Quicken insists on short sales

Hi, Jeff.

We hear of such "short sales" pretty often here. The reason is almost always because we let Quicken round off our share purchase, splits or sales at some point in the past - and maybe we did that several times.

HOW did you come to own 19 shares? Did you buy 19 shares in a single transaction? Or did the odd number 19 result from multiple buys, sells, splits or other transactions? None of my scenarios is explaining how Quicken thinks you are making a short sale by selling just 2 shares out of

2. Looks to me like you have some homework to do. And I hope you've saved all the documents that make up the trail to your 19 shares. Then you need to make sure that each transaction was correctly entered - in chronological order. For EACH transaction, make sure that you told Quicken the actual total dollars and cents and the exact number of shares, including any fractions or decimals. DO NOT let Quicken calculate the number of shares! Feed it the dollars and shares and let any necessary rounding apply to the per-share price, not to the number of shares. Be especially careful with splits that result in fractional shares. Worry first about dates and numbers of shares in and out; we can work out the dollars later. If you tell us the name of the company, we probably can help you research the chronology.

Once you've told us how you started with zero shares and ended up with 19, we should be able to help you spot why Quicken thinks you are selling more shares than you still have.

RC

-- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX (Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.) snipped-for-privacy@grandecom.net Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010) (Using Quicken Deluxe 2011 R 8 and Windows Live Mail in Win7 x64)

Using Quicken Deluxe 2011 desktop. I have a problem I cannot resolve. I own 19 shares of a certain stock and sold 2 shares. But when I try to accept that transaction, Quicken insists this is a short sale - which it is not.

I have checked: the share names are correct and are the same. Quicken shows that I do have 19 shares on that date. (Still do).

I did a "repair lots" on a copy of the Quicken file which found a few errors, but the problem persists.

Any suggestions how to get around this?

Jeff

Thank you. I have all the info and will collect it and reply more fully.

Jeff

Hi R.C.

Problem solved. Going to each transaction one at a time I discovered the problem.

It was a stock split that was entered wrong in Q. Instead of 9 shares from 6, it was entered as 0 from 6

When corrected, all went well.

Thanks for helping.

Jeff

Does Q round off shares automatically or does it ask?

If automatically, is there a way to stop it doing that?

Thanks again.

Jeff

Hi, Jeff.

If you tell Quicken you bought 3 shares for $100, it will use 3 shares. If you say you bought paid $100 for shares costing $33.33 each, it will calculate that you have $100/$33.33 = 3.000300030003 shares.

If you then tell Quicken that you sold 3 shares, it will think that you still have 0.300030003 shares left.

The difference may be subtle, but it is real. Quicken believes what we tell it. But when we make it guess, sometimes it guesses wrong.

So always tell it the exact dollars and cents, and the exact number of shares. Don't make it calculate the number of shares.

I see that you solved your problem, so congratulations! ; We hear of such "short sales" pretty often here. The reason is almost

Does Q round off shares automatically or does it ask?

If automatically, is there a way to stop it doing that?

Thanks again.

Jeff

Thank you.