[moneydance] Downloaded BUYs from Schwab

[Larry Alkoff]

Michael Casteel wrote:
> I just verified that the latest version of MD (and for some versions
> back) mangles downloaded BUY transactions from a Schwab brokerage
> account, and the resulting transactions will not balance to the
> brokerage statement. I only have Schwab accounts, so don't know if
> this applies to other brokerages.
> 
> What appears to be happening is, the share price on the downloaded
> transaction includes the commissions (fees); this price is multiplied
> by the number of shares, then the commissions are added in. The total
> amount of this transaction is thus overstated by the amount of the
> fees.
> 
> The simplest recovery when balancing to the statement is to get the
> correct share price from the statement and edit the downloaded
> transaction in MD to reflect the correct price. Barring rounding
> issues, this makes the transaction total correct and it should match
> the statement. A little hard to see, since Schwab statements show the
> total transaction amount, while the 'total' amount MD shows on the
> transaction is only the price times share count, although the
> commissions/fees do impact the account balance. Mental arithmetic will
> confirm if the correction has taken place. That or finding that the
> statement reconciles.
> 
> I just entered a bug report on this issue. I think that SELLs had an
> analogous problem some months ago, but they are working OK now.


Hello Michael.

Congratulations on your noticing this severe problem.  I noticed the 
same failure to balance on both my Schwab and Merrill Lynch accounts in 
the last few versions.  I agree the cause is double counting of the fees.

This action has been reported to Sean directly by me and I'm hoping he 
will take action soon.

I only noticed this a few months ago because Schwab is a new account for 
me.  It took some time to see why the account wouldn't balance.  My 
Merrill account has been active for many years but all transactions in 
that account have been entered 'by hand' and balanced each month.  Last 
month I made a special BUY transaction and then downloaded the OFX data 
for the period to MD.  The balance was off by the amount of the fees for 
that transaction so the bug appears to be more widespread than Schwab.

Apparently not very many people balance their accounts!

Larry

-- 
Larry Alkoff N2LA - Austin TX
Using Thunderbird on Linux