Advice needed- debugging corruption in Quicken file

Posted by Gary on July 15, 2009, 6:33 am

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At some time in the past (late 2008) I discovered erroneous
transactions in my Quicken file. I attempted to edit them manually
with some success. Recently I have come across some transactions that
seem incorrect and I'm not quote sure how to proceed.

In my Vanguard Roth IRA, I show a transaction:

11/28/08 ReinvDiv CashReserves 22.97 sh @ 73.26 = $1,694.27
When I go to edit it, up comes 22.97 sh @ 277.861123 = $6,428.41,
clearly different.
The whole transaction is also suspect, as Vanguard has no "Cash
Reserves" ... that is a Fidelity investment.
In my Fidelity Roth IRA, I show a transaction
11/28/08 Div CashReserves $22.97.

If I erase the erroneous transaction (in the Vanguard Roth IRA account)
and then do an on-line-update, can I expect Quicken to pick up a
missing eight-month old transaction (if something really belongs there)?

Unfortunately I have no backups from before 2009 to restore.

What I am asking is for some general procedure that will help debug my
file. This is something I have little-to-no experience with.

Thanks in advance for any help!!!

Posted by John Pollard on July 15, 2009, 9:26 am

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Gary wrote:

> At some time in the past (late 2008) I discovered erroneous

> transactions in my Quicken file. I attempted to edit them manually

> with some success. Recently I have come across some transactions that

> seem incorrect and I'm not quote sure how to proceed.

> In my Vanguard Roth IRA, I show a transaction:

> 11/28/08 ReinvDiv CashReserves 22.97 sh @ 73.26 = $1,694.27

> When I go to edit it, up comes 22.97 sh @ 277.861123 = $6,428.41,

> clearly different.

> The whole transaction is also suspect, as Vanguard has no "Cash

> Reserves" ... that is a Fidelity investment.

> In my Fidelity Roth IRA, I show a transaction

> 11/28/08 Div CashReserves $22.97.

> If I erase the erroneous transaction (in the Vanguard Roth IRA

> account) and then do an on-line-update, can I expect Quicken to pick

> up a missing eight-month old transaction (if something really belongs

> there)?

Whether a download will include an 8 month old transaction is partly
dependent on how long your financial institution makes transactions
available for downloading. But I think it should be a moot point.

But once you download a transaction, Quicken should prevent that specific
transaction from downloading again ... even if your financial institution
still has the transaction available for download (assuming you are trying
to download to the same Quicken account in the same Quicken file).
Deleting the transaction from your Quicken account should have no bearing
on this; once the transaction is downloaded - even if you don't "Accept"
it, or you delete it after accepting it - it should never download again.

Since you are talking about one transaction, you should be able to use
your printed statements (or get the appropriate statement(s) from
Vanguard's web site) to determine whether that transaction was a
legitimate Vanguard transaction, and if so, what its specifics were ... so
you can enter it manually.

I think you should backup before taking any steps to "fix" the problem.

[And if the problem Quicken transaction has the security name you are
using for a Fidelity security. it's possible you have mismatched
securities. If so, you should uncheck the box "Matched with online
security" for each of the two securities (in the Security List), and
expect to link the downloaded securities to your Quicken securities the
next time you download or do a Compare to Portfolio for the two accounts.]

--

John Pollard

Posted by jo on July 15, 2009, 2:35 pm

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> Gary wrote:

> > At some time in =A0the past (late 2008) I discovered erroneous

> > transactions in my Quicken file. =A0I attempted to edit them manually

> > with some success. =A0Recently I have come across some transactions tha=

> > seem incorrect and I'm not quote sure how to proceed.

> > In my Vanguard Roth IRA, I show a transaction:

> > 11/28/08 ReinvDiv CashReserves 22.97 sh @ 73.26 =3D $1,694.27

> > When I go to edit it, up comes 22.97 sh @ 277.861123 =3D $6,428.41,

> > clearly different.

> > The whole transaction is also suspect, as Vanguard has no "Cash

> > Reserves" ... that is a Fidelity investment.

> > In my Fidelity Roth IRA, I show a transaction

> > 11/28/08 Div CashReserves $22.97.

> > If I erase the erroneous transaction (in the Vanguard Roth IRA

> > account) and then do an on-line-update, can I expect Quicken to pick

> > up a missing eight-month old transaction (if something really belongs

> > there)?

> Whether a download will include an 8 month old transaction is partly

> dependent on how long your financial institution makes transactions

> available for downloading. =A0But I think it should be a moot point.

> But once you download a transaction, Quicken should prevent that specific

> transaction from downloading again ... even if your financial institution

> still has the transaction available for download (assuming you are trying

> to download to the same Quicken account in the same Quicken file).

> Deleting the transaction from your Quicken account should have no bearing

> on this; once the transaction is downloaded - even if you don't "Accept"

> it, or you delete it after accepting it - it should never download again.

> Since you are talking about one transaction, you should be able to use

> your printed statements (or get the appropriate statement(s) from

> Vanguard's web site) to determine whether that transaction was a

> legitimate Vanguard transaction, and if so, what its specifics were ... s=

> you can enter it manually.

> I think you should backup before taking any steps to "fix" the problem.

> [And if the problem Quicken transaction has the security name you are

> using for a Fidelity security. it's possible you have mismatched

> securities. =A0If so, you should uncheck the box "Matched with online

> security" for each of the two securities (in the Security List), and

> expect to link the downloaded securities to your Quicken securities the

> next time you download or do a Compare to Portfolio for the two accounts.=

]

> --

> John Pollard- Hide quoted text -

> - Show quoted text -

John,

I have been able to get Quicken to re-download transactions by
disabling the account from online updates and then reenabling it. It
does have the potential for downloading an awful lot more than you
want, and some of my transactions didn't make complete sense initially
(could be because I was changing brokers at the time) , depending on
how old the account is, but at least you have the historical
transactions to look at.

jo

Posted by John Pollard on July 15, 2009, 5:24 pm

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jo wrote:

> I have been able to get Quicken to re-download transactions by

> disabling the account from online updates and then reenabling it. It

> does have the potential for downloading an awful lot more than you

> want, and some of my transactions didn't make complete sense initially

> (could be because I was changing brokers at the time) , depending on

> how old the account is, but at least you have the historical

> transactions to look at.

Yes, that is one way; normally much derided (because of all those unwanted
transactions) by those who are usually doing the deactivating/reactivating
to try to regain communications with the financial institution. You can
also achieve similar results by deleting the .QEL file from your Quicken
fileset (though it's a bit more draconian than deactivating/reactivating)
... good for when you can't deactivate.

But it's significant overkill to try to recover one transaction.

If you just want to look at all the transactions available at the
financial institution for download, you could create a temporary New
Quicken file with just the one account and download to that file ... easy
to get rid of those transactions. Or, I suppose, backup,
deactivate/activate, download, peruse ... then restore the backup.

--

John Pollard

Posted by jo on July 17, 2009, 6:08 pm

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> jo wrote:

> > I have been able to get Quicken to re-download transactions by

> > disabling the account from online updates and then reenabling it. =A0It

> > does have the potential for downloading an awful lot more than you

> > want, and some of my transactions didn't make complete sense initially

> > (could be because I was changing brokers at the time) , depending on

> > how old the account is, but at least you have the historical

> > transactions to look at.

> Yes, that is one way; normally much derided (because of all those unwante=

> transactions) by those who are usually doing the deactivating/reactivatin=

> to try to regain communications with the financial institution. =A0You ca=

> also achieve similar results by deleting the .QEL file from your Quicken

> fileset (though it's a bit more draconian than deactivating/reactivating)

> ... good for when you can't deactivate.

> But it's significant overkill to try to recover one transaction.

> If you just want to look at all the transactions available at the

> financial institution for download, you could create a temporary New

> Quicken file with just the one account and download to that file ... easy

> to get rid of those transactions. =A0Or, I suppose, backup,

> deactivate/activate, download, peruse ... then restore the backup.

> --

> John Pollard

I certainly wouldn't want to do it often, believe me. And you're
absolutely right that for one transaction, it is overkill. I'm still
cleaning up my files. There are downloaded transactions that make no
sense.. or else they didn't get recorded properly the first time.
It's back to the paper statements time.

Currently Smith Barney has a bad bug that is inhibiting downloading if
you have any security that for a any amount of time has a 0 quantity.
(probably before settlement). They are not fighting over the
responsibility for this, but thought they had fixed it. I sold some
securities so they should not show up at all in the online account
screen showing positions, but they do, and with a 0 quantity. Hence,
nothing else can be downloaded, or rather no transactions can. The
new securities that I *purchased* are downloaded in a form that makes
Quicken realize they are new and ask you what to do with them, but the
buy transaction never makes it, nor do any other transactions that
have nothing to do with the the 0 quantity ones. It's quite a mess
right now.