I have several investment accounts that were originally set up as simple 'asset' accounts under older versions of Quicken. Now I am in the process of identifying which ones can be re-created 'automagically' with on-line access to the financial institution.
I just completed creating one - a 401k with a former employer. This account has several individual stock and bond mutual funds, and some individual stock in the (previous employers) company. The creation and download of current values went fine, but the values of one of the funds and of the individual stock are way off. They don't even agree with the account info I see when I go to the financial institution's web site. On all of the other funds, the current balance, shares, and price are a match with what the web site shows.
For the fund that is off, it is listed on the web site as 'Small-Cap Value Index', with a share price of $2.177886. In Quicken, it is listed as 'Small-Cap Value Fund'. The numbe of shares matches but the price is listed at $41.04. A significant difference!
On the individual stock, things are a bit more complex. On the web site, it shows 3774.497570 shares at $3.51419, but then gives a second line called 'equivalent shares' that shows 164.401289 shares at $80.69000. Quicken got the 3,774 shares at $79.35.
Each of these discrepancies resulted in a gross over-valuation of the account. Would that they were correct -- I could probably retire today!
The odds are that the fi did not provide the correct data; if this is a one time deal (if only the history is problematic), you can just modify names, tickers, prices to agree with the real world (even deleting the account and redoing the download, if necessary).
You don't say whether you got (or thought you were getting) all your individual historical transactions or whether you just got a placeholder for the historical data. Many fi's do not provide all historical transactions for downloads.
You also didn't say whether the securities were publicly traded US securities (so your prices could be gotten by Quicken's price downloads). Be cautious; some securities used in 401k accounts have the same name as publicly traded securities, but are not priced publicly.
If you manually enter an investment transaction that contains a security price, or accept a downloaded investment transaction that contains a security price, and you have no price in your price history for the date of the transaction, Quicken will enter the transaction price in your price history for that date. That's one source of prices other than a Quicken download of prices.
I believe that Quicken will also use prices downloaded in the "holdings" section of a download, but I'm not sure under what conditions Quicken uses them.
Generally when you download a security for the first time in investment account transaction, if there is any ambiguity about whether that security is already in your Security List, Quicken gives you the option to match it to an existing security, or create a new security. If you elect to create a new security, its default name is the name that the fi downloaded. The names are not material after that, but the cusips are. I can't tell from your post whether the security in Quicken is a different security from the one you own in the real world; you would need to look at things like the ticker symbol, or see if your fi has two securities with very similar names, to determine that. If it's the same security with a minor name difference, the name difference should not matter. If it's a different security, you need to research how that happened (did you allow the download to match to an existing, but incorrect, security, for example).
As to the "equivalent shares" bit; I can't tell from your post why the "equivalent shares" would be the correct value to have, but I don't think Quicken made the choice ... I think the fi did.
It is fairly easy to verify what the fi actually provided in the download, if you make the effort before you do any (or too many) other downloads. Downloaded data is placed in a log file which is accessible in Quicken, and which can be viewed in a word processor. You can "Save" the log file in Quicken, then you can view it in a word processor at your leisure (especially a good idea when the data is not formatted in a friendly manner ... you can make a minor change in the format and make the data much easier to read). The OFXlog is available in "Help > Product and Customer Support". There are two primary sections: transactions (assuming there were any real-world transactions) and holdings. If I recall correctly, the transactions begin with the tag "" and the holdings begin with the tag "".
Not sure, actually. One never knows what it is one doesn't know. "We have known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns."
In any event, I shuffled some money between funds (getting less aggressive as I approach retirement) and after the next download, all the prices, shares held, and total values were back to normal.
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