Place Holders Due to Decimall Place Accuracy

Yes.

Never allow Quicken to compute the number of shares in a transaction. [And never accept a placeholder.]

I download from five Vanguard accounts, and I never have a difference between my Vanguard holdings in Quicken and my holdings at Vanguard.

To the best of my knowledge, I never change anything that Vanguard downloads; the transactions Vanguard sends work fine just as downloaded. All my Quicken Vanguard share balances are carried at three decimal places (though Quicken is capable of carrying share balances to six decimal places).

I took a quick glance through transactions dating back to 2001: not a one had a share quantity with non-zero values greater than 3 places to the right of the decimal.

Hi John,

Where is the setting that tells Quicken not to calculate number of shares? Is this a global setting? or is it set somewhere by individual holding?

Thanks

Tim

John,

I have an account with Vanguard and there are four Mutual Funds in my account that download transactions up to five significant decimal places. I have two Mutual Funds which download to three decimal places. In addition my stock funds invested my employer stock also downloads to five significant digits. Therefore as I have posted in the past, this is a PITA as it defeats the purpose of the download that I have to manually edit almost 100 transactions per month (out of 120 transactions) to be able to make sure that they tie to Vanguard's balance. I also make sure not to accept the placeholder transactions.

This has pissed me off for years as Vanguard's website reports to three significant digits as does their statements. I have posted this topic in the forum in the past - about two years ago I think was the last time.

As for how I fix this is to edit the transaction removing and rounding the quantity and have Quicken recalculate the price per share. It takes me about 2 hours per month to perform these edits.

Oilcan

-----Orig> I searched for this in the Newgroup and could not find any one else

Yes.

Never allow Quicken to compute the number of shares in a transaction. [And never accept a placeholder.]

I download from five Vanguard accounts, and I never have a difference between my Vanguard holdings in Quicken and my holdings at Vanguard.

To the best of my knowledge, I never change anything that Vanguard downloads; the transactions Vanguard sends work fine just as downloaded.

All my Quicken Vanguard share balances are carried at three decimal places (though Quicken is capable of carrying share balances to six decimal places).

I took a quick glance through transactions dating back to 2001: not a one had a share quantity with non-zero values greater than 3 places to the right of the decimal.

There is no setting; you make sure the share quantity is in every transaction you enter.

As I said, I never have to change anything when downloading from Vanguard.

If I manually enter a transaction, I make sure I enter the number of shares, and the amount ... and let Quicken compute the price/share.

That's a Vanguard problem.

They should download your holdings with the same precision as they download your transactions.

John,

Perhaps it is a Vanguard problem, but since I have no other investment accounts with fractional shares / units, I don't know if the problem resides with Quicken or Vanguard. However, if Vanguard does carry funds out to 5 places, they should also report that to me on their website (balances, transactions) and on the quarterly Statements - which they do not.

Oilcan

-----Orig> I have an account with Vanguard and there are four Mutual Funds in my

That's a Vanguard problem.

They should download your holdings with the same precision as they download your transactions.

I think the trick to avoid this rounding problem is to enter the number of shares and the total amount of the transaction exactly as your statement says but let Quicken fiddle with the per-unit price as it sees fit.

Hi, John.

Although I've not used it, I note that Quicken, at Edit | Preferences | Quicken Program, on the bottom line of the bottom option (Reports only), lets us set "Decimal places for prices and shares: ___ (0-6)". Does this have anything to do with John Doe's comment that "Vanguard keeps my online share balance to 3 decimal accuracy while Quicken calculates it to 5 decimal places"?

As we've often discussed here, I strongly agree with your (and Oilcan's) recommendation to always record dollar amounts to the nearest cent and share amounts to the same precision as reported by the broker, mutual fund manager or other party involved. That usually is even whole shares, or .001 shares for mutual funds. Let the per-share calculation absorb any rounding differences. Also, while not part of the current discussion, always let Quicken select the lots being sold, and record transactions in strict chronological order; this almost always avoids the small-fractional-share leftover problem.

RC

I don't think so.

The Report option is just for display purposes.

I think the problem is that there are (at least) two fundamental and separate parts to a download to a given investment account: the transactions and the holdings.

If the financial institution is not rigorous in its controls, it can create transactions that will have a different number of decimal places than the decimal places it puts in the holdings that it downloads, which can create the problem reported here.

When the user finishes processing (Accepting or Deleting) all the downloaded transactions for an investment account, Quicken defaults to comparing its holdings to the holdings downloaded by the financial institution. When Quicken's holdings are different than the downloaded holdings, Quicken offers to make adjustments ("placeholders") to get the two in sync.

If the downloaded transactions were using share quantities out to five decimal places Quicken would be computing its holdings using five decimal places. Then when it came time to compare Quicken's holdings to the downloaded holdings, there would be little chance they could agree, if the downloaded holdings were only accurate to three decimal places.

I think the financial institution must supply holdings that agree with the total of the transactions they have supplied ... to whatever number of decimal places they have supplied them.

[I think the problem is worsened because, in reality, I believe most financial institutions carry some, or most, of their holdings "internally" to more decimal places than they report or download - especially for stocks. One of my fi's told me they had share quantities out to eight decimal places in their internal system.]

You're right, but "usually" is an important word in that sentence.

While I have never seen a Vanguard transaction with more than 3 decimal places (all my Vanguard holdings are mutual funds); the op (and others) have reported as many as 5 decimal places for mutual fund transactions.

And since I use "dividend reinvestment" on many of the stocks I hold, the reinvestment transactions downloaded for those transactions will carry share quantities to at least 4 decimal places.

Yes. I've never understood why some place importance on this number as it was when they initiated the transaction. The number Quicken calculates will be closer to the actual price/share paid than the price/share quoted at the time of the purchase or sale - if the two are different at all.

I do select specific lots for some sales, as I may be wanting to maximize (or minimize) gains. I don't think I have had any problem from doing that so far.