From: Jeff on
My Quicken 2008 Deluxe started behaving funny. So I made a backup and
then ran Validate. The Data_Log.txt file has numerous entries going back
to 2004! They are all of the following type:

Found backfill cash transaction: "the A/C number" 3/16/2010 "Balancing
Cash Adjustment"
Found ex information for backfill cash transaction.
Found backfill pair with id: 75354
Found backfill cash transaction: "the A/C number" 1/15/2010 "Balancing
Cash Adjustment"
Found ex information for backfill cash transaction.
Found backfill pair with id: 75313

What do I do with this information?
What should I do? I have multiple backups but I think this problem has
been going on for at least 3-4 months so it would be a hassle to
reconstruct all these transactions.

Thanks for any suggestions.
From: John Pollard on
Jeff(a)nospam.invalid wrote:
> My Quicken 2008 Deluxe started behaving funny. So I made a backup and
> then ran Validate. The Data_Log.txt file has numerous entries going
> back to 2004! They are all of the following type:
>
> Found backfill cash transaction: "the A/C number" 3/16/2010
> "Balancing Cash Adjustment"
> Found ex information for backfill cash transaction.
> Found backfill pair with id: 75354
> Found backfill cash transaction: "the A/C number" 1/15/2010
> "Balancing Cash Adjustment"
> Found ex information for backfill cash transaction.
> Found backfill pair with id: 75313
>
> What do I do with this information?
> What should I do? I have multiple backups but I think this problem
> has been going on for at least 3-4 months so it would be a hassle to
> reconstruct all these transactions.

Why (specifically) did you do the Validate?

Why do you think there is anything you should now do?

--

John Pollard
news://<YOUR-NNTP-NEWSERVER-HERE>/alt.comp.software.financial.quicken
Your source of user-to-user Quicken help


From: Jeff on
On 7/2/2010 10:00 PM, John Pollard wrote:
> Jeff(a)nospam.invalid wrote:
>> My Quicken 2008 Deluxe started behaving funny. So I made a backup and
>> then ran Validate. The Data_Log.txt file has numerous entries going
>> back to 2004! They are all of the following type:
>>
>> Found backfill cash transaction: "the A/C number" 3/16/2010
>> "Balancing Cash Adjustment"
>> Found ex information for backfill cash transaction.
>> Found backfill pair with id: 75354
>> Found backfill cash transaction: "the A/C number" 1/15/2010
>> "Balancing Cash Adjustment"
>> Found ex information for backfill cash transaction.
>> Found backfill pair with id: 75313
>>
>> What do I do with this information?
>> What should I do? I have multiple backups but I think this problem
>> has been going on for at least 3-4 months so it would be a hassle to
>> reconstruct all these transactions.
>
> Why (specifically) did you do the Validate?
>
> Why do you think there is anything you should now do?
>
Thanks for replying John. Happy 4th of July.

1. I download transactions once a month, usually on the 1st of the new
month. Over the past couple of months I started having trouble
downloading transactions from a certain broker - which I assumed was
just their servers being overloaded because other financial institutions
(credit cards, etc.) downloaded fine. Quicken would stay stuck at
"Sending instructions to financial institutions" and then give up saying
it had trouble connecting with them. This was only with this one
institution. I even called their support and they insisted there was
nothing wrong with their servers. Finally, usually the next working day,
Quicken would download from that institution.

2. When after many attempts they finally downloaded from that broker I
would get 3-4 popups saying saying something about "excessive 1000:1
splits" - all in 2-3 accounts from that broker. I searched for such
splits but found nothing.

3. then 2 days ago, again it would not download from that FI. After
finally downloading from that broker, on 2 accounts from that broker,
Quicken would not let me accept some downloaded transactions. When I
clicked on the downloaded transactions in these accounts, nothing would
happen and the transactions would not even appear in the register where
I could accept or edit them. Accepting transactions in all other
accounts went normally. I found that if I closed and reopened Quicken I
could sometimes accept a transaction but then again I could not. Only
in those 2-3 accounts.

That is when I got really worried. So I made a new backup and validated.
On previous validations (in the past), the validations would go through
with no popup saying I should look at the log - which I interpreted as
meaning the validation found no errors. This time (yesterday) it told
me to look at the log. When I did I saw it had all these "backfill"
errors which I did not know what to make of and assume are errors the
validation found. They are a long list and all are backfills.

So I stopped doing anything else and sent out my message for help.

Thanks for responding.

Jeff
From: Jeff on
On 7/3/2010 5:33 AM, Jeff(a)nospam.invalid wrote:
> On 7/2/2010 10:00 PM, John Pollard wrote:
>> Jeff(a)nospam.invalid wrote:
>>> My Quicken 2008 Deluxe started behaving funny. So I made a backup and
>>> then ran Validate. The Data_Log.txt file has numerous entries going
>>> back to 2004! They are all of the following type:
>>>
>>> Found backfill cash transaction: "the A/C number" 3/16/2010
>>> "Balancing Cash Adjustment"
>>> Found ex information for backfill cash transaction.
>>> Found backfill pair with id: 75354
>>> Found backfill cash transaction: "the A/C number" 1/15/2010
>>> "Balancing Cash Adjustment"
>>> Found ex information for backfill cash transaction.
>>> Found backfill pair with id: 75313
>>>
>>> What do I do with this information?
>>> What should I do? I have multiple backups but I think this problem
>>> has been going on for at least 3-4 months so it would be a hassle to
>>> reconstruct all these transactions.
>>
>> Why (specifically) did you do the Validate?
>>
>> Why do you think there is anything you should now do?
>>
> Thanks for replying John. Happy 4th of July.
>
> 1. I download transactions once a month, usually on the 1st of the new
> month. Over the past couple of months I started having trouble
> downloading transactions from a certain broker - which I assumed was
> just their servers being overloaded because other financial institutions
> (credit cards, etc.) downloaded fine. Quicken would stay stuck at
> "Sending instructions to financial institutions" and then give up saying
> it had trouble connecting with them. This was only with this one
> institution. I even called their support and they insisted there was
> nothing wrong with their servers. Finally, usually the next working day,
> Quicken would download from that institution.
>
> 2. When after many attempts they finally downloaded from that broker I
> would get 3-4 popups saying saying something about "excessive 1000:1
> splits" - all in 2-3 accounts from that broker. I searched for such
> splits but found nothing.
>
> 3. then 2 days ago, again it would not download from that FI. After
> finally downloading from that broker, on 2 accounts from that broker,
> Quicken would not let me accept some downloaded transactions. When I
> clicked on the downloaded transactions in these accounts, nothing would
> happen and the transactions would not even appear in the register where
> I could accept or edit them. Accepting transactions in all other
> accounts went normally. I found that if I closed and reopened Quicken I
> could sometimes accept a transaction but then again I could not. Only in
> those 2-3 accounts.
>
> That is when I got really worried. So I made a new backup and validated.
> On previous validations (in the past), the validations would go through
> with no popup saying I should look at the log - which I interpreted as
> meaning the validation found no errors. This time (yesterday) it told me
> to look at the log. When I did I saw it had all these "backfill" errors
> which I did not know what to make of and assume are errors the
> validation found. They are a long list and all are backfills.
>
> So I stopped doing anything else and sent out my message for help.
>
> Thanks for responding.
>
> Jeff
Wanted to add some more information.

I just reopened Q and found that I had finally succeeded in accepting
all the downloaded transactions. Being frazelled at the problems I was
having I forgot that after one of the Quicken restarts I must have been
able to finally accept the problem transactions.

The encrypted partition where I had the Quicken data file was running
out of space. I've since made more space. Maybe that was part of the
problem.

The quicken data file was very fragmented and I have defragmented that
partition. After backups to an external backup drive.




From: John Pollard on
Jeff(a)nospam.invalid wrote:
> On 7/3/2010 5:33 AM, Jeff(a)nospam.invalid wrote:

>> On 7/2/2010 10:00 PM, John Pollard wrote:

>>> Jeff(a)nospam.invalid wrote:
>>>> My Quicken 2008 Deluxe started behaving funny. So I made a backup
>>>> and then ran Validate. The Data_Log.txt file has numerous entries
>>>> going back to 2004! They are all of the following type:
>>>>
>>>> Found backfill cash transaction: "the A/C number" 3/16/2010
>>>> "Balancing Cash Adjustment"
>>>> Found ex information for backfill cash transaction.
>>>> Found backfill pair with id: 75354
>>>> Found backfill cash transaction: "the A/C number" 1/15/2010
>>>> "Balancing Cash Adjustment"
>>>> Found ex information for backfill cash transaction.
>>>> Found backfill pair with id: 75313
>>>>
>>>> What do I do with this information?
>>>> What should I do? I have multiple backups but I think this problem
>>>> has been going on for at least 3-4 months so it would be a hassle
>>>> to reconstruct all these transactions.

>>> Why (specifically) did you do the Validate?
>>>
>>> Why do you think there is anything you should now do?

>> Thanks for replying John. Happy 4th of July.
>>
>> 1. I download transactions once a month, usually on the 1st of the
>> new month. Over the past couple of months I started having trouble
>> downloading transactions from a certain broker - which I assumed was
>> just their servers being overloaded because other financial
>> institutions (credit cards, etc.) downloaded fine. Quicken would
>> stay stuck at "Sending instructions to financial institutions" and
>> then give up saying it had trouble connecting with them. This was
>> only with this one institution. I even called their support and they
>> insisted there was nothing wrong with their servers. Finally,
>> usually the next working day, Quicken would download from that
>> institution.

Sometimes doing an "Update now" from the one account that has problems in
One Step Update will get the account downloaded.

Another possible workaround is to deactivate the account for downloading,
then reactivate it. Since this may not solve the problem and it may
download a bunch of already downloaded transactions, backup first so you
can revert to the backup, if you don't like the results.

>> 2. When after many attempts they finally downloaded from that broker
>> I would get 3-4 popups saying saying something about "excessive
>> 1000:1 splits" - all in 2-3 accounts from that broker. I searched
>> for such splits but found nothing.

I don't think I've ever seen, or heard of, that before.

So your share balances are all correct. And you know of no real-world
splits that occured for your holdings? When you look in your Quicken
problem account and the Security Detail view for the securities in the
problem account, you see no stock splits?

>> 3. then 2 days ago, again it would not download from that FI. After
>> finally downloading from that broker, on 2 accounts from that broker,
>> Quicken would not let me accept some downloaded transactions. When I
>> clicked on the downloaded transactions in these accounts, nothing
>> would happen and the transactions would not even appear in the
>> register where I could accept or edit them. Accepting transactions
>> in all other accounts went normally. I found that if I closed and
>> reopened Quicken I could sometimes accept a transaction but then
>> again I could not. Only in those 2-3 accounts.
>>
>> That is when I got really worried. So I made a new backup and
>> validated. On previous validations (in the past), the validations
>> would go through with no popup saying I should look at the log -
>> which I interpreted as meaning the validation found no errors. This
>> time (yesterday) it told me to look at the log. When I did I saw it
>> had all these "backfill" errors which I did not know what to make of
>> and assume are errors the validation found. They are a long list and
>> all are backfills.

I'm not sure what the Validate message about the backfill transactions
means.

Backfill cash transactions usually occur when you have a placeholder in an
investment account with a linked checking account, and you enter a
transaction (such as a Buy, Sell, Div, etc*) that would normally affect
the cash in the account and the transaction is controlled by the
placeholder. When an investment transaction is controlled by a
placeholder, Quicken will do what it takes to prevent that transaction
from affecting the cash balance of the account. When an investment
account has a linked checking account, that linked checking account
contains the cash balance ... and the backfill cash transaction prevents
the balance of the linked checking account from changing.

[* At one time, there was a bug (Q2010, I think) that caused Quicken to
create backfilled cash transactions for reinvestment transactions ...
which should not happen since reinvestment transactions don't affect the
cash balance of the account. I think the bug was fixed, but I'm not
certain.]

Normally backfill cash transactions wouldn't be considered errors; I don't
know what problem Quicken found with yours.

[If you want to see all the backfill cash transactions, tell Quicken to
display hidden investment transactions.
Edit > Preferences > Quicken Program > Investment transactions.]

>> So I stopped doing anything else and sent out my message for help.
>>
>> Thanks for responding.


> Wanted to add some more information.
>
> I just reopened Q and found that I had finally succeeded in accepting
> all the downloaded transactions. Being frazelled at the problems I was
> having I forgot that after one of the Quicken restarts I must have
> been able to finally accept the problem transactions.
>
> The encrypted partition where I had the Quicken data file was running
> out of space. I've since made more space. Maybe that was part of the
> problem.

It does sound possible, but I have no experience in this area.

> The quicken data file was very fragmented and I have defragmented that
> partition. After backups to an external backup drive.

My prescription for the backfill cash transactions would be to get rid of
the placeholders, then get rid of the backfill cash transactions, then
re-enter the transactions that the backfill cash transactions were linked
to.

--

John Pollard
news://<YOUR-NNTP-NEWSERVER-HERE>/alt.comp.software.financial.quicken
Your source of user-to-user Quicken help