Inconsistent rounding?

I frequently find that the cost reported for a purchase differs from the amount deducted from my free funds balance. For example, I just bought 1 V and my history shows it cost £165.59. But my free funds balance has decreased by £165.60. I don’t wish to be thought OCD and really don’t mind so much the missing £0.01, but I have noticed it never goes the other way, to my advantage, ie that I gain an odd £0.01 - and it makes keeping accurate records difficult. It has happened like this many times. The cost was 113.90 USD converted at 1.29166, making £165.600854714. So why does my history show I paid £165.59 rather than £165.60? Can you program the calculations so the cost reported for a transaction and the amount deducted from my free cash are the same? This was Fill ID EOF138688859.

The same thing happened on the very first transaction I ever made on T212. I bought 2 V. The cost was reported as £⁠300.55 and my free funds balance decreased by £⁠300.56. Fill ID EOF131084411. Odd, is it not?

Could this be due to the two numbers being computed at slightly different times, so with different exchange rates? Or is it due to rounding taking place in two different directions?

I wonder what might have happened if I had been buying 1000 V rather than 1 V. Might the descrepancy be 1000 times as great, ie £10, or will the discrepancy never be more than £0.01?

1 Like

I was about to post the same issue. Maybe it’s something that can be reviewed in the future.

For example, my recent FLOA purchase cost 1002.12€ according to the “History” section of the platform and 1002.1015€ according to the “Contract Note Statement from Trading 212” I received by e-mail.

If I either add all the values in “History” or in the “Contract Note Statement from Trading 212” I get a different result than the actual free funds (a difference of 0.05€ in the first case and 0.07€ in the second case).

For taxing purposes I suppose I’ll have to choose one of the two values, even though none of them actually matches the amount subtracted from the free funds.

1 Like

@Richard.W @mmc_pt I’ll look into it.

2 Likes

@David Thanks. In case it helps, I have now received the contract note. It shows price as £165.5995, cost as £165.59. The amount deducted from my free funds was £165.60. This is why I wonder if the problem might be that one part of the system rounds down and another part rounds up.

It could be useful to add to the “History” a starement of the running balance of free funds, following each debit, withdrawal or deposit.

1 Like

@Richard.W @mmc_pt It’s because of the precision when converting currency. The rate in the statement isn’t as precise compared to the account, the account value’s a bit more accurate. Example: FX conversion precision is 4-5 digits in the statement while on the app it’s 8, that’s what causes the difference.

We’ll increase the precision in the reports but as a rule of thumb - account values are always correct.

@David, even so, there’s still a difference to the free funds. I second @Richard.W’s suggestion to have the running balance of free funds for each movement in the account’s history.

P.S.: I still have few transactions, so it’s easy to see that the account’s history doesn’t check by 0.05€.

1 Like

@David I just made a transaction that did not require any currency conversion. It was for 10 shares of IITU at cost of £99.57. My free funds balance decreased by £99.66, an extra £0.09. At least I think so by my records, though I might have made a mistake. Unfortunately, the platform does not provide me with any way to look back to see what was my free funds balance before this transaction, so I have to rely on my own records. It really ought to be possible to look back and check the additions and subtractions from my free funds balance, no?

The LSE web site is showing the record my trade as

10:07:44 20-Feb-2020 995.75 GBX 10 99.58 Off-book ACTX XOFF

Notice the value is £99.58, but my “History” shows £99.57. So it is something more than an exchange rate issue, no? I am curious to understand what is meant by “Off-book”,

@mmc_pt Could you DM me with more details? I’d like to have a more in-depth look.
@Richard.W I doubt it’s possible that your free funds would decrease by £99.66 when the order was executed for £99.57, double-checked with LSE. Your free funds do match exactly with the cost of investment.