Portfolio view shows a lot that has no transaction

Question

In an investment account with about a dozens transactions, the market value is wrong; So I thought I'd edit the transaction for the missing lot. This didn't help as intended. Now this lot shows up twice. So I deleted the only transaction for buying this lot.

Now I have a phantom lot. There's no associated register transaction. And my market value includes double the value of this phantom lot. Now I'm even more screwed than I was before.

How do I delete a lot that no longer has any associated transaction, and thus shouldn't even exist anymore?

Even better — I decided I might as well put that missing transaction back in. So just now I did this, w/ the same total cost and number of shares. Now there is only 1 lot, and it is correct, and my market value is correct.

Stuff like this makes me always extremely uncomfortable with Quicken Mac. It works 99% of the time, then 1% of the time, something extremely extremely bonkers happens, with no obvious way to fix it, like just obvious data corruption bizarreness.

Sigh. 🤨

jasonb885 · Answer

Hi,

Thanks for your reply; It is definitely not a placeholder transaction. As you've indicated, these are offset at the very bottom of the register, and I only have 8 transactions in this account and there are definitely none of these entries of which I am familiar.

I've been using Quicken myself, on Windows, then on Mac, for nearly a decade as well, and this was definitely aberrant behavior. There were no visible transactions that would have removed the value of the shares lot purchase — there are only 8 in total, and only 2 buys ever, both on the same date, so this would be extremely hard to misplace.

I've experienced other bizarre behavior in the past, such as editing a transaction to find the text change doesn't "take", then quitting Quicken, restarting, and finding it indeed gone. I've also had an account that just would not reconcile; restarted and strangely it was 100% reconcilable thereafter. Rare, but this does happen. I always keep multiple backups, just in case.

On the other hand, in another account I have a strange positive investment value that should be $0; I went back yesterday and found I screwed up a sale transaction and Quicken thinks I used different lots. So I admit in some cases the error is my own. But I don't believe it to be so here.

If you've never seen any unusual behavior, consider yourself fortunate!

John_in_NC · Answer

In my personal experience and from helping around here for 13 years, Quicken Mac is (usually) working correctly. It is dutifully reporting what the brokerage house sends-and therein lies the rub.

I suspect your problem stems from Placeholder transactions that appear in light gray at the beginning of the register. Think of them as opening balance adjustments that Quicken creates based on what your brokerage reports as your current holdings. Sometimes there is a mismatch in what they report.

I am not there, so I can only speculate as to what you tried. The Placeholder transaction is simply an Add (or Remove) Shares transx with no associated cost basis or cash balance. These will appear in the portfolio, so it might be what you edited. Again, I am not there.

I would reexamine the transactions for this investment account. I suspect you will find some transaction(s) that end up with the holdings/market value as they show.

Tip: the Add/Remove transactions work similarly to Buy/Sell, but they do it without cash.

I hope this helps point you in the right direction.