Deleting a placeholder entry

Dcan

Just upgraded to Quicken for Windows 2018.

[rant redacted]

Super frustrated right now. I have an employer sponsored qualified plan with a dozen or so holdings. I need to adjust the shard balances, there are over 1200 transactions in the plan, I'm not going to go fix them all to get the right balances. I'll just make adjusting entries.

My XYZ share balance is off by a few shares. No big deal, easy to fix, right? Just do an "adjust share balance" transaction. So I entered the total number of Shares I own and - guess what - Quicken very helpfully adds that number of shares to the account, so now my account value is overstated by thousands of dollars.

Well, okay, I'll just find the transaction and delete it, right? No way. I looked at the placeholder entries, the transaction was there, but there was no option to delete it. for some reason that I doubt makes any sense whatsoever, the only option is to delete ALL placeholder entries.  So I entered the cost for this particular placeholder, and it disappeared from the placeholder entry list.

I need to get rid of this placeholder entry [removed], but I'll be [removed] if I can find it anywhere. The only sign of it was when I tried to enter another transaction in the same account, and Quicken said, "you are entering a purchase as of the date of a placeholder entry, so your share balance will not be affected. Proceed?"

SO HOW DO I FIND AND GET RID OF THIS PLACEHOLDER ENTRY?

Unknown

Placeholder and other entries can be viewed in the security detail view.  PLaceholder entries are not visible in the register where most transactions can be viewed, edited and deleted.  I have a similar problem with placeholder entries that were entered when I attempted to adjust share balances.  Now the security is a mess and everything I have done so far has made things worse. I am holding off attempting to delete the entire investment account and re-entering (if this will work?)  Deleting the individual security is not allowed unless all entries are deleted first.

I agree:  how do we delete placeholder entries in Quicken 2018??

Jim_Harman

In QWin 2018, if you go to Edit/Preferences/Investment transactions and check Show hidden transaction, do the Placeholder(s) not show up in your Investment Transaction List (register)? They should be there, with a dark background and an Action type of Entry.

You should be able to click on the Placeholder to select it (the highlight will not change) and there should be a delete button at the bottom right of the transaction, beneath the Cash Bal column. Note if your transaction list is too wide to fit on your screen, you may need to scroll it to the right to see the Delete button.

Note also that if the tabs at the bottom of the Transaction list are collapsed, the count of Placeholders in the Placeholder Entries tab does not update right away when you create or delete Placeholders. Expanding the tabs forces it to update.

Jim_Harman

Dean,

If Quicken is adding the full number of shares to your account when you do an Adjust Share Balance, it may be that you have two similarly-named securities and the Adjust Share Balance is changing the wrong one.

Go to your Security List, select Show hidden securities at the bottom, and see if this is the case. While you are at it, make sure the Type of the securities that you hold is set appropriately, and NOT to Market Index.

Jim_Harman

One further idea: if for some reason the Placeholders are still not displayed in your transaction list, you can go to Reports/Banking/Transaction to show the Banking Transaction report. 

Adjust the date range if necessary and group by account. The Placeholders will have *Placeholder in the Num column. Select the one(s) you want to delete and right-click to delete.

For some reason Quicken doesn't let you delete transactions from the Investment Transaction report.

As always before anything like this, do a backup first so you can revert if something goes awry.

Dcan

Jim, thanks for your help. I didn't know you can go to edit->preferences->investment transactions-> and check the "show hidden transactions" box. I did that, and my placeholder entries are now visible in my investment register. Thanks! 

Jim_Harman

Glad to hear you can now see the hidden transactions. You are not the only user who has been tripped up by Placeholders.

A quick question: If you have an account that has placeholders, do you see some fine-print text about placeholders at the bottom of the Transaction list (register)? I am trying to tell if that is sometimes not displayed or if it is and people are missing it.

Dcan

Jim - yes, at the bottom of my register, I see a notification "Quicken has entered placeholder entries for missing transactions." Below that, on the last line of the screen, I have the option to expand a drop-down box and see downloaded transactions, bill and income and reminders, and placeholder entries.

Jim_Harman

Do you get just one line, or the extra text too, which is trying to help you deal with the placeholder?

What I get on my laptop after doing an Adjust share balance looks like this


Note that the second bullet of text is inaccurate, the right side is cut off, and it has not updated the count of placeholders in the tab below yet. You have to expand the tabs or restart Quicken to get the count to update.

Also note that when all your placeholders have been resolved, i.e. they are for 0 shares, all the text goes away (as I guess it should) but the count of placeholders includes the resolved ones.

It's no wonder people get confused!

Unknown

Jim Harman said:

One further idea: if for some reason the Placeholders are still not displayed in your transaction list, you can go to Reports/Banking/Transaction to show the Banking Transaction report. 

Adjust the date range if necessary and group by account. The Placeholders will have *Placeholder in the Num column. Select the one(s) you want to delete and right-click to delete.

For some reason Quicken doesn't let you delete transactions from the Investment Transaction report.

As always before anything like this, do a backup first so you can revert if something goes awry.

Thanks for the tip. Using the transaction report allowed me to delete a placeholder. For some bizarre reason a US security was associated with Canadian currency but was in an account with other multiple US securities. I couldn't add dividend transactions because the security was not available in the list of US securities. Quicken would not allow me to edit the currency associated with the security (DISNEY in this example). It wouldn't let me delete the security because of the placeholder transaction. After I deleted the placeholder as described above, was able to edit the security, associate it with the correct USD currency and create a new placeholder transaction.