In microsoft.public.money, Tom Hornbach wrote:

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I agree on the strange definition of what an "account" is.

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duplicated. I had noticed another flaw: The Vanguard OFX file lacks
<ACCTINFO> <INVACCTINFO> ... </INVACCTINFO> </ACCTINFO> tags -- and
maybe more.

See
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...2809f0699dab4c


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I can't verify that portion of your observations. In the
"Vanguard nnnnnnnn RQ.txt" request file I see
<ACCTID> nnnn-nnnnnnnnnnn where "n" represents a digit. The first 4
digits are the fund number. However where the same fund is in two
Money-style accounts, I see the same <ACCTID> nnnn-nnnnnnnnnnn for
each.

To get the "Vanguard nnnnnnnn RQ.txt" and "Vanguard nnnnnnnn RS.txt"
files, proceed to get online statements. But when you see the
Connect button, hold down the Ctrl+Shift keys as you click Connect.
Find the files in the same folder as your Money file.


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That would be part of it-- add in the "Account Type" to what they
are doing. Then a Roth and a Regular would have unique account
numbers. I would rather see them use the paradigm where an account
can contain more than one fund, but their separate "account" per
fund concept is tolerable.

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I seriously doubt that will happen.

I had a similar problem with Vanguard and MS Money. The
basic problem is that Vanguard and Microsoft have two
different incompatible definitions of what an "account" is.

[I think MS's is more appropriate, but still not
correct.] Basically Vanguard has the MS concept of
an "account" overloaded. You may think that the Vanguard
account # is unique to each Vanguard fund you have, but it
is not. In one case Vanguard calls your IRA and
Individual Funds accounts two accounts. However, each of
these Vanguard "accounts" could have multiple funds in
them. Any or all of the funds, even across IRA and
Individual accounts, could potentially have the
same "account" number. When this happens MS Money assumes
that all "funds" with the same "account number" belong to
the same MS Money "account" and will combine them,
especially when using the "direct" statement method of
connection. This is really nasty because then MS may be
combining taxable, tax-deferred retirement accounts, and
taxable accounts together which may cause you problems if
you trust this software to help you do your taxes; on the
other hand maybe Vanguard and Microsoft will pay your IRS
tax penalties and bail you out of jail

My solution was to have Vanguard transfer all of my funds
such that each ended up with a unique Vanguard "account"
number; note EACH fund! The fund number is NOT part of
the "account" number transmitted to MS Money on download;
so if you have, for example, a PMMF and a TEMMF with the
same "account" number but different fund numbers, you have
to have Vanguard change one of them.

Of course the simple solution for Vanguard would be to
concatenate the Vanguard "Fund number", "account number",
and "Account Type (e.g., IRA, Individual) to make them
unique and then download this "real unique account number"
as the account number to MS Money ... but do you think
Vanguard could do this? NO WAY ... they can't even print
the statement date on the first page of my monthly report
and I'm one if their "high rollers." Vanguard needs a
customer oriented web-team ... their customer service
telephone agents don't even know how to contact the web-
support team (they're probably doing training in India now
anyway.) They are spending big bucks to changes hundreds
(thousands) of customer accounts instead of spending 1-
programmer day to fix the problem correctly in the 1st
place. I wonder if Vanguard is "really" the low cost
provider?

Hope this helps ... hope the flame gets Vanguard off their
duffs.

TSH


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I'm pretty confused with Money 2004 accessing my Vanguard
account online. My account is a mixture of IRA,
investment and money market accounts, and Money creates 3
separate accounts in the Account List, but they don't
make sense:

- The Vanguard Group Investment - contains one investment
account and the money market account

- The Vanguard Group Investment #2 - empty

- The Vanguard Group Retirement - contains second
investment account and IRA account

So my questions are:

1. Any clues as to what might be wrong with my accounts,
or how best to set the up? I.e. is the problem with
Money, my Vanguard account, my understanding, etc?

2. Is there a good reference for working with Money 2004
with Vanguard or other investment/retirement accounts?

Thanks!

WH