Transaction Archive - Another Question about my results

ciarmer

I used "Archive Transactions" to reduce the number of transactions in one of my accounts. I'm using Q Premier 19.44 for Windows.

Excellent results in terms of reducing the number of transactions. I'm left with one odd result which I cannot seem to fix.

My new archive account has a zero total balance. However, the account has a positive cash balance of $736.88 and a negative securities balance of $736.88. I have attached a screen shot of the balance from the register of the archive account. My main investment account has a correct total but the securities balance is too high by $736.88 and the cash balance is too low by $736.88. In total, these two accounts have correct balances for investments and cash. I would like to make a simple adjustment which corrects this problem but I have not been able to find a way to do it.

I believe the issue arose because of a placeholder transaction which was in the file prior to the archive process.

I'm also attaching a screen shot of an adjustment (balancing) transaction that was created at the time of the archive process which provides some hint as to what is going on. This transaction appears in my main investment account. If I attempt an edit to this transaction, Quicken will not allow it (see additional screen shot).

I'm also attaching a screen shot of the result of clicking on "Holdings" in the archive account. The balances (summing to zero) are evident but the odd part here is there are no securities holdings even though there is a securities balance.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

ciarmer

Responding to my own question...

At the risk of posting something else that is incorrect or misleading, I will describe what else I have found as I explored this further (and how I fixed it).

- The archive process did not give rise to this anomaly (it just made it "visible"). The actual transactions in the main investment account and the archive account are the same as the transactions that were present in the Investment Account prior to the archive process. The pre-archive account included a placeholder transaction (with zero shares) and a "Balancing Cash Adjustment that was related to that transaction.

-The archive process caused all security related transactions (for the security related to the placeholder) to be moved to the archive (since that security was no longer part of my holdings as of the archive date). But the "Balancing Cash Adjustment" transaction remained in the main investment account. This seemed to give rise to the odd results in the Archive Account and the Main Account.

-While there was no way to edit that "Balancing Cash Adjustment" transaction (Quicken would not allow it), it was possible to "Move" that transaction from the Investment Account to the Archive Account. When I moved it, Quicken did a quick file validation and the result was the negative securities balance in the Archive account disappeared and the incorrect securities balance in the Investment Account was fixed. I then also simply transferred the excess cash balance in the Archive Account to the Investment Account and all now seems to be in balance.

The lesson here (for me and maybe others) is that it is quite important to attempt to rectify all "Placeholder Transactions" including "Balancing Cash Adjustment" transactions prior to attempting to perform an Archive. It was not possible for me to do that but this quick fix gave me an acceptable result.