Reconcile Accts & Reconcile Wizard

[paul3nt]

I have experienced a problem that others in this forum have also experienced: reconciling cash accounts when the same investment exists in two or more sub-portfolios. The problem is enhanced when you have more than one cash type investment assigned to the same sub-portfolio. You know you have the problem when you reduce or eliminate shares in one investment and the cash account doesn't change, or it changes in an unstable way.

To expose and diagnose these type problems, I and staff have begun a huge effort ( 5 portfolios, each containing about 30-40 investments, at least 2 years of many transactions) of reconciling each portfolio each month for the past 2 years.

A piece of advice to users: When setting up and entering any sub portfolio append an i.d. suffix to the investment. e.g. say IBM is in more than one sub-portfolio, enter IBMp1 into port no.1, IBMp2 into the 2nd, etc, do NOT use IBM without any suffix. Also stick to one unique cash-type account per sub-portfolio. ( and if you transfer the investment between portfolios, e.g to meet m.r.d. ira req's - sell the investment in the transferring acct, and buy it in the transferred to acct.)

A simple software addition could make this reconciliation effort much easier: enable the wizard to reconcile on a selected date, not simply on the current date, for a manual reconcile only.

Thanks

Paul3nt

[Mark]

Hi Paul3nt,

Sorry to hear about the troubles. A couple thoughts that may help...

Whenever you modify your cash transactions the balance should change in a precise manner. The share balance of any investment, including cash is simply the sum of all shares transacted in that investment up through a given date. Anything that happens in any other investment does not affect this investment. If you have the same investment file opened in more than one sub-portfolio, whenever you make changes to that investment, those changes are reflected in that investment everywhere it is located. If you have the same investment in different accounts, and what to track it independently, create new investments for each account holding the same security. They will each have their own unique filename (IBMp2, IBMp1, etc), but they can both track the same security, just with independent transactions. Another item that could cause confusion is the idea of a default cash account. When you have assigned a default cash account (Properties of a sub-portfolio), whenever you record any transaction in a non-default cash account investment that uses or generates cash, that money will automatically flow into/out of the default cash account. You can see it in the default cash account as a transaction. For example, if you sell $1000 worth of some investment, you will get a buy of $1000 on the same date in the default cash account.

When reconciling, usually it is best to reconcile at the account level, which is often your lowest level sub-portfolio.

When manually reconciling, you can choose the date. On the screen that shows all the share balances and differences, notice there is an editable "Statement Date" control in the lower/right section of the dialog. You can change that to any date you want, and the displayed share balances will adjust accordingly.