Quicken FAQ: Managing Placeholder Entries in Quicken for Windows
Quicken Kathryn
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If you use Quicken for Windows to track investments and download transactions from your broker, it’s likely that you have encountered “placeholder entries” in Quicken. This article is intended to explain what they are and how they work.
Quicken Kathryn
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If you use Quicken for Windows to track investments and download transactions from your broker, it’s likely that you have encountered “placeholder entries” in Quicken. This article is intended to explain what they are and how they work.
What is a placeholder entry?
Placeholder entries are automatically-generated “filler” transactions that sync up your history of investment transactions with the per-security share amounts reported by your broker.
When and why does Quicken create placeholders?
What, if anything, do I need to do about placeholders?
Depending on what you are trying to accomplish in Quicken, it may be OK to ignore placeholders – your current investment account values will be correctly in sync with your broker. However, when Placeholders are present, Quicken doesn’t know the true cost basis and acquisition date for the affected securities. As a result, the Portfolio view and some investment reports will show an “*” and a note indicating that certain values, such as Capital Gains and investment returns can’t be calculated.
If you want to be able to do complete investment tracking, you may wish to eliminate placeholders.
How can I get rid of placeholder entries?
You can resolve placeholders by adding historical “Bought”, “Sold”, “Shares Added”, “Shares Removed” and “StockSplit” transactions to your investment register so that the Placeholder amount becomes zero, and then deleting the Placeholder transaction. You can do this yourself, or let Quicken help you by using the “Enter Missing Transactions” function, which is accessed by opening the “Placeholder Entries” tab at the bottom of the investment register, clicking on a Placeholder, and then clicking “Enter Cost”. In either case, you will probably find it helpful to ‘un-hide’ Placeholder transactions in the investment register – see #2 below.
After you click “Enter Cost”, you will see that the “Enter Missing Transactions” window provides two alternatives for resolving the placeholder entry. If you click “Estimate Average Cost”, you will be prompted to estimate the cost basis for the security position at the date of the placeholder. If you already know the cost, or are willing to make an estimate, this method is simple and quick. The drawback is that although performance reports will be correct, Quicken still won’t have a complete record of the cost basis for tax reporting purposes and the placeholder will still be present. (In this scenario Quicken will still display the placeholder transaction with an option to “Enter History”). If you click “Enter Missing Transactions” instead, you are prompted to provide the missing items of the full transaction history leading to the security position at the date of the placeholder.
When this has been accomplished you can scroll to the placeholder in the investment register and delete it.
How can I control the behavior of placeholders?
Summary
Placeholder Entries help keep your Quicken investment accounts in sync with your broker. If you want complete investment tracking and reporting, you may wish to resolve and remove placeholder transactions. We continue to look for ways (such as suppressing near-zero placeholders and offering Delete All) to help users manage placeholders to get the results they expect.
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