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Quicken creating unnecessary placeholder transactions

sspohl

Quicken Classic Premier, vR60.15

A couple weeks ago Quicken decided the securities balances in a Vanguard 401k retirement account were incorrect. As of September 9 the holdings are A-ok, there's only one security in the account and the share balance is correct. September 10, it goes haywire, the holdings show placeholders that are basically messing up the account. No where can I see where the placeholders are coming from. Three of the securities that Quicken is adding were at one time held in the account but were subsequently liquidated.

Been poking at this problem for weeks and getting nowhere. Support is clueless, blamed it on me for entering transactions incorrectly, then didn't have a solution. Have validated the file and rebuilt investing lots. Have looked at the OFX log and confirmed that VG is not sending nonexistent positions. Have confirmed that the legitimate transactions result in zero shares as they should.

Losing my mind!

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Comments

Chris_QPW

Have looked at the OFX log and confirmed that VG is not sending nonexistent positions.

Are you looking in the "summary information"? Placeholder calculations are based on this information, not the actual transactions.

This will be in the <INVPOSLIST> section looking something like this (when prettied up):

                <POSMF>

                    <INVPOS>

                        <SECID>

                            <UNIQUEID>921921508

                            <UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP

                        </SECID>

                        <HELDINACCT>OTHER

                        <POSTYPE>LONG

                        <UNITS>3023.372

                        <UNITPRICE>14.43

                        <MKTVAL>43627.26

                        <DTPRICEASOF>20110415160000.000[-5:EST]

                        <MEMO>Price as of date based on closing price

                    </INVPOS>

                    <REINVDIV>Y

                    <REINVCG>Y

                </POSMF>

Chris_QPW

Oh, And I should mention that when I had Vanguard accounts it was typical that the transactions and the position summary information was "out of sync" for a couple of days after buying/selling until the transactions actually closed.

sspohl

Thank you @Chris_QPW for looking at my issue…

Yes, when I look at the OFX file it shows only the correct single holding between the two <INVPOSLIST> markers.

The OFX file goes back as far back as May 20, 2024, and there is only one security ever mentioned in either INVPOSLIST or INVTRANLIST. That's correct because the account has had a single static holding for quite some time. The only transactions are quarterly VG fees which look like transfers out in the INVTRANLIST.

So, nothing unusual coming in through the OFX file…. meantime, back in Quicken, there are placeholder entries as of September 10 for securities that are no longer held in the account..

NotACPA

IF Placeholders are being created, there's several possibilities.

What Vanguard is telling Q you hold disagrees with what Q thinks you're holding. How many shares are those placeholders for? Tiny fractions of a share? If so, then change your last SELL transaction of each impacted security to a "Sell All", because somehow the number of shares sold didn't quite get everything.
Your data file might be corrupted. Have you tried Validating it? SuperValidating? Re-calculating the investment account register?

sspohl

Thank you for your comments @NotACPA

Two of the placeholder entries are for securities that were previously liquidated. When I export the securities report of all transactions for those two securities, I can tell that the ins and outs excluding the placeholder entry result in a zero balance of shares. I can't figure where Q gets the placeholder share number for either security but it's a big number.

One of the placeholder entries was for a small negative number of shares and I was able to resolve that one by changing the last remove transaction similar to what you suggested.

I did Validate, SuperValidate, and Rebuild Investing Lots. No changes.