N/A entries

I have a couple year's worth of entries of purchases and sales of equity shares, where the total amounts of cash involved is not recorded where it should be, e.g. for a sale, the proceeds are not added to the cash balance. Instead, there is a N/A in the field. All of the "help" information seems to indicate that these entries are "placeholders" but if so I don't know how they came to be placeholders. I cannot download this account. I added them myself, when I got my statement. Moreover, if I try to edit them, I cannot indicate that the funds should be added or subtracted from the account's cash, so I cannot reconcile the cash. Is there any way of fixing this, other than to re-enter every transaction? I'm also thinking that even if I did that, they still might end up the same way.

Reply to
Marilyn
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The transactions with "N/A" in the cash amount field are not placeholders: the "N/A's" in those transactions were *caused by* placeholders.

A placeholder, when visible, has an "Action" code of "Entry". A placeholder says to Quicken that on a specific date, you owned a specified number of shares of a particular security. Whenever there is a placeholder in your account, you can never own any different number of shares of that security on that date ... no matter what transactions you enter dated on, or before, that placeholder, Quicken will make sure that on the date in question, you own the number of shares specified in the placeholder.

If you do not download, then I believe the only way to get placeholders is to enter an "Adjust Share Balance" transaction directly; to utilize something like the "Update 401k Holdings" wizard; or to tell Quicken, when you first create the account, that you owned a certain number of shares of a security.

I think there are two ways you can approach the "placeholder problem": enter the correct historical transactions that account for the placeholder's number of shares; or delete the placeholders.

If you choose to "satisfy" the placeholder's need for historical transactions, you will continue to see "N/A" until all the historical transactions have been entered; until the total number of shares in all the buys, reinvestments, sells, etc. net to the number of shares in the placeholder transaction. At that point, the placeholder will "disappear" from the register ... but it will still be present, and will appear again if you do anything that would imply that you owned a different number of shares of that security on that date (like accidentally entering a buy transaction for that security dated prior to the placeholder: if the placeholder already had history that correctly netted to the number of shares in the placeholder, a new buy transaction for that security dated prior to the placeholder would increase the number of shares owned on the date of the placeholder ... so Quicken would make an adjustment to keep the actual number of shares owned equal to the number specified in the placeholder).

If you delete the placeholders (and do not allow new ones to be created), you can enter your historical transactions at your leisure; your current balance of cash and number of shares may not be correct (depending on your approach) until you finish entering all your history, but you will not have to deal with placeholders, and you will be able to see the exact affect on cash for each transaction you enter.

Reply to
John Pollard

John Pollard, I appreciate your response, and I'm thinking about it. I don't like the way these placeholders work and I think they are very confusing, so I have no idea if I want to try to re-enter a whole lot of entries or just delete the whole account and forget it or what. Whatever, I do it's going to be a lot of work probably hours, maybe half a days worth, when I thought by using Quicken I would be saving myself time and headaches!

Reply to
Marilyn

There is no way that Quicken can enter your history for you (and fi's do not keep your history available to Quicken forever). Placeholders were devised to allow you to get your current balances correct in an investment account, then enter your history at your leisure; but as you have noticed, placeholders can sometimes be confusing. Still, which ever way you elect to go; manually entering history is basically a one-time task: once you have gotten the history in Quicken, keeping current is a snap. (As long as you treat your file carefully and have an effective backup strategy).

I find that Quicken allows me to keep track of a lot of data in one place with significantly less effort than I would otherwise have had to expend; in many cases it allows me to do things I would never have been able to do - given the work that would have been involved.

When you look back, I believe you will be glad you did the work and got your Quicken data correct: I believe you will consider it to have been well worth the effort.

Reply to
John Pollard

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