Share balance doesn't reflect the transaction

TomS

The first entry in my security - the total share balance doesn't reflect the shares purchased. I have deleted and re-entered the transaction but it's still short by 38 shares. There was a place holder transaction and i delete that (probably the problem). I can't seem to get past that. I have run a file repair (File | File Operations | Validate) and that didn't make any difference. I don't want to adjust the balance because the transactions are accurate, quicken isn't calculating the share balance correctly for some reason.

Jim_Harman

First, make sure the Placeholders are visible: Go to Edit > Preferences > Investment Transactions and make sure "Show Hidden Transactions" is selected.

If there are really no placeholders, let's review your transactions:
You started with 0 shares of the problem security.
The Bought transaction shows you bought X shares

You click on Holdings and Quicken shows you have X-38 shares
Is that correct? If not please explain.

Jim_Harman

First, make sure the Placeholders are visible: Go to Edit > Preferences > Investment Transactions and make sure "Show Hidden Transactions" is selected.

If there are really no placeholders, let's review your transactions:
You started with 0 shares of the problem security.
The Bought transaction shows you bought X shares

You click on Holdings and Quicken shows you have X-38 shares
Is that correct? If not please explain.

Frankx

Hi @TomS,

You probably know this but placeholders are used to make the account holdings agree to the total holdings currently being reported by the financial institution.  This usually occurs because one or more transactions that occurred are not included in your account register.  But it is also possible that the financial institution (FI) is not correctly reporting your holdings (this is rare but can happen).

Have you compared your account holdings to your brokerage statement?  If those agree, it could be a problem of the FI incorrectly reporting our holdings or it could be a timing difference between the account and your Quicken data.

When you deleted the placeholder transaction, that will likely come back the next time that you download from the FI, so it isn't the cause of your problem.  You really need to get into the data and methodically compare all of Quicken's transactions to the FI's transactions in order to find the missing entries if you want accurate records.  The other option is to either accept the placeholders, or adjust the settings to prevent Quicken from adding them.

Frankx

TomS

Go to Edit > Preferences > Investment Transactions and make sure "Show Hidden Transactions" - this allowed me to see the transaction that was 1 day prior to my first transaction which kept making the balance decrease by 38 shares. deleted this and now everything is in balance.