3M GESPP via FIDELITY INVESTMENTS

[El Gordo]

Mark,

Please assist me if you can on this issue. I have been trying everything that I know to resolve the discrepancies on my own, but I am having no luck and I have exhausted all the avenues that I can muster.

I added my 3M employee stock portfolio to Fund Manager about a year ago. This portfolio is managed through Fidelity Investments. The data reported in Fund Manager is inaccurate. I could see this without performing a reconciliation. The OOP cost basis and the total account values were off by $9.5K roughly. Fund Manager was missing something, but when I ran the reconciliation feature, I could not isolate the error.

I deleted this portfolio and shredded all of the stored backup folders for it and I attempted to reenter it via the New Portfolio Wizard. The results keep coming up the same. My OOP Cost Basis is totally incorrect, the End Value is fairly close to being accurate but not an exact match and this makes my account appear that my ROI is 335%! I wish this were true, but we know that it isn't.

I have gone as far as uninstalling the entire Fund Manager program and deleting all associated files from my PC and starting over from scratch. That resulted in no improvement or change.

When I execute the reconciliation feature, there are no errors reported, but I can see that the information is incorrect. When I review my GESPP account at Fidelity I can see that all the transactions and values are present and accounted for.

It appears to me that either Fund Manager is not able to access the complete data from Fidelity or that Fidelity is not communicating with Fund Manager properly. I have many accounts with Schwab and also with Ameriprise and I do not have any problems with retrieving accurate data from these entities at this time.

The error is only present for Fidelity Investments. Please note that I have specified the financial source as Fidelity Investments and not Fidelity NetBenefits. Please also note that the SPAXX (Fidelity Government Market Fund) is involved here, but that the funds processed and reported here are correctly displayed.

Do you have any suggestions? Please let me know as I would most appreciate resolving this error.

Thank you,

El Gordo

[El Gordo]

I am a little confused at this time, but more happy as I did make some progress.

I started over from complete scratch once again and when I created the NEW portfolio I selected the option to manually enter all positions and transactions rather than letting FM do it automatically via the new portfolio wizard at the moment I created this portfolio in FM.

After the MMM stock portfolio was created, I then selected to retrieve my transactions for the entire history of the account, month by month since inception. I identified every BUY of 3M stock each month and confirmed these transactions one at a time. Everything was in agreement. Now I have my 3M stock account (MMM) accurately reported, so I managed to correct that error.

However, now the Fidelity Government Market Fund (SPAXX) account report is off by $9570.80. May I say "Good Grief Charlie Brown" now? I managed to completely cure one ailment but infected a healthy organism in the process.

The SPAXX account is only a holding pen for the contribution monies from my pay slips for a monthly period until they are applied to the purchase of the stock therefore it is really immaterial. But this discrepancy annoys me.

Help?

El Gordo

[Mark]

Hi El Gordo,

When the portfolio or investment values are incorrect, it is important to go and figure out why. You want to break it down into parts. If a whole portfolio value is off, look at each investment's value on that particular date (a Portfolio Value report is helpful here). One or more investment values must be off if the whole portfolio is off. Once you find which investment value is incorrect, look at the share balance and closing price for that date. You can do this in the Data Register under the "Prices" data type. The value on a given date is simply the number of shares owned on that date times the closing price on that date. One or both must be incorrect if the value is wrong. If the price is wrong, either edit it, or re-retrieve for that date. If the share balance is wrong, look at all the recorded transactions prior to that date (use the "All Transactions" data type in the Data Register). The share balance on a given date is the sum of all transactions up through that date. If you can't figure out the reason why the share balance is off because you have too many transactions, try going back to the beginning, and working your way forward, in small date steps. Usually you can find there is either a missing particular transaction, or there was a pattern of problems, like maybe you didn't have the default cash account feature turned on, so your cash account wasn't getting any of the default cash account transactions.

When you reconcile you are only comparing share balances in FM to the share balances reported by your broker for a given date (usually the current date). If your share balances are correct this usually also means your values will be correct, but if they aren't, then you have to look at the closing prices. Remember, value is share balance times the closing price, so both have to be correct.

[El Gordo]

Mark,

Thanks for the tutorial on the Data Register.

I was able to identify what is occurring. FM is not retrieving any of the deposits from my payslips that go into my CASH fund at Fidelity. Although it is retrieving the dividend deposits and the redemptions out of the CASH fund to purchase the stock. This is puzzling to me. Why does it not see ALL of the transactions?

I have manually reconciled this and my cash account is now balanced for the time being.

Is there anything I can change in the FM settings that will allow it to retrieve these transactions automatically? Or is this simply a quirk on Fidelity's part?

Thank you,

El Gordo

[Mark]

Hi El Gordo,

If you retrieve this account for a date range covering one such missing payslip deposit, and then look in the log file, do you see it? See "Help / Logs / Transaction Retrieve (Parsed)..." right after retrieving this one account.

[El Gordo]

Hi Mark,

I am not certain how I should interpret the log report. I executed the retrieve for dates 1/1/19 - 1/31/19 and nothing new appeared in the PREVIEW IMPORTING TRANSACTIONS window.

In the log report I think I see the stock BUY transaction from 1/3/19 for $739.96. There should be a new stock BUY posted sometime in the next few days, but that hasn't occurred yet. I am not sure where I should look to view the CASH account deposits, however and these are what seem to be missing.

Since I have already manually reconciled the accounts I wonder if I will need to wait for the next CASH deposit ~February 8th to post at Fidelity, then run the retrieve and then check the log.

I will attach the current LOG here if you can point out what I should look for and how to interpret it.

Thank you Mark,

El Gordo

[Mark]

Hi El Gordo,

Did you have any of these missing deposits happen within the date range you retrieved? The only transaction in that log file is the buy for $739.96 on 12/31/18.

[El Gordo]

Mark,

I may not be looking at this quite right. Maybe it would help if I just attach two files here. One will be the FM LOG report from 12/1/2018 through 1/31/2019. The other will be the Excel transaction report from Fidelity for all deposits and withdrawals for the last 60 days.

The JOURNAL transactions are the ones which do not appear in FM. I observe that the SECURITY DESCRIPTION for these transactions is recorded as NO DESCRIPTION and the SYMBOL is blank.

The QUANTITY and PRICE fields are also blank, but so are they for the dividends and these seem to appear in the FM LOG.

El Gordo

[Mark]

Hi El Gordo,

All the transactions are correctly being downloaded. I compared all of them, and they are all in the Fidelity download. You'll want to also make sure the money market is assigned as your default cash account, so proceeds/dividends go in there.

[El Gordo]

Hi mark,

I have resolved the issue with the actual 3M (MMM) stock account. If I start from scratch and attempt to retrieve all transactions for ALL DATES, FM won't discover them all.

If I apply "enter the data manually" when setting up the account through the WIZARD and enter the positions myself with zero balance, I can go back to the beginning and retrieve all the transactions month by month and the MMM stock fund reconciles perfectly.

I have not been successful in applying this practice with the SPAXX Money Market account. FM appears to detect every other transaction except my actual cash contributions. It shows my money going out to purchase the stock and it shows interest and dividends, but not my cash deposits.

For the time being I have started from scratch and omitted any sort of a cash account. The money does not remain in the SPAXX account very long, so it really isn't very important to me to track this. I am most concerned with the actual stock account value and the funds going in and out of that. If I retrieve my transactions on a monthly basis from here forward, I think it will be just fine.

El Gordo

[Mark]

Hi El Gordo,

Glad you have it working to your satisfaction. It is a unique case with Fidelity that they will only return up to 90 days worth of transactions in a single retrieve. Did you assign an investment to be your default cash account? If you'd like me to look at why your contributions aren't being recorded, please retrieve over a date range covering such a contribution, and then send or post the log file again.