Matching Lots Problem - "You have allocated an incorrect number of shares"

I managed to make this work. It's not terribly intuitive but here's what I (think) I did.

1. Click the top most entry in the left window (the sold shares)
2. Click the top most entry in the right window (the bought shares)
3. double click the "shares allocated" column
4. If the number of shares on the left side is <= the right side enter the number of shares from the left side
4a. click somewhere else
4b. If you have other lines to satisfy on the left side click the next lower line and repeat the entire process. Be careful not to make a mistake or you'll probably have to start over.
5. If the number of shares on the left side > the right side you can only enter as many shares on a line as you have on the right side
5a. Move down the right side entering the max number of shares available on the right side until you use up all of the shares on the left side. Each time you do this it shows you how many shares are still un-allocated (in the "Shares Remaining" field on the bottom right side).

In my case I was always trying to "sell" the oldest shares. Yours could be different if you have a different selling strategy.

I for one vote for making this feature a bit easier to use. I've just converted from Quicken Windows & MAC to MD. The learning curve is a bit steep. Being a programmer helps (I can guess at how things are implemented).

I hope that helps.

Thanks DOUG!

You have described what I had stumbled on, but stated it more clearly than I could have (we DO need something better here).

I suspect the reason it isn't working for me is that the Shares Remaining is zero as soon as I enter the first sale (253.59 shares) which I neglected to say before..... and the Shares available remains at the number originally bought (23456.507 Yes, that's the number, by coincidence!) no matter what I do.

Furthermore, after entering the first sale, the amount of any sale I click on appears in the Shares Remaining field.... a bug?

I've deleted the buy transaction and re-entered it to no avail.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks for taking the time to work on this!

Dick

This would be easier if we were at the same screen together. Let's call the Shares Sold list (on the left side) "A" and the Shares Bought list (on the right side of the screen) "B".

When you click on an A entry you are selecting the sale of a number of shares therefore the "Shares Remaining" field is set to the quantity of the selected line in the A list ( i.e. "Shares Remaining" are the "as yet unaccounted for" shares).

When you enter a number in the "Allocated Shares" column in the B list you are telling it to take that many shares from the selected line in the B list (shares you bought) to account for the selected line in the A list (shares you sold).

If that doesn't satisfy the selected A list line and you try to finish you will get the dreaded "Incorrect number of shares..." message.

I think that the only way to correctly exit from this screen is to account for ALL of the items in the A list. Unfortunately I don't see any way to see what you've done while you're in the middle of it so its easy to get lost (that's why I said to be careful). If you are off by so much as 0.001 shares you will get the error message (and have to start over).

I'm guessing that this is less of a problem once the account is set up and you are doing this allocation every time you make a sale. I had a list of about 50 sales that had to be allocated when I first imported my account from Quicken for Windows. It was very tedious.

So having said all of that and if I understand your issue; I think "Shares Remaining" should go to zero after you enter the first sale because you've satisfied the first sale. You then have to click on the next sale in the A list at which point the "Shares Remaining" will now show the newly selected A list value and you have to click on a B list entry and enter an allocated number of shares. It gets a bit more confusing when you have many small purchases and one large sale (which is typical, my 50 sales turned into a few hundred entries) because you can't enter a number larger than the amount in the B list therefore to account for one item in the A list you may have to enter many smaller items in the B list (all of which sum up to the amount in the A list).

I'm getting a headache just trying to say it! If nothing else it should default the sales to FIFO (first in first out).

I'm not sure it matters but I realized that I've always done this in ascending date order i.e. do the oldest sale first then the next oldest, etc. I'm also working on an old Mac G4 (although I initially used MD on a new WIndows PC running XP). One of the things I like about MD is it seems to be pretty much the same in both environments.

Doug:

Thanks for the extensive message!

I had thought the Shares Remaining field would show the balance of the shares not yet sold (and therefore not yet allocated). Your interpretation is what's happening, so you get the gold star! (This is another example of how the feature is not quite user friendly.)

I have only three sales, so far, so knowing that I need to get them all entered exactly correctly, I think I'll delete them all and start over..... very carefully, as you've suggested in both of your kind replies!

Later!

Dick