Online investment download strikes again!

I'll admit that I don't have any accounts with Vanguard; I use Fidelity for the bulk, but not all, of my investment accounts. I've been thus far pleased with how F handles things, as each account I have at F has a "core" account plus any account positions, and buy / sell transactions are accomplished relatively painlessly.

I won't advocate that you switch from Vanguard, but it does seem that this is a case of the brokerage making life difficult for Quicken uses, not Quicken making life difficult for investors. Have you checked the log files to see what Vanguard is sending Quicken?

====================Look into TradeLog and Gainskeeper.

Quicken is brain-dead as far as ANY stock investments go.

Fine for your checking account but that's about all it's good for.

But if you have splits/ covered calls / strangles / butterflies / short sales etc. etc. etc. flush Quicken down the drain ... don't even bother trying to use it.

The Quicken programmers have never even ATTEMPTED to get Quicken to understand investments.

Both Gainskeeper and Tradelog are excellent programs. They each have some features the other doesn't. And they are both worth the money. Either one is capable of producing your Schedule D. And they are very handy to have around during your trading day.

Hey, tout, want to stop trolling for customers and let Q users get on with our choice?

Thanks but no thanks. The last thing I need is yet another complicated program to make my life even more complicated!

But I don't have covered calls, strangles, butterfiles, etc. Splits are not necessarily something you have any control over. There is no technical reason why online investment downloading can't be done correctly from to Quicken. Quite frankly the programmer who wrote the interface didn't do their job. If I did similar programming for a client I personally would be let go.

They ain't Quicken programmers in this case - it's the programmers over at Vanguard.

I don't have trading days!

============Sorry, not trolling for customers. I have nothing to do with the programs I mentioned except as a satisfied user trying to help someone who is trying to use Quicken to do something it can't do.

I don't own any stock in the companies ( although I should ask myself why not--looks like an oversight I should maybe look into ).

If you chose to use Q for handling stock investments you made a mighty bad choice. You need to check into the two programs whose mention has upset you so :)

Myself I am happy with using Quicken for my checking and saving accounts. I'm not bad mouthing the program ... just honestly stating that it isn't designed to handle stock transactions properly.

Questions for you:

1. With F if you have set your dividends to be reinvested, when transactions are downloaded from F for that reinvestment of dividends what transaction(s) come in? My experience was that they issue two separate transactions, one DIV and one BUY (e.g. Div , Buy of fund). IMHO the correct transaction to download is a ReinvDiv transaction type which does the above in one transaction. 2. When a stock that you own splits how is that represented at F in the downloaded transaction(s)? My experience was if you have say 10 shares of MSFT and they split 2 for 1 you suddenly get a BUY of 10 shares of MSFT for 1. With F if you have set your dividends to be reinvested, when transactions are downloaded from F for that reinvestment of dividends what transaction(s) come in? My experience was that they issue two separate transactions, one DIV and one BUY (e.g. Div $10, Buy $10 of fund). IMHO the correct transaction to download is a ReinvDiv transaction type which does the above in one transaction. 2. When a stock that you own splits how is that represented at F in the downloaded transaction(s)? My experience was if you have say 10 shares of MSFT and they split 2 for 1 you suddenly get a BUY of 10 shares of MSFT for $0.00! This is all wrong. Quicken wants to see a StkSplit transaction for this. Lacking a proper StkSplit transaction Quicken will not represent the price graphs correctly. 3. I assume that your F account works similarly to my V account in that it has a "sweep" account and money sent to F gets converted to Fidelity MM Reserves (BTW I have Fidelity also). Then when you purchase shares of a stock, funds get liquidated, moved to the brokerage account and finally shares of your desired stock are purchased. Right? OK then, when that time comes and shares of Fidelity MM Reserves are sold and the cash is transfered to the brokerage account does F download a Sold or a SoldX transaction for you?.00! This is all wrong. Quicken wants to see a StkSplit transaction for this. Lacking a proper StkSplit transaction Quicken will not represent the price graphs correctly. 3. I assume that your F account works similarly to my V account in that it has a "sweep" account and money sent to F gets converted to Fidelity MM Reserves (BTW I have Fidelity also). Then when you purchase shares of a stock, funds get liquidated, moved to the brokerage account and finally shares of your desired stock are purchased. Right? OK then, when that time comes and shares of Fidelity MM Reserves are sold and the cash is transfered to the brokerage account does F download a Sold or a SoldX transaction for you?

Log files would not be the right place to check. They are for recording the actions that happened. It's the OFX, or in Quicken's case, the QFX file which is input into Quicken. I would need to check that but I don't have that file anymore. Recent attempts to download it have not been successful (problem with Vanguard's web server - possibly scheduled maintenance of their servers and/or a problem with my browser setup such that I'm not even getting a proper QFX file right now. I gotts work on this later).

I also see that OFX has gotten even more complicated since the last time I checked it out

I downloaded the spec (over 500 pages for christ's sake!) but at least with that, and with a proper QFX file I can work through it and verify if the proper data was sent or if it was not. I do not envy those Vanguard programmers and OFX is way over complicated. No excuse for getting it wrong though...

It's designed to handle simple stock transactions properly. It may or may not be implemented as designed however. Then again it just might be the FI's who are feeding it bad information.

You have more sophisticated investment needs than most people and definitely more sophisticated needs than I have. My needs fall within the bounds of both the Quicken spec and the QFX spec AFAICT. I don't think I'm out of bounds wanting the product I purchased to work as advertised and I'm not willing to go hog wild on a sophisticated investing program when I don't need all that functionality.

YMMV.

==================================I don't think you're out of bounds for wanting that either. But Quicken has had problems with stock transactions with every version I've ever seen which goes back to '95 I believe.

People have < always > complained about it, but nothing has ever been done.

I presume that is because it isn't considered a priority by Quicken top dogs. Most people don't have stocks to deal with anyway, they figure.

And, years ago, that used to be true. But these days with more and more companies dumping their pensions into funds that the employee has some degree of control over, that isn't true anymore.

The programs I mentioned aren't all that sophisticated or involved. They download from your institution just like Quicken does .... except they do it right.

They have trial periods ... nothing to lose by giving them a try.

Same can be said for checking account transaction, transfers, checks, credit card accounts, etc. Trust me.

No they rightfully assume that people are buying Quicken to manage their basic finances and perhaps cover 401Ks, basic investing, IRAs and the like. They're not trying to be all things to all people. Indeed they have other products such as Quickbooks.

I'd say most people deal in mutual funds not stocks directly.

Covered calls, strangles and butterflies are way more sophisticated than my needs.

How would you know unless you understand the concepts, transaction types and the like that you mention. Answer is you don't - unless you learn about them. Hell to a person who doesn't understand mutual funds, money market accounts, CDs and 401Ks their perception of Quicken online investment download looks correct too!

Right. How about my time? I have to download it, install it, apply any patches needed, run the program, play around with it, enter data, play with exporting and importing, downloading and hooking it up to my FI, getting that working, verifying that it is really working and if so deciding how split and handle my personal finances in Quicken and my investing finances in this program, how to handle losing "all my finances in one place" and not getting a true picture of my net worth, etc. all within this trial period so I can make an informed decision on whether or not I think it's worth it to shell out the money for this program that may do what I'm doing more correctly and offer me a whole bunch of functionality for strangles and butterflies that I probably will never use. Right. Nothing to lose, nothing to lose at all!

I don't think you're out of bounds for wanting that either. But Quicken has had problems with stock transactions with every version I've ever seen which goes back to '95 I believe.

People have < always > complained about it, but nothing has ever been done.

Same can be said for checking account transaction, transfers, checks, credit card accounts, etc. Trust me.

I presume that is because it isn't considered a priority by Quicken top dogs. Most people don't have stocks to deal with anyway, they figure.

No they rightfully assume that people are buying Quicken to manage their basic finances and perhaps cover 401Ks, basic investing, IRAs and the like. They're not trying to be all things to all people. Indeed they have other products such as Quickbooks.

And, years ago, that used to be true. But these days with more and more companies dumping their pensions into funds that the employee has some degree of control over, that isn't true anymore.

I'd say most people deal in mutual funds not stocks directly.

The programs I mentioned aren't all that sophisticated or involved. Covered calls, strangles and butterflies are way more sophisticated than my needs.

They download from your institution just like Quicken does .... except they do it right.

How would you know unless you understand the concepts, transaction types and the like that you mention. Answer is you don't - unless you learn about them. Hell to a person who doesn't understand mutual funds, money market accounts, CDs and 401Ks their perception of Quicken online investment download looks correct too!

They have trial periods ... nothing to lose by giving them a try.

Right. How about my time? I have to download it, install it, apply any patches needed, run the program, play around with it, enter data, play with exporting and importing, downloading and hooking it up to my FI, getting that working, verifying that it is really working and if so deciding how split and handle my personal finances in Quicken and my investing finances in this program, how to handle losing "all my finances in one place" and not getting a true picture of my net worth, etc. all within this trial period so I can make an informed decision on whether or not I think it's worth it to shell out the money for this program that may do what I'm doing more correctly and offer me a whole bunch of functionality for strangles and butterflies that I probably will never use. Right. Nothing to lose, nothing to lose at all!

-- Andrew DeFaria I wrote a song, but I can't read music. Every time I hear a new song on the radio I think "Hey, maybe I wrote that."

And no benefit of online investment transaction download either - exactly my point!

Guaranteed it'll never happen with an attitude like that!

sharx35 wrote: I simply manually enter share transactions. NEVER any problems. And no benefit of online investment transaction download either - exactly my point!

No trying to make F.I. downloads compatible with Quicken. Guaranteed it'll never happen with an attitude like that!

-- Andrew DeFaria If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.

As the customer you do indeed have control over how things go down. Not you individually but us as group.

Again, we know this and it's pretty much irrelevant.

Did anybody ask you how much you are worth? Why do you think that that is relevant, or are you just bragging? Actually if you had that much money you'd be smart to have somebody else handling your money!

sharx35 wrote: I, personally have absolutely NO control over how the major banks in Canada format their download data. As the customer you do indeed have control over how things go down. Not you individually but us as group.

Therefore, it takes me just a few minutes every few days to MANUALLY enter my financial data. Again, we know this and it's pretty much irrelevant.

And, yes, my net worth is approaching 7 figures, not counting the decimal places. Did anybody ask you how much you are worth? Why do you think that that is relevant, or are you just bragging? Actually if you had that much money you'd be smart to have somebody else handling your money!

-- Andrew DeFaria My girlfriend always laughs during sex - no matter what she's reading.