Placeholder Transactions

I don't believe financial institutions download placeholders; actually I don't think they *can* download placeholders. I think only you, or Quicken, can create a placeholder in a Quicken investement account.

If you get a placeholder in your account (other than after the very first time you download to an account), I believe that you must have *accepted* it yourself.

After all the transactions, and your holdings, have been downloaded, Quicken compares the *holdings* that your fi downloads to your Quicken holdings. If there is a difference, Quicken offers to "adjust" your Quicken account to match the downloaded holdings. You do NOT have to accept this offer (and if you care about the accuracy of your data, I believe you should not accept the offer).

I can't tell you what the specific purpose of the placeholder you are seeing is. Could the account possibly be a 401k account?

Good guess on the account type, in this case it's a 403B account. I recall your earlier advice against accepting placeholder transactions proposed by Quicken to balance the account.

After reading my original post, I need to clarify that these transactions are for zero dollar and zero "shares." That is, the account is in balance without accepting the placeholder transaction.

I did notice the zero share qualification on the placeholders, which was why I said I couldn't tell the purpose of the placeholders.

I have read of unusual placeholder activity in 401k accounts before though, which was why I thought of that account type.

There are other characteristics of "holdings" besides number of shares: for example, in a 401k account, the source of the funds is a characteristic of the "holdings". Because of that, some

When the underlying information is difficult-to-impossible to see, analysis becomes problematic. The more so in your case.

You're the first person I can recall who reported placeholders for zero shares, and I really don't know what characteristic they are triggered by.

If you were feeling energetic, you might poke around in the holdings area of the OFXlog to see what characteristics were downloaded for each security. No guarantees of any enlightenment though.

In any event, I would still not accept them as I suspect they will, like other placeholders, affect other transactions.

I have not followed this thread but I have on occasion had placeholders with zero shares. Usually they turned out to be because at some earlier date there was a placeholder for those shares that had been ignored. Searching through the register finds them. But sometimes it was for no reason I could find. I would delete these zero share placeholders and they would stay removed.

Jeff

From where and how do you delete the placeholders. They typically will show up with either cash balances for investment accounts or bonds.

I don't want them as it appears that Quicken is being more "helpful" than I need it to be.

Where can I delete them?

TIA

Steve Tucson

You delete placeholders from the investment account register (or its successor, the Transactions tab).

You don't say what version of Quicken you are using; it matters a bit as to how easy it is to find placeholders.

When they are visible, placeholders are transactions with an "Action" value of "Entry" (they are really "Adjust Share Balance" transactions). A placeholder says that on a specific date, you owned nnn shares of Security X. If your historical transactions are complete - that is, when the number of shares owned via non-placeholder transactions (dated on or before the placeholder) equals the number of shares specified in the placeholder - the placeholder becomes hidden.

In Quicken versions later than Q2005, there is an "Investment transaction" preference to "show hidden transactions" will will make all placeholders visible, even those whose historical transactions are present. Prior to Q2006, I think you need to enter a dummy transaction that alters the number of shares owned, with a transaction date earlier than the date of the placeholder ... which will cause the placeholder to become visible.

My 403b (TIAA-CREF) downloads zero shares and zero value to indicate the daily share price. This keeps my portfolio value current. Perhaps this is what you are seeing. I often delete the (zero/zero) transaction to keep my register less cluttered.

Joe in FTW

I get those from TIAA-CREF too (for my after tax annuity); but they're not placeholders, and they've never created a placeholder, or caused Quicken to offer me a placeholder. But you're right; they certainly do fit the description offered; I totally forgot about those price update transactions.

Still, I'm glad you mentioned TIAA-CREF because they do not have a very sophisticated system, so TIAA-CREF does constantly offer placeholders (the offer can be turned off, it's just not worth it to me since I only download once a month).

TIAA-CREF is unable to download holdings that agree with Quicken balances because: they can't figure out how to download any transactions for their "fixed" ($1/share) fund, and because they round their downloaded holdings differently than they round their statement holdings.