Adjust share balance doesn't work and actually screwed up my 401k account

Chriscic

Adjust share balance just adds whatever number you put in there to your total shares... it does NOT do what it is supposed to do, which is put in an adjustment (add or subtract) to get you to the right # of shares.

Not only that, but now my acct is screwed... the register (correctly) shows 6k shares, but when I click on holdings it shows 12k and the balance is calculated off of the latter which means my acct balance shows double what it should.

Spoke with tech support and they agree it's a bug, but they have no idea how to fix my account right now.

Using Quicken 2019 on PC.

NotACPA

Why can't you:
a) just delete the transaction that was created by the Adjust share action, or
b) revert to a backup that you created prior to this action

Also, what Q product are you running?  What country? And what Build/Release of the product?

Jim_Harman

Note that Adjust Share Balance creates a Placeholder transaction and depending on your settings this transaction my be hidden. Unfortunately the default for new files is to hide these transactions.

Go to Edit > Preferences > Investment Transactions and make sure that "Show hidden transactions" is checked.

The Placeholder will have "Entry" in the Action column and will have a gray background even if it is not selected.

Once you can see the Placeholder you can correct it or delete it if you want.

One way the "Adjust Share Balance" can result in twice as many shares as you expect is if you have two similarly named securities, and/or downloaded security data is not matched correctly to the security in Quicken.

Chriscic

Thank you both for the responses.

There's no adjustment transaction to delete now.  That's exactly what I did the first time... I deleted the adjustment transaction once I saw things were's right.  That corrected it in the register, but holdings still shows 2x the correct amount.

There are no hidden transactions; I already had that checked.

i also do not see more than one security in my holdings (to your point on similarly named securities).

I have a back-up but I made other changes in the account since then and am not going to go back and redo it all (it was messed up before where some transactions never appeared in the register from Vanguard... I had to enter those manually).

Jim_Harman

Have you tried doing a Validate and Repair on your data file?

If that doesn't fix your problem, go to your Holdings view and click on the little plus sign next to the security name. That will show all your tax lots. See if there is an obvious place where the extra shares came from and investigate transaction(s) on that date.

Also you can go back in time by changing the date in the Holdings view to see when the extra shares appeared.

Also make sure there is not an incorrect stock split that might have doubled your shares.

SimonSezSo

Have you tried "Ctrl-Z".  Put your cursor on any transaction in the investment account.  Then hold down the control button and press "Z".  A message will appear "Recalculate All Transactions?  Press "OK".  Doing this has worked for me when the transactions don't calculate correctly.

Chriscic

None of that works.  The register still shows 6MM shares and when I click on "Holdings" it shows 12MM shares.  And the securities value is calculating off of the 12MM.

Very very annoying. Quicken needs to fix this bug. I guess I can try the chat help or call again, but last time they were useless (granted they've been helpful with the numerous other bugs Quicken has).

Chriscic

Do I really have to spend time with chat or phone support again? I wouldn't mind doing so but last time was fruitless and not enthused about spending time again to explain the issue in detail again with no resolution.

I'm a user since something like like 1995 and a current subscriber. Can someone from Quicken help me out here?  At least let me know if this is still a bug, have new suggestions for fixing, and/or think there is new info. that warrants another support phone call?  Thank you,

Jim_Harman

This is a user to user forum and it is unlikely that anyone from Quicken will reach out to help you.

There are several suggestions above and other than "none of that works" you have not provided any detail on what you have tried and what the result was. 

-- Have you made the Placeholders visible? Are there any Placeholders in the account?
-- Have you tried going back in time in your register and Holdings view to see where the discrepancy first occurs, and if so what was the result?

Jim_Harman

Jim Harman said:

This is a user to user forum and it is unlikely that anyone from Quicken will reach out to help you.

There are several suggestions above and other than "none of that works" you have not provided any detail on what you have tried and what the result was. 

-- Have you made the Placeholders visible? Are there any Placeholders in the account?
-- Have you tried going back in time in your register and Holdings view to see where the discrepancy first occurs, and if so what was the result?

Also be very suspicious if you receive an email from someone who says they are from Quicken and includes a phone number to call. These are support scams.

If you want to contact official Quicken support, go to Help > Quicken support in Quicken and scroll to the bottom for support info.

Chriscic

You da man Jim! There was a placeholder entry there that didn't show in the register (not clear on if it was hidden of if there's an option for that, but I could see it at the bottom of the register). I deleted it and now correct!

Didn't realize there is no Quicken presence here. Thanks for the clarification on that as well.

Cheers

Jim_Harman

Glad it's fixed!

For future reference, the option to display hidden transactions is at Edit > Preferences > Investment Transactions, where you check the box "Show hidden transactions." For some reason this box is un-checked by default, leading to much confusion. 

When visible, Placeholders will have a gray background even if they are not selected, and will have an Action type of Entry. 

If you have been trying to resolve Placeholders by entering Buy or Sell transactions prior to the date of a Placeholder, you may also see Xin transactions with a Description of "Balancing Cash Adjustment" which magically appear when you make the hidden transactions visible. These do not have the gray background, so they are even harder to spot and remove when you resolve the Placeholders.

Ps56k2

Also - depending upon the type of account defined -

there might be a display of the numbe of "Placeholders" at the bottom of the Register

Jim_Harman

@ps56k, the count of Placeholders at the bottom of the Transaction list (Register) is sometimes a good indication that there are Placeholders in the account. In recent versions of Quicken, there is also often some small text at the bottom that explains the placeholders when they are first created. 

However the problem I see in QWin 2019 is that with the default setting of the Placeholders being hidden, the Placeholder count is shown as zero when you open the file. Clicking on the Placeholders tab does not display them. Even if you change the setting to show hidden transactions, the count remains at zero until you click on the Placeholders tab or re-open Quicken.

I can easily see why this would cause users to think they had no placeholders. IMO it would be much better if hidden transactions defaulted to visible.