Fixing OFX investment mismatch
Q:
Hello.
I’m using Money 2007. For the past couple of months now when I download my
active statement from Fidelity with Money I have a weird mutual fund matching
problem that occurs.My portfolio/account includes PTTRX – Pimco Total Returns Institutional.
The imported statement tries to match PTTRX to PTMDX (Pimco Total Return
Mortgage). I have a closed position in PTMDX from a different account in
Money.I’ve tried renaming and chaning the symbol for PTMDX, but that has not helped.
It’s a minor annoyance, but I’d appreciate any feedback or suggestions on
how to resolve this.Thank you.
-jamby
Reply: (Provided by Cal Learner)
I suspect you once told Money, inadvertently, that they were the same security.
I know a fix, but it may be intimidating.
Disassociate Mutual Fund
The purpose of this procedure is disassociate a security from the
download process. The problem this cures is that Money associates
downloaded fund by CUSIP. Renaming and/or changing the symbol is
not sufficient to appear as a different security.
Create dis_mf.ofx by cutting and pasting the portions between the
Begin and End lines (below) into a file named dis_mf.ofx.
I suggest making an extra copy of your Money file as a precaution.
File->Import dis_mf.ofx
Select the appropriate Account from the list.
Select the institution as the actual institution that holds the
account.
You should get the “You have n statements to read” screen. The
account you just imported into should show the name account name
followed by (1). Click that name.
You should get the pop-up that says “Money found the following
investment in your brokerage statement:”.
Select “This investment is already in my investment portfolio with
a different name. I use the following investment in my investment
portfolio to track this investment:”. From the drop-down list,
choose the mutual fund you are trying to get rid of (PTMDX). Click
Next. When you get the “Are you sure xxxxx is the same investment as
yyyyy(Pimco Total Return Mortgage)?”, click Yes.
If you get the screen that says “Do you want to change the ticker
symbol for xxxx in Money from yyyy to zzzz to match the statement,
I suggest you click Yes.
Get the screen that says “The positions reported on nn/nn/nn
statement don’t match those in you Money account. Do you want to
update your account to match the statement?”. I would select No,
but it is up to you. Click Finish.
Now download from your broker for real.
Feel free to suggest improvements to this procedure.
======Begin dis_mf.ofx========
OFXHEADER:100
DATA:OFXSGML
VERSION:102
SECURITY:NONE
ENCODING:USASCII
CHARSET:1252
COMPRESSION:NONE
OLDFILEUID:NONE
NEWFILEUID:NONE
======END dis_mf.ofx ===========
Thanks for the response, Cal
Everything worked fine up until the “Now download from your broker for
real.” step. I downloaded the actual Fidelity statement and the unwanted
PTMDX fund is still there.Once I do that I still get the prompt the ‘Money found the following
investment’ for PTMDX and wants to update my account.I’ve tried it twice with the same results.
Other ideas?
Regards,
jamby
Reply
You have PTTRX that somehow incorrectly matched PTMDX. So in this
process, you said that the new fake investment was the same as
PTMDX, which went as expected.
But when you again downloaded, it did not ask if you already have
PTTRX as another name, but just still assumed it was PTMDX.
Dang. If my recap correctly states it, I am disappointed. I don’t
know why it did not work as hoped.
As with all such unusual things, keep an extra copy or backup of
your Money file in case you want to undo something…. so here is
another way to work around it, since the other way failed:
1. Lets call PTTRX NOWCO and lets call PTMDX OLDCO.
If you currently have NOWCO defined in your file, to the investment
details/settings for that fund. Change the name to ZZZZZ8 or some
such, and *blank* the symbol. If it is not defined, skip this step.
2. Rename the current OLDCO to the name for NOWCO, and change its
symbol to that of NOWCO. Now when the future downloads happen, it
will be for what is now NOWCO.
3. Now to deal with the existing OLDCO transactions:
Create a new OLDCO Fund with the correct name and symbol.
Go back to investment NOWCO and choose InvestmentActivities.
Enter a fake new Buy dated before all other transactions with
quantity more than the total of other NOWCO transactions. That way,
when you change transactions, you won’t have Money complaining that
there are not enough of the fund shares when you change a Buy.
Change each NOWCO transaction that is really an OLDCO transaction to
OLDCO using the drop-down list. Start with the oldest transaction.
Keep going until there are no more transactions that need changing,
except for the fake transaction. Delete the fake Buy transaction.
Similarly, if you have any ZZZZZ8 transactions, change them to the
right security.
Careful. I might have mis-typed somewhere. I hope you see the
pattern rather than just following the algorithm, which could have
mistakes.
-Cal
Reply
Thank you for the follow-up, Cal.That appears to have done the trick. My most recent statement download that
included no new transactions didn’t prompt me with the mis-match.This solution is definitely not for the faint of heart though. Especially
when dealing with a 401k account that has twice monthly transactions plus
dividends for 5+ years. That was one heckuva time consuming task.Well worth it though and I appreciate your taking the time to help me out.
Regards,
jamby
