Manually Match Specific Lots

The Specific Lot matching method lets you see all of your tax lots and closing trades, including voluntary corporate actions, and manually match lots to trades. Specific Lot is available for today or a specific position, but is not available as the Account Default Match Method.

You can make changes and save them until 8:30 PM ET on any given day. The amount of time remaining until 8:30 PM is displayed in the upper right corner of the screen.

To use the Specific Lot match method to manually match lots to trades

  1. Log into Client Portal, then select Reports > Tax Optimizer.
  2. Select the Trading Day. You can select the current trading day or the prior trading day. Note that if you are launching the Tax Optimizer on a Saturday or Sunday, you will only be able to select the prior trading day.
  1. Click Launch to run the Tax Optimizer.

  1. For multi-account structures, select an account from the Account drop-down in the Information Bar.

  1. Select a security type by clicking the appropriate tab (Stocks, Options, Bonds, Warrants, SSFsor Funds). Note that Options include Structured products and Bonds include bills.

The list is updated to include only those positions of the selected security type.

  1. For any symbol listed, change the lot-matching method to Specific Lot by clicking the Method drop-down menu then clicking Specific Lot.

  1. Click the Show button for the symbol to open the Tax Lot Details panel. (The Show button changes to a Hide button.)

The Tax Lot Details panel displays all open lots and closing trades for the selected symbol, as well as the profit and loss for each open lot that is closed under the current matching method.

  1. Click the Edit button in the Tax Lot Details panel for a specific lot to display the Match Details window, which displays the open lot you selected and all possible sales that could be matched.

Only those lots that are currently open (O appears in the Open/Close column of the Tax Lot Details panel) and unmatched (a quantity appears in the Unmatched Open Quantity column) can be manually matched.

  1. In the Match Details window, for each sale that you want to manually match to the open lot type the number of shares or contracts in the Matched Open Qty field, then press Enter.
  • The Matched Open Qty and Unmatched Open Qty for the current working lot is updated at the top of the Match Details window.
  • The P/L is calculated and applied to the session, and displayed in the current window as well as in the main Tax Optimizer window.
  • The closing trades and available quantities to match are also refreshed.
  1. To undo ALL manual matches for a selected symbol, open the Match Details window for a specific lot, then click Reset SYMBOL (where SYMBOL is the current working symbol) to remove all Matched Open Quantities that you previously entered.
  2. To clear only the matches for the current working open log, click Reset Lot.
  3. At any time, click Close to close the Match Details window without making any manual changes.

The Tax Optimizer will not let you save your changes until all available lots for a specific symbol have been manually matched.

  1. To change Today's Match Method to Specific Lot, click the drop-down menu next to the Today's Match Method label, then click Specific Lot.

The match method for all symbols listed changes to Specific Lot, except incoming short positions.

  • You must now manually match all sales to lots in the Match Details window as described in the previous steps.
  1. Click Save to save your changes, or Refresh to update the data in the Tax Optimizer without saving your changes.

    Saving your changes applies the selected matching method(s) to the actual sales for tax purposes.

If you select Specific Lot as your match method but you do not manually match available lots, then close the Match Details window (or exit the Tax Optimizer) without saving, a message appears to remind you that there are unmatched lots and that the default matching method for today will apply.

Therefore, if you select Specific Lots, be sure to manually match all available lots then save your changes, or Today's Match Method will apply to those lots by default.

For more information