adjust share balance doesn't work

Bob Morton

My 401k investment balances are all screwed up.  I have tried to adjust share balance, but it does not work as I would expect it to.  I get a placeholder entry but my share balance does not "adjust" by the right amount.  Two examples: 1) quicken shows that I hold -1,100 shares of a fund (impossible).  I go to enter transactions, adjust share balance, select the fund, enter the correct number of shares owned (0), then enter.   Nothing changes except for a placeholder entry that does nothing.  Holdings still show -1,100 shares.   2) quicken shows I own 1,000 shares, but I actually own 1,200.  I adjust share balance by entering that I have 1,200 shares and my holdings adjust to having 2,200 shares.

I'm using Quicken 2016 WIndows.  Suggestions?

Jim_Harman

Previous posts have indicated that you should enter the number of shares to add or remove, not the number you currently hold (contrary to what the prompts in the dialog and the Help says.) That would be consistent with what you are seeing. So for your example 1 you would enter 1100 and for ex. 2 you would enter 200.

Here I must say that it is best to find and correct the source(s) of the errors rather than relying on Placeholders to correct your balance.

Bob Morton

you do know if this is fixed in 2017 or is it still broken?

Jim_Harman

Well it is sort of fixed in 2017 Premier R15:

Started with 100 shares
Entered 35 in the Adjust Share Balance dialog
Quicken added a Placeholder with "+35 shares" in the description
Ending balance is 35 shares.

So the number to enter is now the number of shares you want to end up with, consistent with the prompt in the dialog and the Help, but the description in the Placeholder is confusing at best. 

For this transaction I would have expected the Placeholder to have a description of "-65 shares" or "Adjusted balance 35 shares" rather than implying that it added 35 shares to the account. 

Bob Morton

Thank you for the thorough response!  

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:



"Started with 100 shares Entered 35 in the Adjust Share Balance dialog Quicken added a Placeholder with "+35 shares" in the description Ending balance is 35 shares"



"For this transaction I would have expected the Placeholder to have a description of '-65 shares' ....".



In Q2017 R15:



I too started with 100 shares.


I too entered 35 in the Adjust Share Balance dialog (date: 10/01/17).


I too see a resulting share balance ("Share Bal" column) of 35 shares. But my Description field (Description "column") shows -65, indicating that the Placeholder removed 65 shares from the account - as expected.



I can't explain your results. But I would double check the security named in the Placeholder and the Date of the Placeholder.



For me, the Placeholder (Adjust Share Balance) "Description" field (column) always shows the quantity of shares that were Added (+) or Removed (-) to keep the account share balance equal to the Placeholder share balance ... on the date of the Placeholder. The Adjust Share Balance quantity is shown in text (which appears to begin in the "Action" column, and flow thru the "Memo" column) that reads (for this test transaction), "Placeholder entry for holdings amount of 35 shares as of 10/01/17)"



I don't recall anytime that this has changed in all the years I have used Quicken.



To assist me in seeing what was happening, I sorted the investment account by security. For each security, the transactions were then in Date order. And obviously I have the "Investment transactions" Preference to "Show hidden transactions" checked.

Jim_Harman

mshiggins said:

From C. D. Bales:



"Started with 100 shares Entered 35 in the Adjust Share Balance dialog Quicken added a Placeholder with "+35 shares" in the description Ending balance is 35 shares"



"For this transaction I would have expected the Placeholder to have a description of '-65 shares' ....".



In Q2017 R15:



I too started with 100 shares.


I too entered 35 in the Adjust Share Balance dialog (date: 10/01/17).


I too see a resulting share balance ("Share Bal" column) of 35 shares. But my Description field (Description "column") shows -65, indicating that the Placeholder removed 65 shares from the account - as expected.



I can't explain your results. But I would double check the security named in the Placeholder and the Date of the Placeholder.



For me, the Placeholder (Adjust Share Balance) "Description" field (column) always shows the quantity of shares that were Added (+) or Removed (-) to keep the account share balance equal to the Placeholder share balance ... on the date of the Placeholder. The Adjust Share Balance quantity is shown in text (which appears to begin in the "Action" column, and flow thru the "Memo" column) that reads (for this test transaction), "Placeholder entry for holdings amount of 35 shares as of 10/01/17)"



I don't recall anytime that this has changed in all the years I have used Quicken.



To assist me in seeing what was happening, I sorted the investment account by security. For each security, the transactions were then in Date order. And obviously I have the "Investment transactions" Preference to "Show hidden transactions" checked.

You are correct. Sorry, I was confused by two similarly-named securities. I will edit my comment above.

Jim_Harman

Jim Harman said:

Well it is sort of fixed in 2017 Premier R15:

Started with 100 shares
Entered 35 in the Adjust Share Balance dialog
Quicken added a Placeholder with "+35 shares" in the description
Ending balance is 35 shares.

So the number to enter is now the number of shares you want to end up with, consistent with the prompt in the dialog and the Help, but the description in the Placeholder is confusing at best. 

For this transaction I would have expected the Placeholder to have a description of "-65 shares" or "Adjusted balance 35 shares" rather than implying that it added 35 shares to the account. 

Correction: As mshiggins notes below, the placeholder description is NOT confusing, it correctly records the number of shares added or removed.

Bob Morton

Well... I went ahead and upgraded to 2017 R15.  Nothing changed.  Still having the situation I described initially.  Specifically, using your example: If I have 100 shares and want to change it to 35, my placeholder entry has a description of +35 shares and a share bal of 135 shares.

So it must be something with my data....  I have over 11 years of transaction history, do either of you have long transaction histories?  Any other thoughts?

Bob Morton

Thinking that I might have too many transactions, I created a new account and downloaded all current transactions and balances to start fresh. Assuming it would now work I didn't test it.  However after downloading the latest transactions this week, and noticing a small rounding error, I decided to "adjust share balance".  Unfortunately the problem still exists.  Minor "adjustments" result in doubling (approximately) the shares on hand.

Any final thoughts why this feature works for you and not for me?

Jim_Harman

Two points:

To correct a rounding error it is generally better to adjust the number of shares in the downloaded transaction rather than adjusting the share balance, which creates a Placeholder transaction.

But on your specific question, are you sure you don't have two almost-identical securities in Quicken? If you click on Holdings for the account where you made the adjustment, is there just one entry for the security in question, or two - one with the downloaded shares and one with your adjustment?

Bob Morton

There are only 11 securities in this account.  Nothing is duplicated.  

On your other point, I agree. I will eventually deal with the rounding issues a different way.

Unknown

I tried to use the "Adjust Share Balance" for a security that used five decimal places when it downloaded because my statement just rounded up to an even 66 shares.  I followed the directions in Quicken 2018 for adjusting share balances and no Placeholder Entry was entered and the number of shares still shows the same as before.  I tried to do it a second time and Quicken tells me a Placeholder entry was already entered for that security and amount.  So, something isn't working correctly for this feature.

Jim_Harman

Joni Anderson said:

I tried to use the "Adjust Share Balance" for a security that used five decimal places when it downloaded because my statement just rounded up to an even 66 shares.  I followed the directions in Quicken 2018 for adjusting share balances and no Placeholder Entry was entered and the number of shares still shows the same as before.  I tried to do it a second time and Quicken tells me a Placeholder entry was already entered for that security and amount.  So, something isn't working correctly for this feature.

Joni,

Ar you sure you have Quicken set to show the Placeholders?

In QWin, go to Edit/Preferences/Investment transactions and make sure Show hidden transactions is checked.

For some reason this defaults to un-checked.

Unknown

Joni Anderson said:

I tried to use the "Adjust Share Balance" for a security that used five decimal places when it downloaded because my statement just rounded up to an even 66 shares.  I followed the directions in Quicken 2018 for adjusting share balances and no Placeholder Entry was entered and the number of shares still shows the same as before.  I tried to do it a second time and Quicken tells me a Placeholder entry was already entered for that security and amount.  So, something isn't working correctly for this feature.

I did that and the placeholder shows now, but my share balance was 65.999967 after a stock split.  When I put in the "Adjust Share Balance", the place holder shows I noted 66 shares to match my statement, but it added +0 shares.  So, it technically needs to add .000033 shares to bring the total to 66 shares which it doesn't do.  The investment screen still shows the 65.999967.  Since I read that "Adjust Share Balance" was designed to use for rounding errors/differences, you would think it would have added the .000033 shares.  But thanks for the tip about the "Show hidden transactions".

DLSieving

I think it's safe to say that share balance adjustment is still broken after almost 2 years.  I tried to adjust my share balance to match my statement and now my registered holdings have doubled.  Re-synced with no effect.  Reconciled and entered recommended placeholder entries with no effect.  All I want to do now is reverse the changes I've recently made, yet they do not appear as entries in the register that I can delete, nor does there seem to be an undo option.

I've been afraid to touch this account for years because I know how far up the creek you can get in Quicken with one little misstep.  After all that restraint, my urge to reconcile overtook me and now my account register seems irreparable.  Same old Quicken.

Jim_Harman

Placeholders can certainly be confusing and frustrating.

To summarize the recommendations above, 
1) Make the Placeholders visible. Go to Edit > Preferences > Investment transactions and check "Show hidden transactions." For some reason Placeholders are hidden by default.

2) Before entering an Adjust Share Balance transaction, check to see if the source of the problem is two similarly named securities. Maybe one of them is hidden in the Security list. To check for this, go to Tools > Security list and check "Show hidden securities" at the bottom.

3) When entering an Adjust Share Balance (AKA Update Share balance) the Number of shares to enter is the correct number of share you hold on the specified date, not the size of the adjustment you want. If the Adjust Share balance seems to double your holding, you probably have problem 2 above. Click on Holdings to see if there are two similarly named entries for the security in question.

Jim_Harman

When you say "re-synced" are you using Quicken's Mobile and/or Web features?