Setting to turn off placeholder transactions?

Question

Since the recent change in the Fidelity downloads, I've noticed that, at least for my NetBenefits 401(k) account, Quicken for Mac is now extremely aggressive when it comes to creation of the Placeholder transaction to adjust the Quicken share count — even when the downloaded share count is wrong. Before I could correct it, now I can't.

And if Quicken has a problem in the download, it zeros out the portfolio by creating a Remove Shares placeholder for the entire account share balance.

My question is: is there a setting somewhere to turn it off?

I can see the purpose of the placeholder transaction when creating a new account, but I don't like it for existing accounts. It just serves to hide errors in transactions. Such as, if I manually enter a transaction with an incorrect share count, Quicken will "fix" the share count, so now I don't know that there's a mistake. I want to know that my transactions are resulting in an incorrect total shares.

Chris_QPW · Answer

@jacobs a warning is one thing, and the right thing to do, automatically adding a placeholder is another.

An automatic placeholder in an investment account is basically the same thing as an automatic balance adjustment in a checking account when your account doesn’t balance during a reconcile.  Do you want that?

What does Quicken Mac do when you have automatic reconcile on and your account doesn’t balance?

I would hope that it warns the user and allows the user to decide to find out why the account doesn’t balance or add a balance adjustment if they think that is what is best for their situation.

The same should be true of investment accounts and share placeholders.

jacobs · Answer

That is a terrible design. It assumes that the data being provided will always be correct when in fact it is well known that at least some financial institutions provide inconsistent information at times.

But how is the alternative better, @Chris_QPW? You think Quicken should do a download and simply display the balances and holdings from those transactions, even though it doesn't match what the financial institution reports and shows on its own website? People would complain that Quicken doesn't match the financial institution and doesn't even warn them of a wrong balance/holdings. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Chris_QPW · Answer

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20513720#Comment_20513720

That is a terrible design.  It assumes that the data being provided will always be correct when in fact it is well known that at least some financial institutions provide inconsistent information at times.