Vanguard 401k - Quicken 2011

"Edward" wrote

I have had a 401k at Vanguard through my employment for years, and have tracked it in Quicken for years. Every time there is a deposit, there are place holder entries. I have three funds, and for each one, there will be two entries adding additional shares, and one entry subtracting shares. The difference between the shares added and the shares subtracted are usually around 0.001.

Is there any way to select multiple placeholder entries and delete in Quicken 2011? (Does it work in later versions?) When I delete one at a time, it takes 15 - 25 seconds to delete.

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Odd that you'd get a placeholder caused by a cash (deposit) transaction: placeholders are only concerned with share balances.

And, I don't understand why you are accepting the offer of placeholders: it's simpler to refuse to accept them than it is to accept them, then delete them.

But if you want to delete multiple investment transactions at one time, there is a (non-intuitive) way to do that.

Create a Banking > Transaction report for the investment account. Use any Customizations you can to exclude transactions from the report that you do not want to delete. Then select all the transactions you want to delete (placeholders will have "*Placeholder" in the Num column). You can select multiple transactions in the report as you would select multiple files in Windows Explorer.

When you have selected all the transactions you want to delete, click the "Edit" button in the report and select "Delete transaction(s)".

Thanks John. My email must not have been clear. The placeholders are for shares. In any case, I think your suggestion is working. My computer is churning away.

I only accepted the placeholders for a few months, but each deposit results in 6 or more placeholders. My balances were way off for some reason, and I thought at first it would help, then I would go back and figure it out and enter the appropriate transactions manually. I have always used Quicken, so I'm not sure why the balances would be off at all. I think I must have a few major transactions that are missing, along with the small corrections.

Is there a way to tell Quicken to round off at a certain level?

"Edward" wrote

Thanks John. My email must not have been clear. The placeholders are for shares. In any case, I think your suggestion is working. My computer is churning away.

I only accepted the placeholders for a few months, but each deposit results in 6 or more placeholders. My balances were way off for some reason, and I thought at first it would help, then I would go back and figure it out and enter the appropriate transactions manually. I have always used Quicken, so I'm not sure why the balances would be off at all. I think I must have a few major transactions that are missing, along with the small corrections.

Is there a way to tell Quicken to round off at a certain level?

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My comment, "Odd that you'd get a placeholder caused by a cash (deposit) transaction ...", was directed to your statement that, "Every time there is a deposit, there are place holder entries". Since the only function of placeholders is to adjust share balances, it seemed strange that a purely "cash" transaction would trigger a placeholder. Perhaps you're referring to your 401k contributions ... which actually result in "Buy" transactions (which use the cash from the contribution) ... and Buy transactions can trigger placeholders.

There is no way to control the manner in which Quicken rounds share quantities; but there is a way to prevent Quicken from rounding share quantities at all: when you enter a transaction (either manually, or by Accepting it in a download) that involves share quantities (buy, sell, reinvest, etc.), do not allow Quicken to compute the number of shares. In such transactions, you should control the total dollar amount and the number of shares ... let Quicken compute the price/share.

As to non-rounding differences: you should be able to "reconcile" your 401k account. Quicken's reconcile will only help with the cash portion of the reconcile (though it will allow you to mark any transaction as "R"econciled), but you can use other Quicken tools to get the job done. The Investment > Transactions report, and the Investment > Portfolio Value report can help you determine where your security values differ from the financial institution and which transactions might be missing, extra, or incorrect.

Thanks, I was referring to the 401k contributions. And thank you very much for your suggestions.