Working the queue of positions that will not reconcile
Share counts agree until a corporate action lands. A spin off shows up at the custodian as a new symbol and in the accounting system as nothing. A fund converts a share class and the old lots stay open. A transferred position arrives with no basis, so realised gain figures are wrong in a way that surfaces at tax time rather than at the break. Breaks cluster by cause and not by account, and one cause repeats across every household holding that security. Grouping them by cause is most of the work.
The account application comes back not in good order because of a missing initial, and the whole signature cycle runs again.
The custodian holds the assets and is the record. The advisory firm runs a relationship system alongside it, plus a portfolio and reporting system, plus a planning tool, and the same client identity is entered into each because there is no shared key between them.
- Addepar
- Orion
- Excel
When this is the wrong thing to build
Pick something else if the book holds model portfolios of broad market funds where corporate actions are rare. The break list will be short enough to clear by eye, and grouping logic costs more to maintain than the reading it replaces.
The constraint that shapes it
Books and records rules require preservation of communications relating to advice and recommendations, and to the movement of funds, in an accessible place, for a defined period with the earliest portion held locally. More on how this sector works.
Two sources of truth. One queue of the rows that do not line up. Read what this shape is, or start from one of these.
- Rebuilding an annual operating expense reconciliation from the lease
- Reconciling a broker trust account three ways every month
- Matching a closed transaction back to the lead that produced it
- Collapsing two overlapping MLS feeds into one property list
- Widening a conflicts search past exact spelling
- Rebuilding a billable day from the trail the systems already keep
- Why does a spinoff create a reconciliation break in portfolio accounting?
- How do I fix missing cost basis on a transferred position?
- What causes share counts to disagree with the custodian after a merger?
- How do I group reconciliation breaks by cause instead of by account?
- Why did a share class conversion leave open tax lots behind?
Back to wealth management, or see how this is priced and scoped.