"You should use two transactions"

Posted by BillHines on February 27, 2009, 5:43 pm

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I had some Budweiser stock that got sold automatically when they were
acquired. So when I did my one step update the SoldX transaction
appears in my Downloaded Transactions (Quicken/windows Deluxe 2008).

But when I try to accept it, I get a message saying "You should use
two transactions: one to sell the shares you hold and one to create
your short position"

I don't understand how to do that, can someone help? In this case the
money from the sale went into another cash account I have at Fidelity
and that account is reflected properly in the transaction.

Posted by Bert Hyman on February 27, 2009, 6:19 pm

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> I had some Budweiser stock that got sold automatically when they were

> acquired. So when I did my one step update the SoldX transaction

> appears in my Downloaded Transactions (Quicken/windows Deluxe 2008).

> But when I try to accept it, I get a message saying "You should use

> two transactions: one to sell the shares you hold and one to create

> your short position"

> I don't understand how to do that, can someone help? In this case the

> money from the sale went into another cash account I have at Fidelity

> and that account is reflected properly in the transaction.

You might not actually have to do that.

That sort of thing will pop up if the total for the transaction doesn't
match the price per share times the number of shares, which can happen
due to rounding errors.

Make sure that's not the case before doing something dramatic. If that's
all it is, usually adjusting the price per share to make the numbers
come out right is all that's required.

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN bert@iphouse.com

Posted by John Pollard on February 27, 2009, 9:52 pm

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BillHines wrote:

> I had some Budweiser stock that got sold automatically when they were

> acquired. So when I did my one step update the SoldX transaction

> appears in my Downloaded Transactions (Quicken/windows Deluxe 2008).

> But when I try to accept it, I get a message saying "You should use

> two transactions: one to sell the shares you hold and one to create

> your short position"

> I don't understand how to do that, can someone help? In this case the

> money from the sale went into another cash account I have at Fidelity

> and that account is reflected properly in the transaction.

Quicken thinks that you own less shares than the Sell transaction is
trying to sell.

As the other poster implied, this can happen if you have ever allowed
Quicken to compute the number of shares in a transaction involving the
security in question.

One way to overcome the problem, is to tell the Quicken Sell transaction
to sell ALL shares of the security.

[That will not always solve the problem ... if it doesn't, you can post
back, and hope we can find another way to solve the problem.]

--

John Pollard