Reported Positions don't match Money Account

[Matt McLelland]

I've been downloading my stock portfolio details for years with no problem.
For some reason one of my brokerage accounts has gotten out of whack - Money
is reporting "Positions reported....don't match those in your money account".
If I don't update and manually compare the account summary with my online
statement, every quantity for every symbol matches exactly. Yet for some
reason, Money thinks it can only fix this problem by creating an empty symbol
and inserting some shares. I think that somehow money is trying to map a few
new transactions into the wrong account - is there a manual way to check
which downloaded transactions are being mapped in Money?

[Cal Learner-- MVP]

Doesn't Money tell you which positions appear to mis-match?

To get around it, normally decline Money's offer to adjust your
portfolio. This will require a change to the default on the radio
buttons each time it occurs. Yet you definitely want to check what
the cause of this is. Make a note of the StatementQuantity (what
the download said your holding was) and the AccountQuantity (what
Money thought your holding was). One of those two values differs
from reality.

You need to figure out which one differs, and figure out why. If
you go to and investment and choose InvestmentActivites, you will
get a list of transactions for that investment. Maybe you will
have a bogus AddShares from previously accepting an adjustment.
This can come from the broker having the statement position
quantity a little out of phase with the transaction. e.g., you
bought Google. The position data was updated but the transaction
did not make it into this download somehow. Money offers to
AddShares (Update my positions). You accept. Then later the Buy
gets downloaded. So Money will offer to Remove/AddShares (Update my
positions). Or the thing could be in the reverse order.

[Matt McLelland]

THanks Cal - here's that I think happened. During the update where Money
finds all the new positions from the last time you updated, if Money detects
a new position the user is asked to add a new fund or map to an existing one.
Usually Money gets it right and it defaults to a new fund - but I think what
I did was I incorrectly mapped it to an existing fund. So when I was done, I
had too many shares - and I deleted them and hoped a new "update positions"
would allow me to remap. However, Money is now "suck" thinking it needs to
update the wrong position (does this make sense?).

I tried your suggestion - when I checked Addshares / update my position (to
make the error go away), it does add them to my position and everything
appears normal. But the next time I click "Update my positions", it reports
(correctly) that I have too many shares - and I'm in a loop.

So I deleted the positions that Money was trying to add and compared this
money account to my online statement - quantities match exactly - so why does
Money think there is a discrepency? How can I "un-map" the incorrect mapping
that I mentioned in my first paragraph? THanks for your advice Cal.

[Cal Learner-- MVP]

In microsoft.public.money, Matt McLelland wrote:

>THanks Cal - here's that I think happened. During the update where Money
>finds all the new positions from the last time you updated, if Money detects
>a new position the user is asked to add a new fund or map to an existing one.
> Usually Money gets it right and it defaults to a new fund - but I think what
>I did was I incorrectly mapped it to an existing fund. So when I was done, I
>had too many shares - and I deleted them and hoped a new "update positions"
>would allow me to remap. However, Money is now "suck" thinking it needs to
>update the wrong position (does this make sense?).
>
>I tried your suggestion - when I checked Addshares / update my position (to
>make the error go away), it does add them to my position and everything
>appears normal. But the next time I click "Update my positions", it reports
>(correctly) that I have too many shares - and I'm in a loop.
>
>So I deleted the positions that Money was trying to add and compared this
>money account to my online statement - quantities match exactly - so why does
>Money think there is a discrepency? How can I "un-map" the incorrect mapping
>that I mentioned in my first paragraph? THanks for your advice Cal.
>

The method will depend on whether you have Money 2007 or newer, or
if you have an older version. Money 2007 added the CombineWith
operation.

The way it works is that there is a CombineWith button on the
Details page. You can select a security of the SAME Investment
Type. When you go to FundA details and click CombineWith, a list of
mutual funds already defined comes up. A pop-up tells you that all
of this investment will be renamed as the other selected investment.
If you combine with FundB, in the register, All FundA transactions
will now appear as FundB.

One case where this should be useful is in a fund rename downloaded
from the broker. If the OFX has a RemoveShares of Acme and an
AddShares of AcmeNew, you can work around that endless circle of
saying they are the same shares. Just accept the new one, and then
do a CombineWith. he history an basis data will be intact.

Make an extra backup/copy first in case you want to undo something.

[Matt McLelland]

Cal - played around with the Combine With - it didn't work, although I
understood why is should have worked.

After spending about 3 hours trying to resolve this, I pulled a backup from
last week (before the update that caused all these problems) and
re-downloaded - taking special precautions to map the new positions to a
brand new symbol, instead of erronousely pointing them to an existing one.
Once I processed 7 days worth of new transactions (about 15 minutes), I'm now
balanced and back up-n-running. Thank goodness for backups. Thanks Cal.

[Cal Learner-- MVP]

In microsoft.public.money, Matt McLelland wrote:

>Cal - played around with the Combine With - it didn't work, although I
>understood why is should have worked.
>
>After spending about 3 hours trying to resolve this, I pulled a backup from
>last week (before the update that caused all these problems) and
>re-downloaded - taking special precautions to map the new positions to a
>brand new symbol, instead of erronousely pointing them to an existing one.
>Once I processed 7 days worth of new transactions (about 15 minutes), I'm now
>balanced and back up-n-running. Thank goodness for backups. Thanks Cal.

I am glad that the backup restoration did it. It's nice that Money
keeps multiple backups. You might want to consider increasing the
number that Money keeps, if you have a big hard drive with a lot of
unused space.

Thinking about it, I think that CombineWith working on the older
version to be combined with the newer version, rather than working
from the Details page the newer version, might have worked right for
you. But it's moot at this point. Again, I am glad that it is doing
right for you now.