloaded during the one step update? It might reveal a reason for the errors.
Thanks for the advice.
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How do I find out why quicken's 'one step download misses some transactions? Is there a log of what was in the download file or of errors that occurred during the download?
There is a download log file, but I'd rather you let Quicken Support review this file, to figure out what the real problem is. I suspect a syntax error makes Quicken skip some downloaded records. If that is the case, somebody at Support will have to work with the brokerage to fix the problem.
Wait for the problem to reoccur, on or after the 23rd, and call Support on the phone. They'll talk you thru the process of downloading the log file and whatever else they might need.
Alternatively, it might be better if you downloaded brokerage transactions more frequently than once a month, to reduce the number of transactions which need to be processed by you in one session.
BTW, you don't have to wait for the month-end paper statement to arrive from the brokerage. The broker's website will have a Transactions page you can view any time, showing all recent transactions up to date. You can use that to see the missing transactions.
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Thank you.
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I am leaning towards Quicken having memory problems when handling too many transactions.
See many similar reports.
I too have experienced episodes during accepting transactions when Quicken seems to freeze and I need to shut down and restart quicken to be able to continue. Quicken is also significantly slower than it used to be. And I think that might easily explain the missing transaction problems.
I am using a fast laptop with 16GB ram, but maybe Quicken is not accessing enough memory for its calculations.
Does anyone know how much memory Quicken can use?
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Is there a way to stop Quicken from dealing with old accounts that have not been active for years? I do not want to delete them but they are now only of historical value and I have not accessed them for years. It would be good if Quicken behaved as if they did not exist to reduce the work load and memory requirements.
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If you have properly Closed and Hidden those old Account in Quicken, then Quicken shouldn't be dealing with them in any way other than as a repository for historical information that you can either look at or use in Reports. What leads you to believe something else is happening with them?
The post you referred to involved crashes, not intermittent omission of downloads, so I'm not sure it's really relevant to your problem.
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I am considering making a new full copy of my current Q file. In this new copy I would delete all the closed and unused investment accounts.
The "old" Quicken file would be kept so I can find old records should I need them in the future. The "new" slimmed down file would be the one I use for current updating from now on.
Does this make sense? Is it likely to help if Quicken is just unable to handle all my data which goes back 20-30 years?
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I'm grasping at straws before giving up on Quicken and just using the broker's website.
My quicken does freeze until I close and reopen it. To me that is a crash.
Just very frustrated.
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