Morgan Stanley Smith Barney rounding of amounts

[steve at SFI]

The transactions I download from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney come in amounts with 6 decimal points; even the cash transactions. Then when I go to reconcile the account using the data from the broker, the broker amounts are 3 decimals and fund manager's are six and I can't recocile the account because of differences of .000??? for investments.

Do I have my settings wrong?

What can I do to fix this?

[Mark]

Hi steve at SFI,

When you retrieve transactions the number of significant digits displayed in the "Preview Importing Transactions" dialog is controlled by you under "Options / General Preferences... / Display". You can set the number of significant digits to display for prices and share amounts. This doesn't affect how your data is recorded/imported, it just affects how the numbers are displayed.

When you reconcile, FM requires that your share balances match out to 6 significant digits, so it always displays 6 significant digits in the Reconciliation wizard. Even if you only have 3 decimals in your statement, you can still reconcile, as the last 3 should be 0. For example, if your statement says 1.125 shares, in FM you should have 1.125000. If you are reconciling against a retrieved Morgan Stanley statement, this should all be taken care of by FM. It will hide any balanced investments by default, and you should only see the ones that are not in balance to 6 significant digits. If they aren't in balance to 6 significant digits edit your transactions to make sure they are all recorded exactly correct.

[steve at SFI]

That is my point. The data I am down loading comes in using more that 3 digits ie 12.012345 then that same transaction, say its a number of shares, shows up on the broker side of the reconcilation using 12.012 therfore I am out of balance by .000345 and it is not reconciled.

You really shouldn't be working on sunday.
I am a tax guy and this is busy time.

[Mark]

Hi steve at SFI,

I see...

If a transaction comes in as 12.012345, then that is how it was reported from your broker... FM should not be adding any significant digits, but it will record all that are reported by your broker. Usually the brokers report transactions and positions all to the same number of significant digits, so the transactions/reconciliation work out.

To debug what is going on, try retrieving transactions for an account, and take a look at how many significant digits are reported by your broker in the raw data returned by the broker. You can look in the log files to see how it is coming down from your broker. For details on the log files, see the very bottom of this page:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/tintrtv.html

After you retrieve transactions, take a look in the "xmldump.txt" file. You'll see all your transactions and positions in this file. In the "INVTRANLIST" section you'll find all your transactions, and you can look next to the "UNITS" values to see how many significant digits are being reported for each transaction. You can then scroll down to the "INVPOSLIST" section, and see a summary of all your reported positions. Again, next to the "UNITS" will be shown how many shares you own, and you can see how many significant digits are being reported. Hopefully, both sections will have the same number of significant digits? If you want, you can email me this log file, and I'll take a look for you.

[steve at SFI]

Sorry it took so long to get back to this subject. I had to do some taxes!

I can't find the xmldump.txt file. Are you asking me to download transactions inside or outside of Fund Manager?

[Mark]

Hi Steve,

How were you getting transactions when this problem occurred? I assumed you were retrieving them from the broker. If so, re-retrieve, and look in your user's application data\Fund Manager folder, and you should see some log files, one of them being "xmldump.txt". For more info on these log files, see the bottom of this page:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/tintrtv.html

[steve at SFI]

I download from brokers. I downloaded on friday and today and I still can't find the xmldump.txt file any where on C drive. Do the files get deleted after they are imported?

Where do I stop the process to be able to see those files?

[Mark]

Hi Steve,

I believe we resolved this on the phone. Let me know if you still have questions.

[steve at SFI]

I believe some of the errors occurred during the data conversion from Captools to Fund Mqanager. A few decimal errors occurred after the conversion and I don't know why. I have fixed those and that should make it reconcile correctly.

I will let you know after month end processing.