Periodic Investment Scramble

[Altman]

My workflow includes reconciling quarterly. What I have found recently is that some previously reconciled sub accounts now have transactions from other subaccounts creating a massive mess.

What is the cause of this problem? Does it have something to do with my machine shutting down without saving the portfolio or investments, (this did occur during a storm induced power surge)

I currently use Vista and 9.0 Advisor version

[Mark]

Hi Altman,

Shutting down without saving should not cause this.

How are you importing transactions? Are you importing, or manually entering? Do you have unique account numbers assigned to each sub-portfolio? Are you sharing the same investment file among multiple sub-portfolios? If you have the same investment in multiple accounts, each account should have its own investment file for this security, so the transactions are kept separate. For more on this, see:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/faq_ ... tments.php

[Altman]

Due to the number of accounts I always download from the custodians.

Not all of the subportfolios have account numbers. This happens when a client has more than one account. The client level subportfolio does not have an account number and I dont download at the client level but at a level below the client --- each of these accounts at this lower level has an account number and separate retrieval settings.

But indeed the problem is only associated with duplicate investments. Somehow I need a way to find these problematic investment files.

[Mark]

Hi Altman,

So, you are 'retrieving' directly from the custodians? You're not downloading to a supported institutional broker/dealer interface file, and then importing, right?

I'd suggest doing this to debug the problem.

0) Save everything, and turn off "Options / Save Investments/Portfolio on Exit". This will allow you to experiment, without saving anything on exit.
1) Find a mis-placed transaction
2) Delete this transaction
3) Re-retrieve, and try to reproduce having the investment go into a wrong sub-portfolio.

If the transaction does again go into this wrong investment, see if this investment is also located in another sub-portfolio that you did retrieve. It may be that you've put the same investment file in 2 different sub-portfolios somehow. When you update an investment file in any sub-portfolio, that same investment file will also be updated in any other sub-portfolio that it is located in. To see if you have this investment file located in more than 1 sub-portfolio, you can create a custom report with "Path and filename". Create the report at your top sub-portfolio, and turn off sub-totaling. Sort the report by this Path and filename under the "Sort" menu after creating the report. Scroll down to the investment in question, and see if the same path/filename is open more than one time.