Problems Retrieving from Fidelity

[jeffweiss9]

...actually I just found some bond dividends that had been entered 7 or 8 times for each one. That's probably the number of times I reconciled tho account. Any idea what I can do to stop that happening?

4) Another issue: When I generate reports or pie graphs, FM is not recognizing that the same investment is held in a number of different accounts and lists them separately. How do I get it to recognize they are really the same investment? They have the same symbols (and names) so I would have thought that would have been sufficient.

Thanks,
Jeff

[Mark]

Hi Jeff,

1) This sounds like TIAA-CREF wants you to download (and then you need to import) an OFX file. This is different than retrieving, where FM connects to their OFX server. Follow the instructions, and download the file, and then you can import this file in FM under "File / Import / Transactions / Open Financial Exchange..." assuming it is an OFX or QFX file that downloads from their site.

2) This means you are recording a new transaction, or editing/deleting an existing transaction on a date on/before you last reconciled that account. This is not normal. Once you've reconciled, this means you should have recorded all transactions up through that date, and shouldn't be modifying transactions on/before that reconciliation date. When are you getting this message? What are you doing? That error message should also show you what is being modified. You should try to understand what/why it is being modified.

3) I don't know if your account is on their OFX server. Please try to ask them for instructions, and whatever they say for MS Money/Quicken would be similar for Fund Manager. In some cases they have you download/import a file, in other cases you can retrieve directly. It just depends on if they have an OFX server or not. They may not use this exact terminology, so you have to examine their instructions to determine this. You can also just test it out, and see if you're able to retrieve. If not, you may need to ask them for the login credentials, or maybe that means your account isn't on their OFX server.

On the duplicate bond dividend issue... Reconciling doesn't add transactions. Can you somehow reproduce this duplication? Maybe you can try retrieving again, and see if a duplicate transaction comes in. Make sure you retrieve with the option to ignore transactions already in FM turned on. This may be the reason for the warning about modifying reconciled data. Are you using version 10.4 of Fund Manager? Please make sure you have 10.4, and try to retrieve again, watching for these duplicates. If you can reproduce the problem this will help.

4) This is the case when you "List By" "Investment" or do a pie chart by "Investment". Each investment is separate in this case. If you want to combine everything with the same symbol, list by or graph by "Symbol" instead.

[jeffweiss9]

Mark-
1) and 3) I'll have to try the download from TIAA-CREF and follow the Quicken instructions for BofA. On 4), thanks, list by symbol lumped the same investments together, as I wanted.

On repeated the interest entries, I do have the no duplicates checked, but I have several times tried to get old transactions from dates much before I last reconciled so that must be the cause I deleted the extra interest entries, allowing for the interest payment but disallowingfor the core account reconciliation and everything looks ok and reconciles.

The problem is, when I set up my accounts, depending on brokerage I only got 1 to 3 months worth of transactions into FM. HOW DO I ADD OLDER TRANSATIONS SO I HAVE A DECENT RECORD OVER TIME to measure performance?

A related question, since ALL my current transactions only go back up to 3 months, is HOW CAN I CHANGE THE SCALE ON THE GRAPHICS for a different time period; say 1 year or less? I could find nothing on the Graph/Options window that lets you change the time span of the graphics plots. With 10 years that seems to be fixed, all the information is jammed at the right edge of the plot.

Thanks very much.

[Mark]

Hi Jeff,

Different brokers maintain a different amount of history on their OFX servers. Some maintain it for the full account history, some for 2 years, or some as little as 90 days. I've not heard of some that are as short as 1 month though... Anything is possible here, it is up to the broker. If you are using the new portfolio wizard, FM will get all available transactions on the OFX server, and then record a single adjustment entry to get your share balances correct as of today. You can manually edit this adjustment to record the right cost basis, or import/enter older transactions, whatever you prefer.

To change the graph's date range, use "View / Dates...". You can also use the drop-down on the toolbar to quickly change to many common date ranges. You can also use keyboard or mouse shortcuts. See the online help for a description of these.