Blank Investment Account

[DaveA]

We have been trying to trace discrepancies between our Investment Manager Account and our Fund Manger data. We have found that a group of transactions have been loading into the proper Fund Manager Investment, as well as, into a "Blank" investment at the top of the Investment List. This has created an imbalance in 3 items in the list. The BLANK investment, the Yacktman Investment, and the Cash account. (See Attached items.)

[DaveA]

This is a view of the Data File for Yacktman Focus Investment. Note the duplicate entry. (Same as "blank" data register.) All of these transactions were generated by the "Retrieve Transaction" function.
Tried to delete the "Blank" Investment activity. Will come back across with the next "Retrieve Transactions".

[Mark]

Hi DaveA,

1) What sub-portfolios are these "Blank" and Yacktman investments located in? Are they in the same exact sub-portfolio, or different ones? Check the properties of all the sub-portfolios they are in, plus the ones higher up in the hierarchy. You only want a given account number assigned at the lowest level account sub-portfolio, where you have your investments.

2) What is the CUSIP for each of these two investments? See "Investment Properties...". Are they the same? Did the CUSIP of this investment maybe change at some point?

When you retrieve transactions for a sub-portfolio that has the transaction retrieve enabled, incoming transactions are matched up by CUSIP with investments anywhere below that sub-portfolio. You want to make sure you have account numbers and transaction retrieve enabled only at the _lowest_ level of your sub-portfolio hierarchy, and you should not have the same account number on more than one sub-portfolio. For example:

Code: Select all

- Master Portfolio
  - My Broker
    - Acct IRA
    - Acct Regular

You only want to enable transaction retrieve and have unique account numbers assigned at the "Acct IRA" and "Acct Regular" levels in this example. The "Master Portfolio" and "My Broker" should have no account number, and transaction retrieve should be disabled on those.

[DaveA]

Mark...
Both Investments are in the same account. The accounts seem to be set up correctly.

You are right. There was a change in the cusip on the transaction in question (4/2/13). Not certain why. As you can see, the identical info was applied to both the Yacktman and the Blank Investments.

There was a more recent transaction on this account (9/23/14) with the same Yacktman Investment. The name of the Investment was changed and the cusip is another new number (different from the original and the change on 4/2/13). Is the cusip used in the transfer to the appropriate account? If so, how did the newest data go to the proper account?

How do I get rid of the info in the blank Investment. I can't shift the activity to the current Yacktman Investment, it is already there. A retrieval will simply bring it back in, if I simply delete the Blank Investment.

[Mark]

Hi DaveA,

When you retrieve transactions, they are reported by CUSIP. Incoming transactions are matched up with investments based on CUSIP. You might just clean things up manually by closing or deleting whatever is not correct. Make sure the CUSIP values are set correctly. When you do new transaction retrieves, only retrieve transactions back to the date of your last retrieve, so you won't be retrieving for 2013 again. Watch when you do the retrieve, and look in the "Preview" window, to make sure everything is going in the correct investment. You can look in the "New Investment" column to see if Fund Manager thinks it needs to create a new investment for some incoming transactions. If so, that indicates there is no existing investment with a matching CUSIP for that transaction.

[DaveA]

I am able to correct the imbalance in the sub-portfolio that we discussed, however, the only way to prevent the transactions in the blank investment from returning, is to limit the retrieval date. I'm still not certain how the exact same transactions can be in the proper investment and duplicated in the Blank Investment.

I now am closer to balance, however, I have another problem in another of our sub-portfolios. The total for the sub-portfolio on the Portfolio Performance Report does not equal the items (Investments and Cash Account) on the report. All of the Investments are accurate to the Broker statements, the Cash is out by a small amount, but the total of these do not add up to the total displayed for the sub-portfolio by more than $6000.

Mark if you prefer that we start a new topic for this problem I will. I am concerned because we are seeing a correlation between dates and the activities that are causing problems. I'm not certain how the Portfolio Performance Report can have a balance... not equal to the sum of it's parts.

[Mark]

Hi DaveA,

I'm not sure what data is coming down from your broker. You could try into a brand new account, and see what all comes down. If transactions were previously retrieved in a different manner, those old transactions don't get deleted when you do a new retrieve. You may just need to experiment with it. You could also take a look at the "xmldump.txt" log file, and see the details of all the downloaded transactions. Limiting your retrieve by date is a good option though, and generally a good practice anyway.

On the Portfolio Performance report, try turning on "View / Hidden Investments/Portfolios". You may have a hidden item contributing to the totals that you're not seeing.