balancing cash adjustment

skeleton567 · December 2018

How can I stop QW2014 Premier from automatically entering a balancing cash adjustment? I'm working through an investment account that was messed up by attempted download of transactions back in 2004. I'm deleting the placeholder and trying to enter a straight cash dividend, and a buy of corresponding shares with the correct cost. I tried Reinvest Div and that didn't work either. QW2014 is behind the scene taking my DIV entry and changing it to an adjustment. Getting tired of QW thinking it is smarter than I am. This should be a simple entry of data without being adjusted for me

mshiggins · December 2018

It sounds like you still have placeholders. Have you deleted all the placeholders?

skeleton567 · December 2018

No, I delete a placeholder for a single stock, then try to enter the related transaction(s) to reconcile the shares for that stock. I should not have to delete all placeholders to reconcile a single stock. I'm trying to balance to each quarterly statement in succession, and have completed probably a dozen quarters before this started. Unfortunately, the financial institution did a horrible history download and each quarter has placeholders that accumulate buys from purchases and buys from dividends for the several funds that I held. I just want QW to stop the automatic stuff that is WRONG.

BTW, before this problem began, I could enter the individual transactions, and QW would automatically update the remaining shares in the placeholder. That seemed to work fairly well, and then I would delete the placeholder when it reached zero shares.

mshiggins · December 2018

skeleton567 said:
No, I delete a placeholder for a single stock, then try to enter the related transaction(s) to reconcile the shares for that stock. I should not have to delete all placeholders to reconcile a single stock. I'm trying to balance to each quarterly statement in succession, and have completed probably a dozen quarters before this started. Unfortunately, the financial institution did a horrible history download and each quarter has placeholders that accumulate buys from purchases and buys from dividends for the several funds that I held. I just want QW to stop the automatic stuff that is WRONG.

BTW, before this problem began, I could enter the individual transactions, and QW would automatically update the remaining shares in the placeholder. That seemed to work fairly well, and then I would delete the placeholder when it reached zero shares.

You don't need to delete all placeholders, just the one for the cash balance.

mshiggins · December 2018

skeleton567 said:
No, I delete a placeholder for a single stock, then try to enter the related transaction(s) to reconcile the shares for that stock. I should not have to delete all placeholders to reconcile a single stock. I'm trying to balance to each quarterly statement in succession, and have completed probably a dozen quarters before this started. Unfortunately, the financial institution did a horrible history download and each quarter has placeholders that accumulate buys from purchases and buys from dividends for the several funds that I held. I just want QW to stop the automatic stuff that is WRONG.

BTW, before this problem began, I could enter the individual transactions, and QW would automatically update the remaining shares in the placeholder. That seemed to work fairly well, and then I would delete the placeholder when it reached zero shares.

Also, it's been a long long time since I experimented with placeholders. Doesn't deleting the placeholder delete all its associated transactions?

skeleton567 · December 2018

skeleton567 said:
No, I delete a placeholder for a single stock, then try to enter the related transaction(s) to reconcile the shares for that stock. I should not have to delete all placeholders to reconcile a single stock. I'm trying to balance to each quarterly statement in succession, and have completed probably a dozen quarters before this started. Unfortunately, the financial institution did a horrible history download and each quarter has placeholders that accumulate buys from purchases and buys from dividends for the several funds that I held. I just want QW to stop the automatic stuff that is WRONG.

BTW, before this problem began, I could enter the individual transactions, and QW would automatically update the remaining shares in the placeholder. That seemed to work fairly well, and then I would delete the placeholder when it reached zero shares.

No. What has happened is that QW examines the downloaded ending number of shares, versus what my QW account shows, and the placeholder is for the difference. Then as the transactions were created manually, it would reduce the shares in the placeholder. I could live with that, but now it is creating a cash adjustment instead of the transactions I enter.

mshiggins · December 2018

skeleton567 said:
No, I delete a placeholder for a single stock, then try to enter the related transaction(s) to reconcile the shares for that stock. I should not have to delete all placeholders to reconcile a single stock. I'm trying to balance to each quarterly statement in succession, and have completed probably a dozen quarters before this started. Unfortunately, the financial institution did a horrible history download and each quarter has placeholders that accumulate buys from purchases and buys from dividends for the several funds that I held. I just want QW to stop the automatic stuff that is WRONG.

BTW, before this problem began, I could enter the individual transactions, and QW would automatically update the remaining shares in the placeholder. That seemed to work fairly well, and then I would delete the placeholder when it reached zero shares.

If you have a placeholder for the security dated later than the transactions you are entering, you will get a balancing cash adjustment.

Jim_Harman · December 2018

skeleton567 said:
No, I delete a placeholder for a single stock, then try to enter the related transaction(s) to reconcile the shares for that stock. I should not have to delete all placeholders to reconcile a single stock. I'm trying to balance to each quarterly statement in succession, and have completed probably a dozen quarters before this started. Unfortunately, the financial institution did a horrible history download and each quarter has placeholders that accumulate buys from purchases and buys from dividends for the several funds that I held. I just want QW to stop the automatic stuff that is WRONG.

BTW, before this problem began, I could enter the individual transactions, and QW would automatically update the remaining shares in the placeholder. That seemed to work fairly well, and then I would delete the placeholder when it reached zero shares.

So the trick is to work backwards in time, resolving the Placeholders as you go.

skeleton567 · December 2018

skeleton567 said:
No, I delete a placeholder for a single stock, then try to enter the related transaction(s) to reconcile the shares for that stock. I should not have to delete all placeholders to reconcile a single stock. I'm trying to balance to each quarterly statement in succession, and have completed probably a dozen quarters before this started. Unfortunately, the financial institution did a horrible history download and each quarter has placeholders that accumulate buys from purchases and buys from dividends for the several funds that I held. I just want QW to stop the automatic stuff that is WRONG.

BTW, before this problem began, I could enter the individual transactions, and QW would automatically update the remaining shares in the placeholder. That seemed to work fairly well, and then I would delete the placeholder when it reached zero shares.

mshiggins and Jim

That doesn't make any sense if it DOES in fact work that way. The register contains placeholders for each quarter-end. The placeholder that SHOULD be affected would be the one for the quarter being reconciled. Therefore, I should work FORWARD reconciling each quarter in time sequence, and completing the oldest placeholders first. Just thinking logically about it, and I realize developers didn't always do that, any reconciliation has to consider any and all transactions BEFORE the period end, but should NOT consider any transactions AFTER the period end, because they do not affect the target balance. A placeholder should only account for shares in the current reporting period., and NOT account for LATER transactions. Otherwise, placeholders would become cumulative. This assumption is borne out by the existence of placeholders at the end of EACH reporting period. My register does in fact contain these placeholders for dates at each quarter end, and they only contain the shares purchased/sold in that quarter.

Anyway, I've reached a decision here. I will delete ALL placeholder transactions following my most recently reconciled quarter and quit *ing around with them. I only have four more years to do to the point the account was transferred and closed, so I'll manually create all transactions from my digitally archived documents, reconcile to the final transfers out, and prove once again that I'm smarter than Quicken.

Jim_Harman · December 2018

It appears to work like this in QWin 2019:

When there is a Placeholder in an investing account, Quicken has forced the share balance to match the downloaded data but does not know how much those shares cost or when they were purchased. You are supposed to edit the Placeholder to adjust earlier transactions or add missing ones using the Enter missing Transactions dialog until the "Shares in Placeholder Entry" is zero.

If you enter a missing transaction for an affected security that affects the cash balance (Buy, Sell, or Div for example) for a date prior to the Placeholder, Quicken creates a balancing cash adjustment to compensate for it, because it is trying to keep the cash balance constant. Leave this in place until you are done resolving the shares.

Once the shares in the Placeholder are down to zero, you can delete the Placeholder and then delete the balancing cash adjustment(s) as well, if you want the cash on the Placeholder date to change to match the transactions you have entered.

I find it much easier not to allow Quicken to create the placeholders in the first place.

Jim_Harman · December 2018

Jim Harman said:
It appears to work like this in QWin 2019:

When there is a Placeholder in an investing account, Quicken has forced the share balance to match the downloaded data but does not know how much those shares cost or when they were purchased. You are supposed to edit the Placeholder to adjust earlier transactions or add missing ones using the Enter missing Transactions dialog until the "Shares in Placeholder Entry" is zero.

If you enter a missing transaction for an affected security that affects the cash balance (Buy, Sell, or Div for example) for a date prior to the Placeholder, Quicken creates a balancing cash adjustment to compensate for it, because it is trying to keep the cash balance constant. Leave this in place until you are done resolving the shares.

Once the shares in the Placeholder are down to zero, you can delete the Placeholder and then delete the balancing cash adjustment(s) as well, if you want the cash on the Placeholder date to change to match the transactions you have entered.

I find it much easier not to allow Quicken to create the placeholders in the first place.

To further confuse things, these balancing cash adjustments are also hidden in the transaction list (register) when the Placeholders are hidden, and when un-hidden, they are not displayed with a gray background like the Placeholders.

If you delete the adjustment transaction before deleting the zero Placeholder, the corresponding Buy, Sell, or Div transaction is also deleted.

None of this is mentioned anywhere in the Help or online support info.

Looking back over previous conversations about Placeholders, I think these may be causing the "my account balance is twice as big as it should be" issues, because many people do not notice the balance adjustments.

q_lurker · December 2018

As best I can recall and I am not a placeholder expert' the conventional wisdom circa QW2014 was to delete the placeholder and any transactions entered after that placeholder but pre dating the placeholder. Then you had to re-enter those prior dated transactions. Just deleting the 0-share placeholder did not eliminate the effects of that placeholder.

I am open to correction if I am misstating actuality.

balancing cash adjustment

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