Quicken Development Team - Please fix Adjust Share Balance functionality once and for all!

Unknown

Please fix the Adjust Share Balance functionality to work as every user who posts on this board expects/wishes it does.  Specifically, if a new Total # of Shares is entered, Quicken should set  the updated total share balance to that number and automatically calculate and create the adjusting transaction for the quantity difference (either adding or removing shares as appropriate).  The user should not have to do the math... especially when he/she has no control over download rounding or decimal place accuracy for the brokerage accounts.

This has been an ongoing series of posts for years and almost nobody in the user community is convinced it works like it should.  Please correct the functionality once and for all.  

Sherlock

That is how it works (Quicken 2016 R17.4) unless it has changed in a more recent year:

Unknown

Nope. Many on this board have tried for years and get erroneous placeholder entries and strange new totals. Bottom line, it doesn’t behave as described in your screenshot (which is how we wish it would work). This problem has existed since Quicken 2011 for me... and in multiple files! Heck, if there was some way to look at or even correct some internal master data table, I’d love it. I have tried validating and repairing the files and no errors! Perhaps something got corrupted during an upgrade but there is no way to research and correct that I know of and too much history to start fresh.

Sherlock

Nope. Many on this board have tried for years and get erroneous placeholder entries and strange new totals. Bottom line, it doesn’t behave as described in your screenshot (which is how we wish it would work). This problem has existed since Quicken 2011 for me... and in multiple files! Heck, if there was some way to look at or even correct some internal master data table, I’d love it. I have tried validating and repairing the files and no errors! Perhaps something got corrupted during an upgrade but there is no way to research and correct that I know of and too much history to start fresh.

Many just don't understand how placeholders work: https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/quicken-faq-managing-placeholder-entries-in-quic...

Unknown

Nope. Many on this board have tried for years and get erroneous placeholder entries and strange new totals. Bottom line, it doesn’t behave as described in your screenshot (which is how we wish it would work). This problem has existed since Quicken 2011 for me... and in multiple files! Heck, if there was some way to look at or even correct some internal master data table, I’d love it. I have tried validating and repairing the files and no errors! Perhaps something got corrupted during an upgrade but there is no way to research and correct that I know of and too much history to start fresh.

Here is how I see the situation.  Either Sherlock is right and there is just a misunderstanding of how placeholders work, or there is basic functionality problem which would show up for everyone (not the case), or there is something corrupted in your data file and as such the Quicken Inc developers can't provide you a fix.  At least they can't provide that fix unless you and they are willing to dig into exactly what is corrupted in your data file.

As a test of the general functionality I went into one of my accounts shown below.


Entered an adjustment:


Results:


As shown, Quicken did exactly what the was described in the Adjust Shares Balance dialog.

My conclusion would be there isn't anything here for the Quicken Inc Developers to fix, it is functioning correctly.

Unknown

Mea culpa, apologies and thanks to Sherlock and QPW!  I tried Adj Share Balance on a single stock that I just purchased this week.  It added the correct Placeholder transaction to generate the new total.  I have no idea why I never tried this before.  Yes, amateur move!  

So, the problem is clearly with my holdings that I have had for a long time, have gone through Quicken release upgrades and where larger numbers of fancier things like dividend reinvestment or regular small purchases come into play (e.g. 401K investments).  I am considering deleting all of the Placeholders that were created and simply having a new one get generated but am wondering what impact, if any, that will have on holdings which I have already sold.  I assume it will also skew my historical account balances if I look at them over time so not sure I'm totally ready to do that.

Any other ideas?  If I manually Add or Remove Shrs as I have been, my holdings are correct, but any subsequent Adj Share Balance never works.  It's as if there is a corrupted separate total being stored somewhere that I can't see/edit.

Unknown

Mea culpa, apologies and thanks to Sherlock and QPW!  I tried Adj Share Balance on a single stock that I just purchased this week.  It added the correct Placeholder transaction to generate the new total.  I have no idea why I never tried this before.  Yes, amateur move!  

So, the problem is clearly with my holdings that I have had for a long time, have gone through Quicken release upgrades and where larger numbers of fancier things like dividend reinvestment or regular small purchases come into play (e.g. 401K investments).  I am considering deleting all of the Placeholders that were created and simply having a new one get generated but am wondering what impact, if any, that will have on holdings which I have already sold.  I assume it will also skew my historical account balances if I look at them over time so not sure I'm totally ready to do that.

Any other ideas?  If I manually Add or Remove Shrs as I have been, my holdings are correct, but any subsequent Adj Share Balance never works.  It's as if there is a corrupted separate total being stored somewhere that I can't see/edit.

Your assumption is correct.  If you remove the old placeholders it will throw off your historical balances.  The only way have both is if you "replaced" the old placeholders.

I'm not really sure what affect it would have on the shares you sold, but my guess would be that you share balance would go negative for those periods in the past.

Sherlock

Mea culpa, apologies and thanks to Sherlock and QPW!  I tried Adj Share Balance on a single stock that I just purchased this week.  It added the correct Placeholder transaction to generate the new total.  I have no idea why I never tried this before.  Yes, amateur move!  

So, the problem is clearly with my holdings that I have had for a long time, have gone through Quicken release upgrades and where larger numbers of fancier things like dividend reinvestment or regular small purchases come into play (e.g. 401K investments).  I am considering deleting all of the Placeholders that were created and simply having a new one get generated but am wondering what impact, if any, that will have on holdings which I have already sold.  I assume it will also skew my historical account balances if I look at them over time so not sure I'm totally ready to do that.

Any other ideas?  If I manually Add or Remove Shrs as I have been, my holdings are correct, but any subsequent Adj Share Balance never works.  It's as if there is a corrupted separate total being stored somewhere that I can't see/edit.

In my opinion, you need to determine what works for you.  I prefer not to have placeholders in my datafile.  Instead, I attempt to maintain an accurate transaction history so that Quicken knows the cost basis of the holdings.  When there is a share balance discrepancy, I determine the cause and decide how to appropriately address the issue. 

Unknown

Mea culpa, apologies and thanks to Sherlock and QPW!  I tried Adj Share Balance on a single stock that I just purchased this week.  It added the correct Placeholder transaction to generate the new total.  I have no idea why I never tried this before.  Yes, amateur move!  

So, the problem is clearly with my holdings that I have had for a long time, have gone through Quicken release upgrades and where larger numbers of fancier things like dividend reinvestment or regular small purchases come into play (e.g. 401K investments).  I am considering deleting all of the Placeholders that were created and simply having a new one get generated but am wondering what impact, if any, that will have on holdings which I have already sold.  I assume it will also skew my historical account balances if I look at them over time so not sure I'm totally ready to do that.

Any other ideas?  If I manually Add or Remove Shrs as I have been, my holdings are correct, but any subsequent Adj Share Balance never works.  It's as if there is a corrupted separate total being stored somewhere that I can't see/edit.

When my Dad was doing his finances in Quicken his goal was just to match the statements he got every 3 months.  So adjusting the shares was exactly what he wanted.  And in fact at one time I turned on downloading quotes and he hated it because it didn't line up with his statements.

In the "old days" you only got statements every 3 months (I notice my wife's 401K is still like that even if we can download the transactions by QFX after every paycheck), and that was "good enough".  There have been some studies to suggest that is in fact better for a lot of people that will try to be "too active" and reduce their returns.

I just had few thoughts.  The first is, just create a new account and transfer the current active securities/cash to it.  I have done that in the past to get around investment account corruption.

The other is that in the 2018 release of Quicken they added a feature to move transactions between investment registers.  That may either fix the problem, or make it much worse.  Hard to say, but that is what backups are for, so you can try things like that.