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New QMAC Investing problem

Bob.

I bought more shares in a stock I own yesterday. QWIN handled this EXACTLY as expected, adding the shares, debiting money market. Just fine…

BUT, QMAC added the new shares but in portfolio deleted the previous purchase so all that shows is yesterday's buy and the previous buy is gone. The register looks fine, but portfolio view is short the previous shares!!

Yet fine in QWIN.

How do I fix this? I could almost understand if it was missing the newest transaction, but not the previous.

Thanks!

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Bob.

I actually called support!!

Fixed, but so odd:

There was a placeholder created to remove the original shares!!

Now, why did it work in windows?
Why was a placeholder created to remove the original purchase?
Why is a placeholder placed at the very top of the register where I would never see it!!!???

Its a bug. I asked the agent to report it in as such.

John_in_NC

I am glad you got it figured out.

Likely not a bug: a placeholder is simply a balance adjustment for share balances from what is being reported by the brokerage compared to what is in your Quicken file. Being an adjustment, that is why they are added at the beginning (top) of your register. Placeholders don't remove specific lots or buys, but total holdings for that fund at the time of update.

I can't answer as to why you see the difference between QWin and QMac as I don't know when your connection methods are or the timing of account downloads. Manually entering transactions can also trigger placeholders.

I suspect that if you had waited a day, the correct share balance post purchase would have been pushed out and the placeholder would have vanished.

Placeholders aren't a bad thing-you just have to understand how they work as I think you now are.

Good luck!

Bob.

Thanks John, but no :)

This placeholder was to sell the previous buy of shares I did not nor desire to sell. And that had nothing to do with the current transaction of a new buy. It is a bug. Windows had no such thing but reported the buy and debit from Money Market. Did not touch the original shares purchase transaction. BTW, connections are identical. That also has nothing to do with this.

Bug (or VERY poor design decision): If the placeholder was at the bottom (like in Windows) I would have seen it and never would have had to post here or call support. It was the VERY FIRST entry after opening balance. Windows did not have nor need an incorrect placeholder.

Waiting years would not get this sorted. The brokerage sent the proper data. Quicken misused it.

John_in_NC

Hi, again @Bob.

Placeholders behave the same way under QWin/QMac: They will be light gray Add or Remove Shares transactions at the very beginning of your register, depending on how your register is sorted. You can click on the date column header to make that the sort key, and clicking repeatedly will change if you prefer the newest transactions at the top or bottom of your register. Perhaps you are not sorted in the way you are familiar with.

Again, a placeholder won't target any specific transaction, but add or remove shares to make the total correct at that point of download. I have had brokerages push out transx for that day (buy, sell, etc.) but not update the total holdings (that happened at midnight) so a placeholder get's created. I could delete the placeholder, or wait. I see this on both platforms.

But I am glad you got it all resolved.

Bob.

Nope. In QWIN the placeholder is at bottom of the register. Properly where is it sorted by date. In QMAC the top of the register on top of a dozen years of transactions where I would NEVER see it, John. Always sorted by date. It is (was) either right above or right below the OPENING BALANCE!! Been using Quicken, what, 18 years or more?

And there is NO REASON for a placeholder to sell stocks I did not sell on a buy transaction. BUG. And then for the portfolio to deduct that original purchase from my portfolio. BUG!

So I appreciate you trying to convince me otherwise, but nope. A bug and a bad design. And QWIN knew better.

jacobs

@Bob. Quicken Mac always (almost always?) puts placeholder transactions at the beginning of time. Whether that is the top or the bottom of your register simply depends on whether you have the register sorted in ascending or descending date order. I'm not saying this is great design, and there are requests for Quicken Mac to better highlight when placeholder transactions have been added to an account, but that's the way it works.

As John said, placeholders adjust holdings up or down to match the balance reported by the financial institution. And it's not unusual for financial institutions to update the balance pushed out to Quicken at a different time than pushing out the actual new transaction(s). And, usually, waiting a day will result in Quicken receiving the missing data so that everything is back to reporting things in proper sync.

The brokerage sent the proper data. Quicken misused it.

How do you know that? Did you examine the log file to see exactly what the financial institution sent?

Bob.

Poor design at beginning of time, Jacob.

And i know that because Quicken WINDOWS picked it up properly and Quickly. Same EWC+ feed. Mac buggered it. And once again, and for the last time, a BUY of shares should do anything for SELLING the original amount of shares already held. That is what this placeholder tried to do.'

Enough. It is what it is. Both a bad design and a bug. Fans can defend it all you like, but that will not make it right :)

FWIW, another issue with a buy transaction that at least I have learned the fix in a previous thread of mine, is that buying used more money than in the CORE account No issue, the broker automatically takes the rest from my money Market fund. BUT, quicken leaves CORE at a negative balance and does not debit Money market. The fix is to create a SELL in the register for Money Market which brings CORE to 0 and Money Market to accurate.

I should not have to do that either.

Jon

There's no way that Quicken could accurately predict in all cases how a purchase is going to be funded when there isn't enough cash in the core position. Maybe you'll transfer funds from a different account, or there might be multiple MMFs that could be sold and Quicken won't choose the one your brokerage chose; if they automatically enter a transaction you might wind up having to delete it because it's incorrect. Sometimes it's better to do nothing than it is to create a problem that users have to fix (and here I'll pointedly look at the placeholder transactions you're complaining about).

I've seen in the past that those kinds of automatic MMF sales may not get downloaded by Quicken until a couple days after the stock purchase closes (in large part because they don't even happen until the day after the purchase closes), so if you're unwilling to enter the MMF transaction manually you may just have to put up with a negative balance for a few days.

Bob.

I could almost go with that Jon. However, the Money Market, which funded the buy, should have been debited the amount it paid, no? That's how Quicken would know at least half of it. If it did not zero out core, but did debit Money Market, I would understand.

Jon

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20527328#Comment_20527328

I'm confused, I thought you made a purchase funded by core & there wasn't enough money in core to fully fund it so MMF shares were sold to make up the difference.

Bob.

You are correct. And it happens automatically at the broker. Just does not get picked up by Quicken. My expectation, fwiw - only my expectation - is that Quicken would pick up the sale as well. It doesn't. Even if waiting a few days. At least for me. It appears it actually thought I sold the ORIGNAL held shares to purchase the new ones, or so the PLACEHOLDER implied.

No worries. will wait until the next time to see what happens.

jacobs

@Bob. I don't know how Quicken would know to pull from a particular money market fund automatically. You may only have one in this account, but some people have more than one money market fund. Your brokerage institution may have defined rules for how it handles such transactions, but Quicken doesn't know the brokerage's rules. Now, it would be nice, or even proper, for the brokerage to transmit the Sell transaction to Quicken, but apparently they didn't. (Next time you have something similar, I wonder if it would be any different if at your brokerage you created a sale of the MMF prior to your Buy transaction.)

Bob.

Because shares of the Money Market fund were sold in the exact amount of the negative shortfall in the Core account. On the same day. At the same time.

You are right though, Quicken does not pick up the sell transaction and i do have to enter it manually.

And I'll be if i did transfer first it would work. But, I trade on the spur of the moment and I should not have to do the math and make a manual transfer.

John_in_NC

Hi, again, @Bob.

The few people in this thread are quite experienced users who have provided correct information-and we are the first to call out the program's shortcomings or poor design! But, the behavior you are seeing is roughly the same in QMac and QWin. So, please be patient. . .

Being able to choose between displaying the newest transactions at the bottom or top of the register is a feature and hardly poor design. Choose which sort order you prefer.

As Jon noted, Quicken has no way to to determine where the cash comes from to fund a Buy purchase-that is why your running balance drops. How this happens should mirror how it happens in the real world and how your brokerage shows it. You may or may not receive transactions accurately to represent this-it depends on your brokerage and how it handles/reports cash transx.

FYI: Placeholders do not "Buy" or "Sell" shares: they are Add/Remove transactions (just like Windows) that adjust share balances if there is a mismatch. We have covered that earlier.

As I mentioned before, investment accounts behave roughly the same in QWin/QMac. One thing that might explain the difference you are seeing is that you are using EWC+/QC which aggregates data at night, and not when you perform a one step update (OSU). Your QWin/Mac Cloud accounts will acquire data at different times, and one is likely getting data earlier than the other.

While errors could be occurring, I suspect not. We just see more concerned users when people are tracking cross platform and start spelunking into their investment transactions when they hadn't before.

Good luck!

Bob.

Hi John,

I have to yet disagree again. Sort order with newest transactions at the bottom of the register put the Place Holder at the top of 10 years of transactions. That's is not a "choose whichever your prefer." Nope.

I do keep forgetting that in BOTH Qwin and Qmac I have to enter the sell from money Market manually. So my bad and apologies there. That is likely as said above the brokerage not sending the info to Quicken. Or a miismapping of the data by brokerage or Quicken. But I should not (at least yet) have the expectation of seeing that in either platform.

Though I STILL consider a placeholder trying to sell existing shares to buy new is a bug. What else could it be? And, it debited those from my portfolio until I deleted the placeholder. I cannot see how you can defend that. Of course it did not buy or sell. But it deleted the value from my portfolio and what if I accepted it? It should have never been there.

Not timing issue on platforms. An accuracy issue.

Is the horse dead yet?

Not worth continuing. Could be my communication skills, but could be you are defending that that does not deserve to be defended. An incorrect placeholder was placed in a place I would have never found it and changed the value of my portfolio in only QMac. Even support agreed this was a bug.

I'm going to unwatch this thread.

Thanks guys. I'm sure I will see you again soon :)

John_in_NC

Howdy, @Bob.

Feel free to ignore if you prefer-we are just fellow users (with no financial incentive to defend) trying to help you figure things out. Is help what you want?

Yeah, it likely is a (brokerage) reported timing issue, whether you agree with that or not. It happens-but at least you know what is going on. And placeholders do inherit a date of account inception, hence why they appear at the very beginning of your register (QWin/Mac). This will be at top or bottom based on your sorting.

I know you are frustrated. But. your tenacity is the reason I am responding.

Post back if you have further questions-we aren't here to defend anything. We simply want to help you figure things out as others did for us.