Placeholder entries

Posted by John Oliver on August 27, 2009, 9:28 pm

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So, I have a 401(k) that is filling up with "placeholder entries",
presumably because the management firm sells some tiny portion of shares
to pay for expenses and doesn't feel the need to put specific entries in
the info it sends to me. So... what do I do with them? Instead of a
binary "trust Quicken / trust the downloaded info", it asks me for a
cost. Huh?

--
* John Oliver http://www.john-oliver.net/ *

Posted by John Pollard on August 29, 2009, 9:47 am

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John Oliver wrote:

> So, I have a 401(k) that is filling up with "placeholder entries",

> presumably because the management firm sells some tiny portion of

> shares to pay for expenses and doesn't feel the need to put specific

> entries in the info it sends to me. So... what do I do with them?

> Instead of a binary "trust Quicken / trust the downloaded info", it

> asks me for a cost. Huh?

Cost is probably not as important in a retirement account since you're not
going to pay capital gains taxes.

But you're right that if the fi removes shares to pay fees, but doesn't
provide transactions to account for the removal of those shares, Quicken
will offer to adjust the share balance for you, creating a placeholder if
you say "yes". But you don't have to accept the offer of the adjustment.

It's your choice to keep your account accurate by manual means (where
necessary); or to let Quicken do some, or all of the work for you (with
the "Update 401(k) Holdings" wizard, you could probably avoid ever having
to enter any "transaction" in the 401k account; you'd just have Adjust
Share Balance entries for each security for each printed statement).

When we had contributions to a 401k where the administrator removed shares
and didn't account for that removal (anywhere - not even in printed
statements), I just computed the shares removed using the share balance
the actual transactions produced and the share balance the fi reported; I
entered a Shares Removed for that difference and put a note in the memo
field. [I don't care for placeholders, so I don't allow them in any
account for any reason.]

--

John Pollard

Posted by John Oliver on September 1, 2009, 1:08 pm

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On Sat, 29 Aug 2009 08:47:03 -0500, John Pollard wrote:

> John Oliver wrote:

>> So, I have a 401(k) that is filling up with "placeholder entries",

>> presumably because the management firm sells some tiny portion of

>> shares to pay for expenses and doesn't feel the need to put specific

>> entries in the info it sends to me. So... what do I do with them?

>> Instead of a binary "trust Quicken / trust the downloaded info", it

>> asks me for a cost. Huh?

> Cost is probably not as important in a retirement account since you're not

> going to pay capital gains taxes.

> But you're right that if the fi removes shares to pay fees, but doesn't

> provide transactions to account for the removal of those shares, Quicken

> will offer to adjust the share balance for you, creating a placeholder if

> you say "yes". But you don't have to accept the offer of the adjustment.

It isn't "offering"... I just get the placeholders. I might very well
have wound up "accepting" once.

> It's your choice to keep your account accurate by manual means (where

> necessary); or to let Quicken do some, or all of the work for you (with

> the "Update 401(k) Holdings" wizard, you could probably avoid ever having

> to enter any "transaction" in the 401k account; you'd just have Adjust

> Share Balance entries for each security for each printed statement).

Is there a way to tell Quicken to "always trust the download"? There is
no point in my *not* trusting what the FI gives me. The information
that's available on their website is so crappy, there's no way I could
verify accuracy anyway. This is an institution that, when I called
asking for statements showing details of every transaction, actually
said, "That would be far too complex to do." I tried to break the news
to them that there was this fancy, new-fangled contraption called a
"com-pu-tor" that would do stuff like that for them, but...

> When we had contributions to a 401k where the administrator removed shares

> and didn't account for that removal (anywhere - not even in printed

> statements), I just computed the shares removed using the share balance

> the actual transactions produced and the share balance the fi reported; I

> entered a Shares Removed for that difference and put a note in the memo

> field. [I don't care for placeholders, so I don't allow them in any

> account for any reason.]

I would love to disallow them, too :-)

But since I do have these awful placeholders building up now... how can
I get rid of them? I don't know what "cost" they're looking for. I
need to click on something in Quicken to make Quicken happy and take the
placeholders away.

--
* John Oliver http://www.john-oliver.net/ *

Posted by Art McClinton on September 1, 2009, 8:27 pm

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> Is there a way to tell Quicken to "always trust the download"? There is

> no point in my *not* trusting what the FI gives me.

My FI will about once a quarter issue a download that says I have zero
shares in all my holdings. It is straightened out the next day. No I would
not want to trust what the FI gives me. When I was automatically not
thinking and accepting the FI download I found a lot of shares removed and
shares added that I needed to clean up.

Posted by John Pollard on September 2, 2009, 1:23 pm

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John Oliver wrote:

> But since I do have these awful placeholders building up now... how

> can I get rid of them? I don't know what "cost" they're looking for.

> I need to click on something in Quicken to make Quicken happy and

> take the placeholders away.

Delete them, just like you delete any other Quicken transaction.

Determine what the cause of the discrepancy is between your Quicken
holdings and the downloaded holdings, and enter your own transaction(s) to
correct the discrepancy.

[The "cost" (which you do not have to enter) is the same cost that any
other shares of a security would have. If Quicken adds, or removes,
shares in your account to correct, what it believes is a discrepancy;
Quicken has no way of knowing what those shares cost. So Quicken gives
you the "option" to tell it what they cost: you are not required to do
that.]

--

John Pollard