TD Ameritrade Reconciliation Issues

[erlconsult]

I have four accounts at TD Ameritrade that I am maintaining in Fund Manger. I have run across the following issues when reconciling accounts:
1. The TD Ameritrade balance in the reconciliation file includes the accrued interest; Fund Manager does not. As a result the cash account often does not automatically reconcile. Can this be fixed?

2. At times, the statement date as shown in Fund Manager does not match the date used by TDAmeritrade. I have verified this by looking in the log. For example, when I ran reconciliation today, the statement date shows as 5/16/2014, but the INVBAL information in the log shows that the cash balance info is as 5/19/2014. When I logged in to TD Ameritrade, I see that there are two dividend transactions for 5/19 that increase the balance. Shouldn't the statement date reflect the date that comes down from TDAmeritrade?

Thanks,
Eddy

[Mark]

Hi Eddy,

1) I see this with TD Ameritrade as well... Currently, FM doesn't have the necessary info recorded to calculate accrued interest on a cash account. (We do for bond investments, but not cash). It is also not clear that the broker should be reporting the cash balance with accrued interest. This isn't clearly defined in the OFX spec, so I believe some brokers may include accrued interest, while others do not. This may be an area we can look to improve. As a work-around, you could turn on the "Advanced Options..." option "Ignore default cash account errors under X", where you set X to some amount you're willing to ignore, so that you can mark the sub-portfolio as reconciled.

2) The "Statement Date" is read from the INVPOSLIST section, where each position has a DTPRICEASOF value, showing the date for that specified position.

[erlconsult]

Mark,
1. I agree, I think that the accrued interest should not be included in the cash balance. I hope this area can be improved. While the work around you suggest allows the account to be marked as reconciled, it can make it harder to resolve larger reconciliation errors should they occur.
2. The real issue here is that when reconciling, the balances need to reflect the same date. If the balance that comes from the broker reflects a certain date, then the fund manager balance needs be calculated as of the same date. Today, when looking at xmldump, INVBAL Section shows DTASOF 6/2/2014 for each of the items under BALLIST, but in the INVPOSLIST section the DTPRICEASOF values are 5/30/2014. The 6/2 transactions(dividends and foreign tax) have downloaded into Fund Manager. So if Fund Manager had used the cash balance as of 6/2/2014 rather than from 5/30/2014 the cash balance would have reconciled.
Thanks,
Eddy

[Mark]

Hi Eddy,

2) I see the same thing. Fund Manager currently only supports a single date when reconciling. It expects all the balances to be reported for the same date (just like on a regular statement from your broker). It gets this date from DTPRICEASOF, and is ignoring DTASOF. If you look at the DTASOF for the INVSTMTRS response, it also shows 5/30, and not 6/2. So, it appears TD is bringing down cash for one date (6/2), and all the positions for a different date (5/30). I think it makes sense to support multiple dates when reconciling. We would have to somehow show a particular balance is for a different date than the "Statement Date", in the Reconciliation dialog. We could put this in the "Notes" column for line items that are using a different date than the specified statement date.

Thanks for bringing this up, we'll see about improving this in a future release.

[sbfree]

Good morning Mark
I see your comment below from 2014. TDAm is reporting out a cash balance that includes the accrued interest and it keeps the cash balance from reconciling. I don't see where the "Advanced Option" is that you refer to below. Is that still the resolution to resolve this type of problem?
Thanks,
Scott

Hi Eddy,

1) I see this with TD Ameritrade as well... Currently, FM doesn't have the necessary info recorded to calculate accrued interest on a cash account. (We do for bond investments, but not cash). It is also not clear that the broker should be reporting the cash balance with accrued interest. This isn't clearly defined in the OFX spec, so I believe some brokers may include accrued interest, while others do not. This may be an area we can look to improve. As a work-around, you could turn on the "Advanced Options..." option "Ignore default cash account errors under X", where you set X to some amount you're willing to ignore, so that you can mark the sub-portfolio as reconciled.

2) The "Statement Date" is read from the INVPOSLIST section, where each position has a DTPRICEASOF value, showing the date for that specified position.

[Mark]

Hi Scott,

Yes. The "Advanced Options..." button is on the bottom/right of the first page of the Reconciliation Wizard, the same page where you choose the sub-portfolio to reconcile, and the statement source. (It isn't on the 2nd page that shows the share balances).