Investment Account Placeholder Question

Paddy

I use Quicken to track investments. I had to create a new file and it downloaded a placeholder with the correct shares. I have tried a few things without having to enter in each transaction but it messes up the cash balance.

Is there a way to enter a correction without having to enter each line item from my investment web site without it messing with the cash balance?

Boatnmaniac

Placeholders are not downloaded by Quicken.  They are generated by Quicken when the number of shares for a security that is downloaded by the broker and the number of shares that is entered into Quicken do not match.  The fact that you have a placeholder means that there is a count discrepancy that needs to be resolved.

Who is your broker?

Is the placeholder for a money market fund or is it for some other security?  If it is a different security, which one is it?

Does your broker hold cash in a money market fund (often referred to as the Core Account or Settlement Account) or in a more traditional Sweep Account (which is pretty much a high interest paying savings account)?

Paddy

The brokerage has all the information for purchases and cost basis. Quicken is not downloading the cost basis information and is only putting a placeholder for me to do it. I am thinking the brokerage only allows 2 years back for transactions so Quicken just adds the placeholder for me to enter each transaction and the cost basis.

The question is how do I enter in the average cost basis as one transaction so I do not have to enter in each transaction?

q_lurker

You can use an Add Shares transaction to accomplish your goal. 

Boatnmaniac

@Paddy - I see @q_lurker beat me to the punch.  You can enter a single Add Shares transaction for the affected security and when creating the transaction be sure to enter the total number of shares that are missing and enter either the average price paid or the total cost to establish the cost basis for for those shares.  Make sure to have a transaction date that is sometime before the date of the Placeholder...perhaps the day of or day after the Opening Balance transaction.  The Placeholder should then go away and the account Cash Balance will not be affected and your total Cost Basis for that security should be correct.

Now if your Cash Balance is still off then it indicates there is some other underlying cause and then we should probably go back and pick up from my initial comment above.