New Schwab MD+ User. Some initial issues
I'm a long-time MD user and previously kept my Schwab account up-to-date with OFX and then CSV (via iCreateOFX) when OFX was stopped. I just subscribed to MD+ and downloaded all of the transactions since my last manual import about 3 months ago. After deleting duplicates, here are the issues I found. I'm interested to hear from others who made the switch if they've run into the same thing and have solutions:
1) Plaid now downloads SWGXX buys and sells. Years ago OFX stopped doing this, and I converted all SWGXX to cash and used the account cash to equal my SWGXX total. Now that they download buys and sells again, I need to convert my cash balance back into SWGXX so that I can automatically maintain the portfolio from now on.
2) Cash dividends for securities are downloaded as MiscInc, except for the security with "DIVIDEND" in the title which imports as Div. This is cosmetic, but I've been manually converting each MiscInc to Div (and one or two stay as MiscInc because they are cap gains).
3) SWGXX Cash Dividends download strangely as a MiscExp with the Dividend category, resulting in a 0.00 transaction in the register. Double-clicking the transaction shows the correct dividend amount greyed out, but when I change to a Div transaction it goes back to 0 and I have to re-type the div amount. This is not cosmetic but now that I'm caught up should be a once a month item.
4) One of the SWGXX dividends came in as "^ROBINHOOD_PLAID_CASH_SECURITY" which was not found on the Schwab website. It matched a SWGXX div transaction so I manually changed it.
5) After deleting duplicates, my securities match Schwab exactly. However, my SWGXX balance on MD is $884.18 higher than on Schwab. I guess I have to go through months of SWGXX transactions to see what I missed. I'm guessing duplicate DIV entries since the other securities are spot on.
All-in-all I'm happy to back in the auto-download camp after not doing a great job keeping USAA, Schwab and lately AMEX up-to-date manually.
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1 Posted by dtd on 15 Sep, 2024 01:34 AM
Sounds like most of the issues are with SWGXX, I have a similar issue with SWVXX, but basically it's just Schwab being Schwab - they don't have an automatic sell/transfer and it has to be kept separate. Have to make seperate transactions to move to/from cash.
And yes, it's a pain.
I leave miscinc versus div alone, as you say it's cosmetic.
Basically, I like the fact autodownloads work again too, as Schwab threw everyone under the bus with discarding OFX AND discarding manual ofx downloads... (you note USAA did as well) - and lately Amex...
As for 5, do a sort on SWGXX and your duplicates might come up fairly quickly.
Overall, it's a downgrade, but it does work again, with a bit more manual work.
Robinhood_plaid_cash_security - as well as a few other crazy things, just happen to be there (what the heck is BUSCAR?)... I created a cash category called CUR:USD (no real relationship to a currency) for cash things that just pop up (like RobinHood)
2 Posted by Ted on 15 Sep, 2024 02:13 AM
Oh how I wish this worked! There's not a lot in the cash account at any one time, so the dividends are low. Searching by that security since my last full reconciliation got me 21 non-buy/sell txns while Schwab had 22. They're all in the $1-$25 range depending on how much cash was sitting in SWGXX when the dividend was calculated. I don't see anything that looks like an $880 difference.
My choices are 1) to say "who cares, enter a dummy txn to make it all match," then keep up with downloads in the future or 2) download all transactions since my last confirmed match and compare them line by line. I want to just start over with a new balance, but part of me doesn't want to let it go. We'll see what happens and how much time I'm willing to spend on it...
3 Posted by dtd on 15 Sep, 2024 02:40 AM
"who cares, enter a dummy txn to make it all match,"
yeah - i'm not a let it go type person either, though that's what I recommend others do.
I spent a few hundred hours on this 3-4 years ago when I converted from Quicken, over multiple weeks of course, and after the fact, glad I did it to get 35+ years worth of almost perfect data (won't mention the exceptions which i just made inactive)
4 Posted by Ted on 17 Sep, 2024 03:34 AM
I'm keeping this updated in case it helps anyone else. I went back to 4/2022 when I "converted" the SWGXX shares to cash with a dummy transaction. I deleted that transaction and downloaded all SWGXX transactions from Schwab from that date to the present. I used iConvertOFX to make an OFX file that I imported. Schwab records buys and sells of the money market fund except when there's a dividend. So I had to find each dividend and convert it to DivReinvest. I also found a few buys that didn't import even though they are in the website and downloaded CSV.
After working my way through 2+ years of transactions, I got to where the cash balance was zero and the account's securities matched the website to the penny and 3-decimal-place number of shares. Except for SWGXX.
The SWGXX fund had two errors. One is that it is about $300 lower than reality. That means I could have missed some DIV transactions over the years and/or ran into the iCreateOFX bug where sometimes the imported amount is 1/10 of the actual value. I figure I can go line-by-line and see what SWGXX transactions ,if any, I've missed.
The other error puzzles me more. MD's Portfolio View says I paid an average of 1.01 for each money market share, and the current price is $1 like it should be. That makes my total $36 less than the cost basis for the security, when it should always be equal.
I checked every transaction and saw they all have a price of $1, except for the DivReinvest transactions that sometimes have 100 as a price, sometimes 10000. I ran the Investment Performance chart on SWGXX, and it shows the price has been $1 since the beginning with no fluctuations.
I'm at a loss how all of the transactions could be $1 but MD thinks I lost money on the fund over time. If I do a line-by-line comparison to fix the first issue, hopefully I'll find whatever is causing the second.
Anyway that's my progress for now. Having the account's main securities correct is most important, but I'll plug away at the money market fund a while longer to see what else I've missed.
5 Posted by dtd on 17 Sep, 2024 05:18 AM
Thanks for the update.
6 Posted by Ted on 20 Sep, 2024 12:09 AM
Ok this is confusing to me. Somehow DivReinvest transactions are skewing the balance of the money market fund and causing MD to think the SWGXX fund has lost value. Example: the current (incorrect) portfolio view shows a -34.21 unrealized gain for SWGXX. I import the latest transaction, which is a 14.97 Dividend. When I import from Schwab, it comes in as MiscExp for some reason. I change MiscExp to Div and hit save. Now I have a 0.00 Div. Reopen the transaction, change amount to 14.97, save. The unrealized gain stays at -34.21.
If instead I change the imported transaction to DivReinvest and change the amount to 14.97, the unrealized gain changes to -49.18! It's skewing the cost basis of the fund by the amount of the dividend for some reason.
Shouldn't DivReinvest be the same as two separate Div and Buy transactions? Why is DivReinvest causing the cost basis of the security to rise (and therefore the unrealized gain to go lower)? Do I really need to change each DivReinvest back to Div and manually enter a Buy transaction for each SWGXX dividend? I'm stumped!
7 Posted by Ted on 20 Sep, 2024 12:27 AM
Ok DivReinvest was my problem all along!
Short version, a dividend either needs to be separate Div and Buy transactions, or a DivReinvest where the Shares, Amount and Share Price are all filled in and correct.
When a Div is imported, it comes in as an amount without shares or share price, which makes sense. Converting it to DivReinvest changes it to blank shares, amount the same, and share price 100 or 10000. I haven't figured out why it's sometimes 100 and sometimes 10000.
To make it work, an imported Div of 14.97 needs to be converted to a DivReinvest of 14.97 shares, 14.97 amount, and share price of 1.
After fixing all of my DivReinvest transactions, my SWGXX wnet from being $500 off and showing a loss to exactly matching the website.
I would imagine this doesn't happen too often with other accounts. The conditions that seem to lead to this are that Schwab performs a DivReinvest on their end but sends it to MD without the necessary data for it to be recognized as such. MD thinks it's an expense, and changing it to DivReinvest doesn't auto fill in the share amount.
Other accounts I've had would either download directly as a DivReinvest (like TD Ameritrade before it was sold to Schwab), but now that I know how to handle this account I hopefully won't have this trouble again. Sheesh!
8 Posted by dtd on 20 Sep, 2024 12:28 AM
There are some issues with the action steps in financial accounts in some cases.
@dwg knows a lot about these things, so maybe he'll jump in.
------
Seems you figured it out. great.
9 Posted by dwg on 20 Sep, 2024 04:14 AM
A DivReinvest is two transactions in one. A dividend which is the amount part and a reinvest which is nothing more than a buy with a price and quantity.
With Moneydance when you are using Average Cost and post a buy transaction with just a total Moneydance treats it as a capital call, so what it does is increase the cost basis.
Not much Moneydance can do about institutions providing incomplete data.
If the software had a proper Capital call/capital return function then perhaps with no data Moneydance could assume a price of 1 and a calculated quantity on a incomplete DivReinvest, however the developer does not seem keen on making any assumptions with downloaded/imported transactions, perferring to leave it up to the user to make manual corrections.
10 Posted by Ted on 22 Sep, 2024 09:28 PM
Thanks for the detaile info, @dwg. I understand MD can't make assumptions for missing/incorrect data from an institution. I was surprised I didn't see this reported earlier when people started using MD+ to download Schwab again.
Since an investment account's money market has all Buy/Sell transactions downloaded, and Div downloaded incorrectly as MiscExp,it seems there are two choices to keep Schwab accounts perfectly synced to the website: 1) Delete all downloaded money market Buy/Sell and convert the MiscExp to Div (using the account's "cash" as the money market balance), or 2) Convert all the MiscExp to DivReinvest with share price and # of shares manually added.
I think option 2 is going to be less work for me, so that's what I've picked.
11 Posted by dtd on 22 Sep, 2024 10:07 PM
As to reporting this for MD+ and Schwab, I knew that the action steps provided were incomplete, (as they had been when Schwab still had OFX direct connect), I had long ago become ready to change bad ones, so when a couple more appeared with MD+ (given OFX direct connect was totally gone for Schwab), I saw no reason to report it again, as I did mention it 2-3 years ago for OFX...