Tell me about how Quicken matches investment transactions

For Quicken to identify a match, everything about the transaction must be the same: the security, action, number of shares, price, amount, and the ratio if it's a stock split. The dates must match exactly.

•   Tell me how investment transaction matching works

  Quicken uses a scoring system to decide if a transaction is a match, a near match, or new. If you think a new transaction might actually be in your transaction list, find it and check the fields for data entry errors in this order:

  In this field	Verify that the following is correct
  Security	This field must match exactly, or the transaction is marked New.
  Date	The dates must be the same for an exact match. If the dates differ by more than 14 days, Quicken considers the transaction new; if less than 14 days Quicken may mark the transaction a Near Match unless there are additional discrepancies.
  Action	If you have a linked checking account, the action must match exactly.
  Stock splits	The ratio must be an exact match.
  Price, Number of shares, Amount	Any difference in one of these prevents the transaction from being marked Match. When the difference in any of these is too great, Quicken marks the transaction New.

•   Tell me why the Online Center displays different information than my Quicken investment account displays

  The Online Center displays information exactly as it is downloaded from your participating financial institution, including current available prices, holdings, balances, transactions, its representation of bonds and options, and so on. Your Quicken account displays information using Quicken terms and units. Also, you may have manually entered transactions differently from the way they are downloaded from your financial institution.

  You may see differences in how your financial institution handles some of the following information:

  •   Fees, loads, and commissions
    Your financial institution may list several kinds of fees, loads, and commissions as separate transactions. Quicken sums these in the Commission/Fee field in each transaction.
  •   Prices

    For example, you may have entered a price in the transaction list that is more current than the one last downloaded from your financial institution, or vice versa.

    The best way to compare current prices is to get your automatic Quicken price updatesafter the market closes, then download your investment transactions (so that your financial institution also has the closing prices).

    Check with your financial institution for its policy on posting prices for downloaded transactions.

  •   Transaction histories
    Either Quicken or your financial institution may have a longer transaction history. You can manually enter older transactions into your transaction list to make your Quicken account information more complete.
  •   Terms for actions and units

    For example, buy to open in a financial institution statement is translated as Buy in Quicken; a single option contract may be displayed as 100 shares in Quicken.

    Your financial institution is responsible for getting as close to Quicken actions as possible. If you have any concerns with the transactions from your financial institution, call your financial institution.

  •   More detailed information
    The Online Center shows your financial institution's records of your holdings and balances. If you manually enter your transactions into Quicken, you might see more information on the Online Center Holdings tab than you do in the Quicken Portfolio.
  •   Withholding from a Sell
    For tax purposes, your financial institution may withhold a certain amount of money from the proceeds of a Sell transaction. Quicken shows this activity as a MiscExp(miscellaneous expense) item.
  •   Multiple Quicken transactions are required for a single downloaded transaction

    Financial institution transactions sometimes result in multiple Quicken transactions. For example, a financial institution Buy is usually entered as a Buy transaction in Quicken. But if the security is an interest-paying bond, you as the buyer may have to pay accrued interest.

    To account for this financial institution transaction, Quicken requires a second transaction to represent Miscellaneous Expense. You may not have entered a transaction in the transaction list for this second transaction, so you can accept it as a new transaction when it appears in downloaded data.

  •   Multiple transactions are downloaded for a single Quicken transaction

    Often a single transaction that you might record in your Quicken investment transaction list corresponds to more than one transaction in the downloaded data, due to features of your investment account or to the participating financial institution's procedures.

    Here's one example:

    You might record a single check to pay for a stock. That one transaction might correspond to four transactions in the downloaded data: a sale from a mutual fund to provide funds to place in your linked checking account, a transfer of the funds from the mutual fund to the linked checking account, the Buy itself, and the withdrawal from the cash account to make the Buy.

    Quicken matches the withdrawal to the check you recorded. You can decide what to do about the other three transactions, either accepting them into your investment transaction list or deleting them from the Downloaded Transactions list.

    You'll need to check data from your financial institution to see how it sends transactions.

    If a transaction you've entered manually does not match a downloaded transaction, check to see if it resembles a downloaded transaction. If it does, either delete the manually entered transaction, or mark the manually entered transaction as cleared and delete the downloaded transaction (or transactions) to ensure the accuracy of your reports.

  •   Balances in subaccounts

    The Online Center Balances tab shows the subaccount balances as they are downloaded from your financial institution. Quicken does not distinguish between cash and margin subaccounts. If you have a margin balance, the investment transaction list displays it as a negative cash balance.

  •   One date

    Quicken tracks one date per transaction. When you enter transactions manually, you should use the trade date.

    Your financial institution shows the trade date in the transaction and may show the settlement date in the detail window.

    Because of this limitation in Quicken, the cash balance in your Quicken transaction list may be incorrect during the settlement period. The Online Center Balances tab shows the correct balance after you've connected to your financial institution.

•   Tell me about terms used in investment transaction matching

  Click a term below to view information about it.

  •   New transaction

    A downloaded transaction is marked as New in the Downloaded Transactions list when Quicken finds no transaction in your transaction list that matches it. When you select a New transaction on the Downloaded Transactions tab, the transaction list previews the way the new transaction will appear when you accept it. Quicken does not actually add the transaction to the transaction list until you click Accept or Accept All.

    Before you accept a new transaction, check that you don't have a transaction that should have matched the new one.

  •   Matched transactions

    A downloaded transaction is marked as a Match if it is the same as a transaction you've already entered in your investment transaction list. Click the Match transaction on the Downloaded Transactions tab and look at its matching transaction (highlighted in the transaction list) to make sure you agree it's a match. When you accept a matched transaction, Quicken marks the downloaded transaction as Accepted and your list transaction as cleared.

    For Quicken to identify a match, everything about the transaction must be the same: the security, action, date, number of shares, price, amount, and the ratio of the stock split. The dates must also match exactly.

  •   Near match transactions

    Quicken marks a downloaded transaction as a Near Match if it appears to be the same as a transaction in your transaction list, but there's a slight difference.

    Check the date and the share price. In most cases, the downloaded transaction is more accurate than the transaction in the investment transaction list, so you should just accept the downloaded transaction (when it overwrites the list transaction, Quicken retains any additional information that you may have entered by hand). If you think the list transaction is more accurate, you can delete the downloaded transaction. For more information, see Editing and deleting downloaded transactions.