Placeholder entries

Question

in one of my investment accounts, Quicken has created Placeholder entries because I did not have the transactions correctly entered several years ago.

Question

1. How do i find what is the share units for each investment that is entered as placeholder

2. Once i know answer to 1 above, I plan to create a transaction entry with an arbitary cost basis so that the placeholder entry will go away. Is this the right way to handle it?

I am not concerned about capital gains reports on this account since it is a tax deferred account.

I just would like the placeholder entries go away.

Jim_Harman · Answer

First make sure the Placeholders are visible in your transaction list (register). Go to Edit > Preferences > Investing transactions and make sure Show hidden transactions is checked. Then,

1. A Placeholder is an automatic transaction the forces the share balance to match the number in the Placeholder. The size of the adjustment is the bold number in the Description field in the first line of the Placeholder. The share balance after the Placeholder is the "for holdings amount of" in the second line of the Placeholder.

2. To resolve the Placeholder, you can enter a Shares Added transaction on the day before the Placeholder date. This should make the bold number in the Placeholder go to zero. Once the Placeholder is zero, you can safely delete it.