Removing the date "prefill" for ARM Transactions

When entering a transaction in ARM, the Transaction Date will automatically populate with a value, it seems to be the Period End Date.

Is there a way to remove this "prefill" date value?

We're concerned some users will leave this field as is, because it is already populated.

I tried to make it not required and put a rule to prevent save if transaction date is blank, but it still always populates the date value. The attribute window does not show it having a default value, so I would think it should start out as blank. I'd prefer to not do a custom attribute and some data copying rule.