Investment account dividends not added to cash balance
I added a new investment account and I added all entries manually. The account is set up to track the running cash balance within the account (the 'No' radio button is selected in the account setup dialog 'Show cash in a separate checking account'). When I enter a stock dividend using the Enter Transactions dialog, the register's 'Cash Amt' column displays 'N/A' and the Cash Balance column remains unchanged. On the Enter Transaction dialog I have selected 'Inc - Income (Div, Int, etc.)' and the dividend amount is recorded in the Dividend box. In the register the Action displays 'Div'.
I tried enabling the account option to 'Show cash in a separate checking account' but dividends did not transfer there.
I am running Quicken Premier Version R48.18 Build 27.1.48.18.
Best Answer
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The situation you describe indicates that there are one or more Placeholders in the account.
To make Placeholders visible, go to Edit > Preferences > Investing and make sure the Show hidden transactions box is checked.
Placeholders will have a gray background in the account’s transaction list (register) even if they are not selected, and will have “Entry” in the Action column.
Placeholders compensate for missing or incorrect investing transactions by forcing Quicken’s share balance for a security to match a specified value on the date of the Placeholder. This is usually the share count downloaded from your financial institution (FI).
Because transactions are missing or incorrect, Quicken will not be able to compute the cost basis or performance for the affected securities. You will see asterisks in the Portfolio views for this data.
Placeholders also prevent new transactions like Div, Bought and Sold prior to the security’s Placeholder date from affecting the account’s cash balance. It does this by creating a linked Cash Balance Adjustment just before the affected transaction. Deleting one of these will delete them both. This shows up as N/A in the Cash Amt column of the transaction list. To allow the cash balance to change when entering missing transactions that affect the cash balance, you must first delete all the Placeholders for this security that have later dates than the transaction you are entering.
Always back up your data file before changing historical transactions.
For information on resolving placeholders, please see this FAQ:
QWin Premier subscription2
Answers
-
The situation you describe indicates that there are one or more Placeholders in the account.
To make Placeholders visible, go to Edit > Preferences > Investing and make sure the Show hidden transactions box is checked.
Placeholders will have a gray background in the account’s transaction list (register) even if they are not selected, and will have “Entry” in the Action column.
Placeholders compensate for missing or incorrect investing transactions by forcing Quicken’s share balance for a security to match a specified value on the date of the Placeholder. This is usually the share count downloaded from your financial institution (FI).
Because transactions are missing or incorrect, Quicken will not be able to compute the cost basis or performance for the affected securities. You will see asterisks in the Portfolio views for this data.
Placeholders also prevent new transactions like Div, Bought and Sold prior to the security’s Placeholder date from affecting the account’s cash balance. It does this by creating a linked Cash Balance Adjustment just before the affected transaction. Deleting one of these will delete them both. This shows up as N/A in the Cash Amt column of the transaction list. To allow the cash balance to change when entering missing transactions that affect the cash balance, you must first delete all the Placeholders for this security that have later dates than the transaction you are entering.
Always back up your data file before changing historical transactions.
For information on resolving placeholders, please see this FAQ:
QWin Premier subscription2 -
Thank you very much! I enabled the viewing of Placeholders as you described and quite a few popped up. I am not sure why they were there in the first place, but after handling each one so that the share balance dropped to zero, then deleting them, the problem with the Cash Balance update has been resolved. Thank you again for pointing me in exactly the right direction.
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