Placeholders When Entering Dividends

Question

I have recently created an investment account and when doing so added stocks that have been owned in the account.  I'm now tring to add dividend transactions, but this is creating placeholders.

Why is this happening and how do I correct it?

Jim_Harman · Accepted Answer

Were the placeholders created when you downloaded the dividend transactions, or are you entering everything manually? 

Are the dividends reinvested?

Are the placeholders for tiny fractions of a share, or are they for the whole amount of the dividend?

Sandy Macdonald · Accepted Answer

I entered everything manually - dividends and initial shares.

I'm not reinvesting the dividend, rather trying to increase the cash banance in the account.  But the entry doesn't show an increased case balance, or an increase in the number of shares.  There is an N/A displayed in the Cash Amt column.

Tom Young · Accepted Answer

That's a sure sign that you've got placeholders entered.  Go to Edit > Preferences > Investment Transactions and tick "Show hidden transactions" and you should see them.
Make sure that "Automatic entry" is off in the Account and that way you can dismiss further placeholders.
As you enter historical cash transactions you're constantly changing the cash in the Account and every time you download information Quicken sees that your updated cash amount doesn't match the downloaded information so it tries to add another placeholder to correct that.

Jim_Harman · Accepted Answer

After the Placeholders are visible, you may see mysterious Xin transactions next to any Buys and Xouts next to sells you have entered earlier than the placeholders. They are Quicken's attempt to not mess up your cash balance. You will probably want to delete these.

When you have entered all the historic transactions, the Placeholders should be zero and you can then delete them.