Placeholders in Investment Account

Question

I recently exchanged mutual funds in my 401k account. These transactions were classified as Removed/Added. All of a sudden, 5 days after the trade has settled, I noticed that the investment value in my account almost doubled. Upon looking through the account, I see a ton of extra Placeholder Transactions. However, when looking at the account register, and unhide hidden entries, I do not see these placeholders, so I am unable to "remove" these placeholders. I believe removing these placeholders would fix this issue

Frankx · Accepted Answer

Hi @f_stopblues,

This guidance should help you  https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7267839/quicken-faq-managing-placeholder-entries-in-quicken-for-windows

You should read the entire document, however these paragraphs may be particularly helpful:* You may be wondering if you have Placeholders, and why you haven’t seen any.  Here’s why: placeholder transactions are hidden by default in the investment register itself.  However, they will always show up in the “Placeholder Entries” tab shown at the bottom of the account register. To see placeholders in the investment register as well, check “Show hidden transactions” in Edit->Preferences->Investment transactions.

* To help users who have accumulated a large number of Placeholder Entries – perhaps for one of the reasons mentioned in this article - we have added a feature in Quicken for Windows 2016 R8 to delete all the placeholders in an account.  It is accessed from the Placeholder Entries tab at the bottom of the investment register, with the “Delete All Placeholders” button.  If you delete all placeholder transactions, you will probably want to turn on the “Compare account portfolio after download” (Edit/Preferences/downloaded transactions) setting for the account in question, at least temporarily.  Doing so and downloading from the broker will cause Quicken to propose placeholders (hopefully, a much smaller number than you had deleted) to sync your Quicken positions with the broker.  You can either accept these, or make the appropriate historical transaction entries to make them unnecessary.

Let us know how things go...