Issue with Merrill Lynch account since reauthorization - account balance is wrong [Edited]

@mrzookie

This is what the fee transaction looks like in the Cloud Sync Log (formatted by Notepad++ json plugin and I have x'ed out the amount)

	{
		"id": "514965458772807424",
		"createdAt": "2025-12-03T14:02:12Z",
		"modifiedAt": "2025-12-03T14:02:12Z",
		"dbVersion": 0,
		"source": "QCS_REFRESH",
		"accountId": "514180192803641600",
		"postedOn": "2025-12-02",
		"payee": "INV. ADVISORY FEE DEC",
		"coa": {
			"type": "UNCATEGORIZED",
			"id": "0"
		},
		"amount": -xx.xx,
		"state": "CLEARED",
		"matchState": "NOT_MATCHED",
		"knownCategoryId": "3000000000",
		"cpData": {
			"id": "20251202AR173553412511682",
			"txnType": "FEE",
			"postedOn": "2025-12-02",
			"txnOn": "2025-12-02",
			"payee": "INV. ADVISORY FEE DEC",
			"amount": -xx.xx,
			"inferredPayee": "INV. ADVISORY FEE DEC",
			"inferredCoa": {
				"type": "UNCATEGORIZED",
				"id": "0"
			},
			"cpCategoryId": "16",
			"investmentTxnType": "FEE",
			"units": 0.0,
			"unitPrice": 0.0
		},
		"mlKnownCategoryId": 3000875000,
		"investmentTxnType": "EXPENSE_MISCELLANEOUS",
		"units": 0.0,
		"type": "INVESTMENT",
		"isExcludedFromF2S": true,
		"isExcludedFromReports": true
	}

In the IRA transaction register it appears with Date = 12/2/2025, Action = Withdraw, Security = "Inv Advisory Fee Dec", Description = "Inv Advisory Fee Dec". Note that payee in the json is all caps and there's a period after Inv. So looks like local Quicken app did some editing of payee before putting it in Security and Description. This is how fees looked under Direct Connect except that Security and Description were a bit more wordy but essentially the same thing.

My investment fee is being taken out of the account for which the fee applies. Maybe that's why it is working.

Would be interesting to look at the OFX Log from last time I was assessed a fee under Direct Connect.

Jim

@mrzookie to answer your questions:

This is what it looks like now:

This is what it looked like pre-EWC+:

All of my ML accounts have this format in the transaction register. I have two IRA accounts and one brokerage account.

1 - You are using the terms "Security" and "Description" for the fields I'm showing as "Payee" and "Memo". Is that intentional or are you just paraphrasing?

Ans. So, no I am not paraphrasing. I have Payee and Memo in my bank account transaction registers. I do not have a bank account with ML. I do have a Bank of America checking/savings account and have had no problems with them.

2 - Was your Payee pre-EWC+ "Advisory Program Fee" or "Investment Advisory Fee"? If the latter, you may be getting a new payee every month now bc the month is appended. Perhaps its more of a problem for me bc I track the fees by individual account #, even though they're all paid from the same account. I no longer get that info in the Memo field, and thus have to add it manually (and then deal with another old bug when choosing an existing payee and changing the transaction amount).

Ans. As you can see I did have "Advisory Program Fee" but it also had the month then and now.

What is a bit interesting is that I found a qfx file I downloaded before ML stopped supplying them and this is the advisory fee transaction from October:

      <INVBANKTRAN>
        <STMTTRN>
          <TRNTYPE>DEBIT
          <DTPOSTED>20251002110000.000[-5:EST]</DTPOSTED>
          <TRNAMT>-xx.xx
          <FITID>20251002AR173630962487869
          <NAME>Advisory Program Fee
          <MEMO>INV. ADVISORY FEE OCT
        </STMTTRN>
        <SUBACCTFUND>CASH
      </INVBANKTRAN>

So the name and memo were combined into the Security and Description fields. I am guessing now that neither your json (EWC+) nor QFX (Direct Connect) format transactions look anything like mine.

Jim

@mrzookie

I see, said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw. I took a look at the edit entry dialog and now see what you saw.

Jim

Addendum to last post: In the Clould Synclog of the bad capital gains transaction, the payee field had incorrect security name. It was "<security name> PAY DATE 12/05/2025". This error was in dividend (and other) transactions earlier in the switch to EWC+ and that caused Quicken to popup a message to have user identify the security.

Note: I usually get several captial gains transactions in December and so far I've only gotten one. So if a fix is found quickly enough I can verify that it works. If not, based on recent experience, the next will be in July of 2026.

Jim

@Quicken Anja I did send a report with the data that I had.

One problem with reporting is that if you "Send to Quicken" with too many files attached, the entire report is lost. That's a problem. I can understand having a limit but just refuse the send don't wipe out everything. That would allow us to amend the report to reduce the number of files. The file I didn't send was OFXOLD.txt. That one shouldn't be needed.

One thing I hope is clear, I manually updated the bad transaction in the Quicken data file prior to sending the report.

To be frank, I think that the only thing they will need from us is the synclog.txt file because that has the transaction as it was downloaded to Quicken. It is indistinguishable from other transactions that are simply deposits. If there is any other data they need it will likely be log files on the server.

And, by the way, the deposits are wrong because they have "txnType": "DEBIT" which can't be right. Probably should be "txnType": "CREDIT". (Other Financial Institutions have "txnType": "DEBIT" only when the amount is negative.) It "works" for things that really are deposits probably because the amount is positive.

Thanks

Jim