Vanguard update quandary

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Greetings:

I am an FM newbie so this problem may be an operator error.
For the past two months I have been able to successfully download Vanguard transactions (running on XP). Yesterday 1/3/15, I downloaded new transactions and did not see those I expected (orders executed on 1/2/15). I tried again today and I still could not see the 1/2/15 orders. I then closed the current portfolio and created a new one to which I downloaded all account transactions from scratch. This time 1/2/15 orders appeared as expected.
Any explanations as to what went wrong, how to fix the original portfolio file and how to avoid a similar issue in the future?

Thank you,

Alex

[Mark]

Hi Alex,

Maybe somehow those transactions were already downloaded? On the transaction retrieve dialog, notice there is an option "Skip Transactions Already In Fund Manager". You can try using your regular portfolio, and retrieving with that option OFF. On the Preview screen if you see your 1/2 transactions, but you don't see them when that option is ON, you know those transactions are already in Fund Manager. You can use the "Back" and "Cancel" buttons on the transaction retrieve dialog, to test both cases, and cancel without completing the import of duplicate transactions.

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Thank you for the note Mark!

I have tried what you have suggested and the results are identical.
However, I read somewhere that FM uses an IE component related to SSL; further, that FM's use of XP's IE component causes Fidelity downloads to fail (I experienced this problem first hand). The solution is to move to Windows 7, which I did not because Vanguard is my main account.
This is not the case for me for Vanguard for 2014.
I wonder whether Vanguard now has the same problem.
Also, upon further testing I realized that I was getting a single transaction from 2015 which must have snuck just under the time Vanguard's system had changed (theoretically).
Is there a way of analyzing what happens at the protocol level?

Best Regards,

Alex

[Mark]

Hi Alex,

Since you were able to retrieve the transactions when using a new portfolio, the problem isn't going to be related to the SSL issue. The SSL issue happens only when you have IE6 or earlier installed, and with certain brokers. As long as you have IE7 or later, you are fine.

You can see the raw data received from the broker, by viewing the log files in:

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

(or under XP it is: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Fund Manager)

The returned raw data is in ofxretr.txt and the human readable version is xmldump.txt.

It is probably easier though to just use FM to see what data is coming down. You can make use of that "Skip Transactions in FM" option to help see everything coming down, whether you've retrieved it already or not. If you're still seeing a difference between what is retrieved in the 2 different portfolios, double check that your username/password/account # are all identical between the 2 cases.

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Hi Mark,

It turns out that there was a time lag of a few days until I was able to download the transactions.
I would theorize that one cannot download the transaction until after it is settled, which makes sense; pilot error then!

Thank you nonetheless,

Alex