Vanguard Brokerage Reconciliation fails

[BobT]

Greetings
I'm current on software:
Pro Version: 12.6
Quote Mod: 450
Trans Mod: 180

Since approximately Oct 14, reconciliations with Vanguard Brokerage accounts have failed to complete; the message is "Position Information not available in OFX data." FYI my non-brokerage reconciles work fine, as do reconciles with other institutions, e.g. Fidelity.

It also appears that transaction retrievals from VG Brokerage accounts are not functioning correctly either--November transactions (e.g. dividends) are not appearing when I download Brokerage transactions (though no overt errors occur).

I have not changed anything in terms of settings during this time, but I have updated components of the FM software.

Would appreciate guidance as to whether this is a Vanguard problem, an FM problem or something I can address on the user side. Thanks

[Mark]

Hi BobT,

I just test reconciled a Vanguard brokerage account from here, using that same version, and it worked properly. This implies it isn't a global problem with Vanguard, but maybe it is specific to your account. To debug this more, take a look at your "xmldump.txt" file right after you do a reconcile on this account. This file will be located here:

C:\Users\<username>\Appdata\Roaming\Fund Manager

The "AppData" folder is hidden, so you need to display hidden files/folders. This file should have a date modified of just right when you retrieved. If you edit this file in Notepad or any other text editor, see if it contains the section INVPOSLIST. If you'd like help, you can email us this log file.

[BobT]

Mark

Thanks for the quick reply. I ran reconciliation against the non-brokerage portion of a VG account, set aside the dump file, then ran reconciliation against the brokerage side. Big difference as you'll see. Attached is the dump for the reconciliation that errored out.

I tried to download transactions, then looked at the dump file. Essentially the same--ends abruptly at the same place.

Hopefully this will tell you what the problem is...

[BobT]

Mark

I have resolved the problem, or at least have a work-around.

At some point in the past, VG revamped its brokerage account numbers (I think when they brought this function in-house?) and started using all numeric ids for their brokerage accounts, so for example AVV12345 became 12345678. Of course this was an FM issue for me, but I figured it out and changed to the new acct #, which by the way, is prominently displayed on VG's site.

For grins, I just tried the 'old' acct number (the AVV12345 style) and it worked. Transactions which had not been showing up downloaded, and the account reconciled. I have 4 VG brokerage accts and so far three are now working. (The other one is a newer acct and I'm not sure if I ever had an AVV style acct #. So I haven't addressed that one yet.)

So that's the story. I'm back working but it sure seems odd to me that the 'old' account #'s are retrieving data and the 'new' ones are not. And this all started, based reconciliation history, in mid-October. If you or anyone else has insight into this, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks.

[Mark]

Hi BobT,

Interesting, glad you got it working, and thanks for sharing your learnings. Some OFX servers support requesting a list of account numbers associated with a login ID. Unfortunately, Vanguard's server does not support this, so you do have to enter the account number correctly, as they have on their OFX server. It sounds like in your case their OFX server has your accounts listed under the old account numbers for some reason. If you'd like to learn more, you may want to call Vanguard, and ask them about this. To get them to understand what you're doing, you may need to tell them you want to retrieve transactions with Quicken, and ask them for the account numbers you're supposed to be using. Fund Manager and Quicken both use the same OFX interface provided by Vanguard, but the Vanguard customer support person may be more familiar with the issue if you mention Quicken as opposed to Fund Manager.

[BobT]

Mark

Thanks for the tip. I do have one account that is not working and I have no "alternative" account number to use. I'll call VG and see what they tell me.

BobT