Investment account in Quicken

Petesmom

My buys are showing up as placeholders with an NA is the cash amount column.  I am putting in my investment account.  The first buy I did worked fine.  It subtracted the amount that I paid for the investment from the cash balance in the account.  The remaining buys did not do that.  I have looked at each transaction and everything about them is identical, however the remaining buys have an NA in the cash amount column.  Does anyone have any ideas on what I am doing wrong?  Or perhaps what I need to do differently so that the account will calculate correctly?

Jim_Harman

When you say the buys are showing up as Placeholders, are they true placeholders, which will have a gray background in the transaction list?



Make sure placeholders are visible by going to Edit/Preferences checking the show hidden transactions box. Then resolve any placeholders in your account and the buys should start behaving normally again.

UKR

About Placeholders (Quicken Windows)

"N/A" in
certain fields of an investment transaction indicates that you have
Placeholder transactions in your account that need to be deleted and replaced
with the correct Buy / Sell / etc. transaction that should have been recorded
here..

For more about Placeholders please go into Quicken Help (press the F1 key from
anywhere in Quicken) and perform a Contents search for
"placeholder".

Alternatively or in addition to the above, read the first few articles found
here: https://www.quicken.com/search/site/placeholder

marchandster

I have placeholders showing up in my Cash Amount column also when I have done a Sell.  However the Placeholder Entries shows 0 placeholders to resolve.  I have resolved placeholder issues before but I can't figure this one out.

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:



"Does anyone have any ideas on what I am doing wrong?"



Yes.



For starters, a transaction with "N/A" in the Cash Amt column is NOT a placeholder.



A placeholder will cause other transactions, that normally affect cash (such as Buys, Sells, and Dividends, for example); to show "N/A" in the Cash Amt column. But no transaction that shows "N/A" in the Cash Amt column is a placeholder - it is a transaction that has been affected by a placeholder.



A placeholder is actually a Quicken "Adjust Share Balance" transaction; and it has an "Action" value of "Entry". The only purpose of a placeholder is to guarantee that Quicken will show you holding a specific number of shares of a specific security on a specific date in a specific account. The placeholder accomplishes it purpose by creating hidden "Shares Added" and "Shares Removed" transactions for the security named in the placeholder - when necessary.



To see the placeholder(s) in a Quicken investment account, you need to insure that the Quicken "Investment transactions" Preference "Show hidden transactions" is selected.



In early versions of Quicken, the only way to remove the "N/A" from transactions affected by a placeholder was to: delete the placeholder affecting the transaction, then delete the transaction(s) with "N/A" in the Cash Amt column, then re-enter the deleted transaction(s).



In the newer versions, Quicken will remove the "N/A" from the Cash Amt column when you delete the placeholder transaction. My test in Q2015 removed the "N/A" when I deleted the placeholder that created the "N/A".



Quicken will offer to create placeholders when you allow Quicken to compare downloaded investment account holdings to your Quicken holdings ... and Quicken finds the downloaded holdings to not agree with your Quicken holdings.



You can continue to have Quicken notify you that your Quicken holdings do not agree with your Quicken holdings, but when Quicken informs you of a discrepancy, tell Quicken not to create placeholders.



Or you can turn off the confirmation process altogether using the Quicken "Downloaded transactions" Preference to "Compare account portfolio after download". Depending on your Quicken version.



You neglected to supply your Quicken version/year/release and your o.s. - which should accompany every question you submit here.