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Recurring Placeholders after 2016 Upgrade

unknown

I upgraded from Quicken to Windows Version 2016 from Version 2013 a few months back. Version 2016 imported all my data and history no problem but I have one very annoying 'feature' that I cannot solve.
Every time I update from TD Ameritrade (multiple accounts) I get a long list of placeholders, one for every position I own. I have tried entering the missing transactions, I have tried just deleting them and every time I make sure my Quicken holdings match my TD Ameritrade Account holdings perfectly. Then if I update again in the same day, no placeholders are created. But if I wait one week, then all the same placeholders are created again.
This has been happening for months and I am frustrated by all the extra work to remove them every time.

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unknown

I should add that before the upgrade, Placeholders made more sense, if there was a Placeholder it was for a new position and once I entered the transaction details it would go away and not recur again, so it seems like a new bug or feature of Quicken 2016. Or it may be the import of the old version file to the new version file?

markus1957

What happens if you go to Tools>Online Center and do a "Compare to Portfolio" for the account in question? Does it say Quicken and TD reported holdings agree?

unknown

Are the placeholders for zero shares?

There a bug in Quicken 2016 which adds zero placeholders for even security every time there is any activity in the account.

The workaround is to turn off this option:
Edit -> Preferences -> Downloaded transactions -> Automatically add to investment transaction lists

This will mean that all the transactions will have to be accepted through the Downloaded Transactions tab.

Also note while they have not fixed this problem, if you open the Placeholders tab, they have added a "Delete All" so you can get rid of these bad placeholders in one go.

unknown

This is very frustrating. In my UBS account with over 70 positions I've been trying for days to resolve placeholders with a zero balances so I can track the p/L for each stock position. I have been reading many of the messages in this Forum relating to placeholders. Based on what I read, I set Preferences to Do Not Enter Placeholders. Then I tried to delete the accumulated 21 placeholders in this account. I found that "Delete All" in fact deletes only those entries on the screen. At first I thought that Delete All was doing nothing - then I noticed that the dates of the entries were advancing with each Delete All. Apparently, Quicken inserted 21 duplicate Placeholder transactions for every holding EVERY TIME I DID A DOWNLOAD from my broker! This means I had to Delete All over and over from mid-2013 to date . That finally done, I tried to get one single stock purchased back in 2007 to appear with the proper share count and purchase price. I could not get this to work - at one point the title line of the placeholder with the correct number of shares had an overstated purchase price, while the next line had the same number of shares with correct price..... The bottom line was zero.

I have been a Quicken user for over ten years, mostly in accounts with only a few positions. It keeps my checking and savings accounts just fine. Maybe the problem is with UBS - initially there were lots of errors in the transmissions, starting with a complex series of entries relating to a change in account number at UBS because of a change in my will. These errors included listing some shares as a negative number, and in-loading shares from an account at a different broker.

Unless someone can outline a solution that works, I am going to give up struggling and do nothing more than ensure that my account totals are correct by making whatever adjusting entries are necessary. I will rely on downloads directly from UBS into TurboTax account at year's end.

unknown

I'm not exactly sure what option you are talking about when you say "Do Not Enter Placeholders" I have never seen such an option. Maybe you are referring to:

Edit -> Downloaded transactions -> Compare account portfolio after download -> Edit Settings and deselect the accounts you don't want it to do the compare on.
Which in theory should mean that it shouldn't put in any placeholders, because it is the compare that triggers that.

Well unfortunately part of the bug is that even if you have deselected the account for doing the compare, if the automatic entry is on, it will put in the zero share placeholders (basically ignoring this settings).

I didn't know about the fact that the Delete All is a page at a time thing. I never tested it on lots of placeholders.

But back to your last paragraph.
Here is my take on it.
A placeholder is to securities as a balance adjustment is to a reconcile.
As in if you do a reconcile and it doesn't balance then there is a transaction(s) that either are missing or extra or of the wrong amount. And the proper procedure is to find and correct them, and not accept a balance adjustment. Or in the case of reconciling to online balance, making sure that is in fact using the right balance.

A placeholder was put in for the fact that what is in Quicken disagrees with what was downloaded from the financial institution as far as what number of shares you have in each security on a given date.

In the case of a zero share placeholder there is in fact no disagreement, so they can be deleted without affecting anything. And you want them out because not only will a lot of them slow down the performance of Quicken, you won't get some numbers calculated in the portfolio view.

Now for the placeholders that are not zero shares, that is a disagreement, and the source needs to be found.

Sometimes the "source" is the financial institution. For instance Vanguard tends to send out the transactions before it updates the balances later in the day. So I know that if I download a buy at say 6PM and I get at request to put in a placeholder (I get the request because I have automatic transaction entry off), I know that I shouldn't put in the placeholder, just wait on it. Because if I update say at about 11 PM the balances will now be right and no request to put in a placeholder.

For this case it is "temporary". It is possible for other financial institutions they have it wrong for "longer" or "permanently".

Now past all this. The whole purpose of this operation is a "reconcile of the shares on a given date".

So basically if you can remove all the placeholders, and still have the right amount of shares in the account on any given day, then that was the end goal and nothing else needs to be done.

But notice I did say "on any given day". As in even if you have your shares right now, there might be days when they are not in agreement with the financial institution's. For instance the transaction for a sell might be off by a few days.
For most purposes this doesn't really matter. But in a taxable account where you have a sale near the year hold mark, it might.

unknown

I will try this and advise if this provides any improvement.

unknown

I think I already tried this after searching on other blogs. My wife is on the computer where Quicken runs now, so will check it out Sat morning.

Brent

In many cases Quicken just makes up the placeholder. There is no disagreement - things balance perfectly between Quicken and the institution, which I'm not actually downloading from anyway. I'm currently trying to overcome an issue where Quicken decided to double the number of shares I own. There is no ability to delete the placeholder on the tab, as is referred to above (2016R8). Occasionally I can get it to go away, but the instant that I try to then sell the shares it is reinserted and I am unable to actually sell the shares, just enter a transaction that has no effect whatsoever. The placeholder does not even show in the ledger or the securities transaction record, it just sits there and gums up the ability to do anything to the account. I've tried closing & restarting Quicken to no effect. I'm basically going to have to delete the entire account, and I don't know what that will do to the transactions going into it (401k account). They really need to fix this.

unknown

First dealing with you not seeing placeholders. Placeholders are considered "hidden transactions". You will not see them or the Delete All button unless you have the option to turned on to see the hidden transactions:
Edit -> Preferences -> Investment transactions -> Show hidden transactions

Without being able to see the placeholders, a lot of things might seem "screwy". As in you try to put in transactions like buys/sells to adjust things, and they have no affect because the placeholders are basically overriding them.

With the exception of the zero shares bug, Quicken doesn't "make up the placeholder".

That isn't to say that shares in Quicken and then shares at your financial institution's website can agree, and still you will get placeholders suggested.

Why? Because Quicken doesn't access your financial institution's website to check. What is does is look at the OFX data sent from your financial institution when you download transactions. If that data is wrong, Quicken is going suggest the wrong amounts for the placeholder(s).

The proof one way or another would be in the OFX logs. Or if you download a QFX file in that. The QFX file is the "response" from a OFX request for the transactions and balances.

You can see the OFX logs by selecting: Help -> OFX log...
They are a bit hard to read, the newest logs are at the bottom.
The share balances should look like: <UNITS>36.043

unknown

Thanks for your response to my outburst. The Compare after Downloading account selections are and have been left unchecked. The Delete All button is available even with Transactions Hidden. When I selected show Hidden Transactions, instead of the 21 I have been wrestling with there were over 2900! Since I had made several backups, I selected Delete All. After several moments all of these were gone, but checking my Holdings I saw that the Account Balance had about doubled! Oh, that this were so. As an experiment I tried adjusting a stock that had been transferred in from the old account - there were only two entries, one of which had the correct share balance with the correct basis - the other, of a different date also back in 2013, was wrong. I decided, what the hell, to delete the incorrect entry. I then did an update from my broker. The current stock value was correct, but the basis was not.

It was apparent that, having deleted all the placeholders, it would be necessary to go through all 70 or so holdings and correct each one individually - if I could figure out how to do it!. Other than having the satisfaction of an impeccable accounting file, I can see no real advantages as long as the UBS records are accurate. However, I remain open to suggestions.

unknown

Well it might "pick the least evil".

Here is some considerations.

If possible I would remove as many of the placeholders as possible because in fact the number of transactions in an investment account affects the performance.

To me personally the cost basis is "nice to know" information in a non taxable account. It is one of the first things I would "sacrifice" if I had to pick between different "evils". I personally judge my "returns" more on "net worth growth".
The way Quicken calculates the cost basis/returns is exactly what you need for taxes, but it can be misleading if you want to look at your returns as I put XXX in and I got YYY out.

unknown

P.S. Even for taxes the ultimate "record" is now the brokers. In the past the brokers didn't report to the IRA on cost basis and and such. Now they do. If you were to find a disagreement between Quicken and your broker you would have to get your broker to change their information if it was some how wrong (unlikely, more likely the wrong information would be in Quicken).

So it is more about what is convenient to get the information transferred into the tax program.

unknown

After all this work and discussion, I've decided to leave that account as it is, with all the 2,900+ placeholders (including the 23 that are visible). I will ensure that the current Quicken account is accurate overall even if it does not report individual unearned gains completely because of the placeholders. The monthly brokerage statement reports gains both earned and unearned, so I believe this will give my Turbotax program sufficient information for my 1040. Maybe one day Quicken will get this straightened out . Thanks for your participation in this discussion.

unknown

I have three accounts at TD Ameritrade, all in Quicken with Direct Connect setup.
I ran the Tools>Compare to Portfolio and all are in 100% agreement.

unknown

I already have this feature disabled
But the 0 Shares Transactions still insist on showing up every time.

Brent

Michael,

I did run into one solution elsewhere that worked for me (but I only had 1 placeholder transaction, not thousands.) I'm in Quicken 2016. Go to Reports > Banking and run the Transactions report. It defaults to chronological, and I found my placeholder down near the recent transaction (it had popped up the day I sent the message.) I was easily able to delete the transaction from there, and it removed it and my account was back to normal. I could sell the stock and transfer the proceeds without Quicken trying in insert another placeholder and not change my account balance.

Brent

unknown

Thanks for your note. I discovered the transaction reporting strategy the other day while browsing through one of the great multitude of user questions and comments about Placeholders. After making a good backup, I experimented with deleting zero placeholders for all of 2016. At least, with hidden transactions revealed, it was possible to delete them by groups. Careful as I was to avoid deleting any that were not zero balance, I must have failed in this, because when I was finally done my account balance had increased significantly. I was still faced with interpreting and adjusting the multitude of placeholders with a dollar value. I gave up for the day - overall, this account has over 2,700 placeholder transactions.
I tried today again, but without success. As I related in an earlier message, even a very simple holding with only two purchases and one sale refused to be balanced - one purchase of over 200 shares persistently was recorded as 11 shares in the Placeholder window - but correctly in the Transaction Register!. Finally, I restored the account to my most recent backup.
I am at my wit's end. The account was balanced on December 31, 2015. Each month is close to being balanced, being off well under 1%. I am going to try to keep the overall account at this level of accuracy, and rely on the annual transmission of tax-related data from the brokers to prepare my tax return using TurboTax. The amount of time I have spent on this is ridiculous- fortunately I am retired and patient.

Brent

Sometimes it's like whack-a-mole, you delete one and Quicken seemingly creates another to replace it. Hard to find the right one, especially with your volume. Good luck with it.

unknown

What appears to happen is that every time I downloaded data, the placeholder was repeated. As I updated my account several times per week, for the year I had to delete repeating identical (except for date) placeholders as many as 60 times.

unknown

Good to know about the glitch. I am in placeholder hell with my 3 accounts, 2 are IRAs. My "delete all"'s seem to be working to keep the "placeholders for +0 shares" from staying in my transaction list, but in searching ways to prevent them, I did find that on a few of my securities the Lot tallies under "holdings" did not add up to the number of shares in that same holdings tab. The # shares in the holdings tab matches the transactions, the security detail view, my broker statements, and any security reports. There are simply lots missing, even though the total tally is correct. I cannot seem to find any way to fix this since the transactions are correct but the lot gives a different number than in the transaction!
I will continue to try to block the placeholders as they come up, but i'm not optimistic. I do reconcile with the brokerage statements monthly, so luckily am not in quite as bad a quagmire as poor Halpern!