Is an S&S ISA Contract Note authoritative?

TrustyOven

I had a contract note from Charles Stanley Direct, for my S&S ISA (purchase of an OEIC index fund), so I entered the unit price and number of units and the dealing date into my record keeping system, as I always do.

A couple of weeks later I was logged into CSDs website to check on the account charges, and I see in the online statement that I had a different number of units purchased with a different unit price.

Is this normal?
Shouldn't the contract note be authoritative?

I understand that the deal would occur at the next available dealing point, and that it would take a few days to complete (settlement date), but I was under the impression that once a contract note was issued, the unit price is therefore set and the number of units is therefore easily calculated. If the unit price isn't firmly known, then why issue the contract note at this time, why not delay it until it is actually known? What has occured makes no sense to me.

Why this difference between contract note and the online statement?

masonic

Sounds strange to me too. Is the contract note still available online and does it still contain the same details?

The contract note shouldn't be issued until the deal has executed, so the price should be known. It's not inconceivable that between then and settlement, some correction is made, but I would expect at a minimum, if there was an error in the details provided in the contract note, that a new one was issued and that I was alerted to that fact.

colsten

Is your fund of the ACC variety?

ColdIron

I suspect what you are seeing is the result of Equalisation Payments. CSD's online 'cost' column is titled 'Tax Cost' and this will differ from what you think you paid, or the sum of your contract notes. Google it for a more detailed explanation but essentially you bought units between the fund's ex dates and have benefited from income you are not entitled to. For CGT purposes these should be deducted from what you actually paid and CSD try to be helpful by showing the modified 'Tax Cost' to you. This is not authoritative but the full breakdown will be detailed in your annual tax certificate which is. I would be very surprised if the number of units purchased differed from what your contract notes say so check again

If these were accumulation units not held in an ISA you would have some fun tax calculations to look forward to as you would have to factor in these equalisation payments as well as retained dividends on disposal of any units

masonic

ColdIron wrote: »

essentially you bought units between the fund's ex dates and have benefited from income you are not entitled to.

Well I suppose technically, if ACC units were purchased between XD dates, then the OP has paid for income they won't benefit from. Hence the Group 2 units are subject to a capital repayment.

As you say, the number of units should be unaffected.

TrustyOven

Ok thanks for the replies. To answer the questions:

The contract note, issued 11 April 2017:

Bargain Date and Tax Point: 10 April 2017
Security: BP8RYC7 (Fidelity Index World W Inc)
Settlement Date: 13 April 2017
Time: 12:00
Quantity: 78.3698
Price: £1.467399996
ExDiv: Yes
Consideration (and also the Total): £115

The statement says:
Price: 1.46728 (doesn't look like a rounding issue or display to specific number of sig figs)
Settlement date: 13 April
Date: 10 April
Same contract ref as the PDF they issued to me via email.
Same Total price.

Slightly dissapointing that the statement doesn't contain all the info as the contract note document, but at least I have the contract notes so no real worries.

CSDs Portfolio Valuation table shows that for that holding I have 2770.1346 units (or shares whatever you want to call it), but my recordkeeping software shows 2770.12 so there are slight differences creeping in (previous purchases could have also had a slight price change which is propagating into the future).

I've located the contract note documents on CSDs site, and the latest is issued 11/04/2017 19:43:17, which is some 10 hours 36 minutes after my email from them with the contract note.

I have downloaded that contract note just now and this also contains price 1.467399996 XD, so they havn't updated the contract note.

ColdIron

A couple of weeks later I was logged into CSDs website to check on the account charges, and I see in the online statement that I had a different number of units purchased with a different unit price.

My error, I read that as the data in the online valuation table. I pay little regard to the statement because, as you say, it is missing data and has rounded values. I work exclusively from the contract notes and my records reconcile precisely

I was under the impression that once a contract note was issued, the unit price is therefore set and the number of units is therefore easily calculated

CSDs Portfolio Valuation table shows that for that holding I have 2770.1346 units (or shares whatever you want to call it), but my recordkeeping software shows 2770.12

I think this may be the source of your problem, are you deriving the number of units for your records from the statement rather than the authoritative contract note?

TrustyOven

ColdIron wrote: »

My error, I read that as the data in the online valuation table. I pay little regard to the statement because, as you say, it is missing data and has rounded values. I work exclusively from the contract notes and my records reconcile precisely

I think this may be the source of your problem, are you deriving the number of units for your records from the statement rather than the authoritative contract note?

I admit that there may be rounding issues in the software that I use, and I need to investigate that.

But when I mention the statement, I mean, the statement on the CSD website:

https://www.charles-stanley-direct.co.uk/My_Dashboard/My_Direct_Accounts/Portfolio_Valuation/Statement?AccountCode=XXXXXXXX


The price on the website statement is different enough to the contract note that I am not convinced that it's a rounding error or that they are simply displaying to a smaller number of significant figures.

Compare:
From contract note: 1.467399996
From statement: 1.46728

If rounding to 4 DP, I'd expect: 1.4674

How would that ever go downwards to 1.46728 ?


I won't get a chance until perhaps tomorrow evening, but I will enter all the data from the contract notes into a spreadsheet and do some integrity checks with the data from CSDs statements. I'll also update this thread when I complete that task.

ColdIron

I think once you use the contract notes then everything will reconcile just fine

As I say I don't pay much heed to the statement, it's incomplete (no unit quantity), not precise (as you have seen) and wouldn't use it as the basis of record keeping or calculation

Apologies for my equalisation payment red herring

TrustyOven

I should note that the 2770.12 number of units in my software is using the price as per the contract note, not as per the statement, and the price in the statement has gone down a little bit, it would have purchased a bit more units, so that could possibly explain the difference with the 2770.1346 holdingon the portfolio valuation on the site.

TrustyOven

Ok, looks like the sum of all the units from the contract notes equal to the CSD website portfolio valuation total number of units.

So it looks like:
1. CSD statement is not accurate enough (*).
2. the software I use has rounding issues, or I entered some value incorrectly, or both.
3. contract notes appear to be authoritative.


[*]:
1. (statement.purchaseAmount / statement.price) != contract_note.units
2. statement.purchaseAmount == contract_note.purchaseAmount
3. statement.price != contract_note.price