Placeholder Transactions

I'm using Quicken 2005 Premier to track my IRA account with TIAA-CREF. When I download a transaction file it gives me placeholder transactions that first delete all shares then add them back in, all on the same date. The transactions balance out, but it makes a real mess of the account.

Is there a way to get rid of these transactions? I've tried deleting both the sell and buy transactions, but they just come back again when I compare the account holdings using the On-Line Center feature of Quicken. Any help would be appreciated.

Don

Reply to
Don R
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I think if you look carefully, you are creating ("Accept"ing) those placeholders; Quicken just offers them, you do not have to accept the offer.

Also make sure you do not have two securities with very similar names in your Security List; one that matches what TIAA-CREF is downloading the other where you have accumulated your Quicken TIAA-CREF holdings.

Reply to
John Pollard

John,

Thanks for the quick reply. While it's true that Quicken is just offering the placeholder transactions, they won't go away unless I accept. It's sort of like "an offer I can refuse." When I delete them they come right back again when I compare online holdings with my quicken account holdings.

From what I read at the Quicken Help site, these transactions occur when the account is "activated online" because the number of shares don't balance out on the date the account is activated. I was just looking for a way to clean things up since the transactions are pretty numerous and distracting. And in the end, they don't change anything.

What I was hoping for was a way to accept the placeholder transactions then later on delete them from the account.

Your advise about looking for share holdings with names that are very close is a good point. I think that's happened to me once or twice in the past. However, in this case that wasn't the cause.

Thanks, Don

Reply to
Don R

Those placeholders certainly are confusing. But after dealing with them I came to the conclusion they are useful. They are trying to save you grief with the IRS. You told Quicken suddenly, "I have 123.45 shares of X." That's fine, but what did you pay for it? Quicken didn't find a Buy transaction. So it put in the Placeholder as a reminder.

One thing you could do is insert the real Buy of 123.45 of X for $DDD. After doing that, delete the Placeholder. All will be fine. Good luck.

Reply to
Stubby

You mean the "offer" is still there, right? No transactions get in your Quicken account "register" unless you "Accept" the offer.

As long as Quicken believes that your Quicken holdings differ from those downloaded by your fi; the offer(s) will never go away.

I don't think this applies in your case. If the number of shares in Quicken was different than the number of shares at your fi, the net effect of your placeholder(s) would not be zero shares; it would be the difference between the number of shares in Quicken and the number of shares your fi downloaded for your holdings.

You must get your Quicken holdings to agree 100% with the holdings downloaded by your fi, or you will continue to get offers to allow Quicken to add placeholders.

The specific placeholder situation you describe, where the net number of shares = zero, can happen, I think, when some characteristic of a security in the downloaded holdings differs from that characteristic in Quicken ... even if the characteristic is not visible (or easily discovered).

For example: At one time I think we (in the Quicken forums) discovered that the "source" of the cash in a 401k account transaction (there are 7 possible cash sources allowed in the OFX spec) was being corrected by Quicken placeholder transactions. Q2006 *used* to have a "Cash Source" button in many 401k investment transactions which could be used to tell if the cash for the transaction came from an employee contribution, an employer match, a rollover contribtion, etc. If the source of the cash in Quicken differed from the source of cash downloaded by the fi; placeholder entries would be generated whose net effect on number of shares was zero ... but behind the scenes, the transactions were removing the shares from the "incorrect" cash source and adding them back with the "correct" cash source. To the user, it looked like nothing useful was being done. (I no longer can find the "Cash Source" button in Q2006 ... though maybe I'm not looking hard enough. But even if the button isn't available, Quicken may still try to "correct" cash source.)

I'm not sure which other such characteristics might exist.

One thing you could try. See if the TIAA-CREF securities have their "Matched with online security" box checked (Edit the security in the Security List). If the box is checked (and I think it should be), try unchecking it; then the next time you download, Quicken should ask you whether the TIAA-CREF securities are new or if they should "match" an existing security. You can select the correct existing Quicken security to match them to. (Make a backup just before you do any of this.)

Reply to
John Pollard

I can see from the discussion that the best course of action here is to accept the placeholders. Thanks for the replies and the insight into the issue. I can see that this is a fairly complex problem that may not be easily solved by just deleting the transactions,

Regards, Don

Reply to
Don R

Good advice. If the IRS wants to figure out what went on here, more power to them. In the end, they probably wouldn't believe me or my Quicken account records anyway. I might gain some sympathy from them when they see what I had to deal with, but then probably not. I intend to follow your advice and accept the transactions. Thanks for the reply.

Don

Reply to
Don R

That would be the exact opposite of what I think you should do. But do what you see fit.

Reply to
John Pollard

John,

Your last response was somewhat unexpected and surprising. I'm willing to pursue this issue a bit further if I still have your interest. I figure we can trick the program into letting me delete the placeholder transactions. When a data file is downloaded from my financial institution they don't send any history information about my Quicken account.

So here's the plan. I'll accept the place holders and then do another data file down load from my financial institution. I'm not sure how far back quicken records share balances, but if it uses the most current data download I can delete the placeholder transactions so long as the current share balance doesn't change.

What do you think? It's a bit of work, but maybe worth it.

Don

Reply to
Don R

I don't think so. Not "trick" anyway.

Do I understand you to be saying that, in effect, your fi is saying your holdings are zero (by not downloading any holdings)?

Quicken will compare your Quicken holdings to your downloaded holdings every time you download. If it required placeholders after your previous download to get your Quicken account to match your downloaded holdings; then if you delete the placeholders, they will be offerred again next time you download.

In theory, placeholders might not be such a bad thing. They are supposed to allow you to tell Quicken how many shares you own as of a certain date, then as time and knowledge permit, enter the actual transactions that the placeholder is holding a place for.

But there are at least two problems: the transactions entered to satisfy the placeholder will *never* have any effect on the cash in the account ... so for whatever period of time precedes the placeholder, no transactions for that security will affect cash ... ever. The second problem is that once you enter a transaction that Quicken believes is history for a placeholder, that transaction will *never* have any effect on cash in the account ... even if you delete the placeholder that it is history for. (I think this second problem is a bug.) A third problem for people with Quicken versions earlier than Q2006 is that placeholders whose history is complete are invisible, causing confusion ("I entered a dividend for fund A. Why wasn't the cash in the account affected").

The only way to get around the permanent effects of a placeholder is to delete it and all of its historical transactions ... then re-enter those historical transactions.

If Quicken investment account holdings do not agree with the fi's downloaded holdings, there are essentially two possibilities: Quicken holdings are incorrect, or the fi's downloaded holdings are incorrect. In the case of the latter one has no choice; you ignore the offers of placeholders every time (and speak to your fi to get them to correct their downloads). [I download from Fidelity; they never download my money market fund holdings, so Quicken offers me a placeholder after *every* download, to reduce my Fidelity mm fund holdings to zero ... I always refuse the offer because I know my Quicken holdings are correct and the download is wrong.]

But if your fi's downloaded holdings are correct and your Quicken holdings are not correct; then I think you can, and should, get Quicken "correct" enough to avoid being offerred placeholders. As far as I know, there is no good reason to use placeholders for this purpose: if you do not have the history to account for your holdings in a security, you can just enter a Shares Added transaction. Better yet, get the old statements and enter the correct transactions (old investment account transactions are valuable, and often necessary). Sometimes it's just a case that you mis-entered a transaction or two, or forgot to enter one or more transactions.

I believe that for most people, placeholders are more of a problem than a solution. Perhaps things will improve in Q2007.

I am not totally sure I understand what is happening in your particular case; but if it were me, I would be trying to find out. Whether it meant just rethinking what is happening, or checking the OFXlog from a download, or calling the fi ... I would want to know. But after all is said and done, I think you only have the same two basic choices I mentioned above.

Reply to
John Pollard

Just to recap the problem -

My financial institution and Quicken agree on the number of shares owned. However, when I compare the account holdings in Online Center, Quicken offers eight transactions - four adding shares and four subtracting an equal number of shares. The net result is zero change.

What's interesting is the number of shares subtracted out and added back in are for the exact same amount that I invested in January 2004. I've examined these transactions to see if there was anything different from the others, but they look to be essentially the same.

Just for perspective there are transactions from 1998 through 2005 in this account.

I've deactivated the account then activated it again, but the problem persists.

I can understand Quicken adding or subtracting shares in order to match the fi number, but it makes no sense to subtract out a small number of shares then add the same number back in. I'm at a loss as to what's going on here.

Reply to
Don R

It appears that there is something different about the transactions for the shares from Jan 2004.

Why not try deleting the related Jan 2004 transactions, then re-entering them.

Reply to
John Pollard

John, Deleting the Jan 2004 transactions and re-entering them did the trick. One word of caution. Be sure to delete all the placeholder transactions before you start. Thanks, Don

Reply to
Don R

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