QWin 2017 Deluxe: Placeholders:

Tom Lieven said:

Good article but it doesn't help. I do not use automatic downloads. i manually enter all investment activity. The only exception is when updating price history, if Quicken finds a stock split mentioned it alerts me and posts it if I allow it. That was not the case here (Quicken price download never identified the split) and that approach has never resulted in a placeholder. Based on logic discussed, I should never see a placeholder since all the placeholder activity centers around downloading brokerage activity.

That isn't completely correct you can certainly get placeholders in a manual entry account.  In fact one way is at the time you create it.

For instance if you were to enter a security in this dialog:

And then in this one:

After selecting Next you now have a Placeholder.
Why?

Because you have told Quicken to put some shares of a security in Quicken, but there is no where you told it when they were bought or at what price.


You are getting a placeholder because some shares have magically appeared out of nowhere.

So now that we know other things like a split transaction can trigger Quicken putting in placeholders the first thing is to make them visible so that you can deal with it.
It should actually be visible in the Placeholder Entry tab at the bottom of the register(expand the tab).

Edit -> Preferences -> Investment transactions -> Show hidden transactions (this will show the placeholders in the register)

Tom Lieven said:

Good article but it doesn't help. I do not use automatic downloads. i manually enter all investment activity. The only exception is when updating price history, if Quicken finds a stock split mentioned it alerts me and posts it if I allow it. That was not the case here (Quicken price download never identified the split) and that approach has never resulted in a placeholder. Based on logic discussed, I should never see a placeholder since all the placeholder activity centers around downloading brokerage activity.

Well that was my long winded way of saying this "Based on logic discussed, I should never see a placeholder since all the
placeholder activity centers around downloading brokerage activity." isn't correct.  Placeholders can be created for other reasons. I'm not sure why they were triggered in this case.

But in fact it isn't the point.  The point is Tom Lieven shouldn't dismiss the advice in the FAQ just because he isn't using automatic downloading.

He does have placeholders, and he does need to deal with them.