Placeholder Madness!!!

Ploooplooo

Automatically generated placeholder transactions in Quicken have always been a bad idea in my opinion, but now it's like Quicken's Frankenstein.

Quicken for Mac v 6.12.2

I have multiple brokerage accounts and purchase t-bills into them.  Often I hold the same t-bill in multiple brokerage accounts.  I run "update all accounts" and Quicken downloads "buy bonds" transactions that appear with a security that I guess was supplied by the brokerage.  So I edit the transaction and select another security that is the same one already in another account.  Quicken then immediately creates a placeholder transaction with the old security that came from the brokerage.  I can delete that placeholder transaction but the next time I run "update all accounts" it is recreated yet again.

Software like Quicken should never every quietly add transactions in the background without notifications and the giving user and option to decline it.

This "feature" should be removed, but it seems Quicken is really married to it, so at least make it optional in settings for those of us who don't need a babysitter.

Ploooplooo

So in attempting to deal with the placeholders, I went into the securities window and merged the two different securities that represented the same t-bills.  Amazingly enough, after merging securities, I ran "update all accounts" after which the securities are no longer merged.  I re-merged them again and re-ran "update all accounts" to confirm because it just seems amateur for a software as seasoned as Quicken.

Jon

I think you're fighting a losing battle. Every time you sync your account, your brokerage is telling Quicken what securities are held in the account. If you try to change those securities to something different, next time you sync Quicken is going to try to make your portfolio match up again with what the brokerage says it should be. If you don't want your portfolio to look like that, you need to disconnect the account & stick to updating it manually. 

Ploooplooo

Thanks Jon, unfortunately I assume you're right.  It appears that Quicken does not use CUSIPs for their intended purpose - which is as a unique security identifier.  Quicken allows multiple securities with the same CUSIP.  I believe what should happen is when you sync Quicken the portfolio match up should be looking at CUSIP, not security description.