Retrieving transactions from Fidelity Netbenefits

[SirSam]

I have tried, but I can't get FM to retrieve transactions of our 401k contributions. It knows the total number of shares for each fund, but doesn't know when or how much mutual fund shares were bought.

Therefore, it incorrectly graphs and calculates the returns for each fund. Actually, it only shows last month's purchases and the totals for each fund. No yield results at all.

I have a similar problem with stocks from the Schwab site, but, let's try to fix my 401k problems first as it is more important. BTW, FM seems to get all the correct stock information from Sharebuilder, but, I think it's incorrectly calculating the yields. Unless, of course, I really did return 17% a year the last five years!

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Sam

[Mark]

Hi SirSam,

How are you retrieving transactions? Did you use the New Portfolio Wizard and retrieve "Transactions & Positions"? Does it complete without error, or are you getting some error message?

When you retrieve transactions & positions, Fund Manager retrieves all available transactions on the broker's OFX server, and it also retrieves current position balances. If necessary, FM makes an adjustment entry to get your current share balance correct. It is necessary to do this when your broker doesn't have the full transaction history for your account available. Different brokers maintain your transactions for different amounts of time. If you look at the transactions for your investments in the Data Register, do you see an adjustment entry, at a cost of $0?

On Schwab, I'm pretty sure their OFX server maintains your transaction history for 2 years. Some OFX servers however only keep them available for as little as 90 days. Others maintain them for your whole account history, it just varies by broker.

[SirSam]

Mark,

Thanks for the reply and sorry for not responding sooner. I found the reason why I'm getting wrong yields. FM only had data that started on 9/03/09. For some reason, the dates went back to 2002, when I started the particular investment, but, the share amounts and values were all zeros.

I checked, and I saw similar things for the other funds owned in NetBenefits. It knows when I started investing, but only had data since September 3rd of last year.

What's going on?

[SirSam]

Mark,

I forgot to answer your questions, but, I did use the New Portfolio Wizard and retrieve Transactions & Positions. It didn't fail; as a matter of fact, things went smoothly. Thus the reason for my confusion.

[Mark]

Hi SirSam,

I'm not following exactly how your data is recorded in Fund Manager. Maybe you could post an example set of transactions? When you retrieve from the New Portfolio Wizard the "Transactions & Positions", you should get all real transactions, as far back as the OFX server has available. On Schwab I believe this is 2 years. Prior to this, you will only have 1 single "adjustment" entry at a cost of $0 to get your current share balance correct. Do you see this adjustment entry recorded as the earliest transaction for you? Have you had your account with Schwab for 2 years, or did you maybe transfer it in 9/09? If you transferred your account, they wouldn't have your earlier transactions.

If this doesn't help, you might want to give us a call at (480) 705-0129. We can do a quick web conference, and I can walk through it with you.