paychecks vs. direct deposit entries

Unknown

Quicken Deluxe 2019

My paycheck is direct deposited into 3 separate bank accounts.  When I update my accounts, the deposits come over with the update.  However when I enter my paycheck, it creates another entry for the same transaction.  I have tried to delete the duplicate transaction but it won't delete it because it says it is part of a split.  There must be a simpler way to do this.  Can anyone help?

John_M

I also don't understand exactly what you mean, but here's something to consider if you're not already doing it.

You should have only one transaction for your paycheck. The transaction should be entered into the account that has the main deposit. Then the other two accounts that also receive deposits should be shown as withdrawals (transfers to other accounts) on that transaction. Here's an example:

Net Pay into Account A on the top line (positive amount).

Splits:

Gross Pay (positive amount)
Taxes (negative amounts)
Benefits and retirement contributions (negative amounts)
Account B (negative amount as a transfer to Account
Account C (negative amount as a transfer to Account C)

Then when the transactions are downloaded into Accounts A, B, and C, they will already be there to match against and there will not be a duplicate transaction to delete.

UKR

Make sure you have your Paycheck transaction already correctly posted to your checking account register with the split transfers also appearing in the other accounts BEFORE you start to download transactions.
If, after downloading, you end up with apparent duplicate deposits in the various account registers ...
For some reason, Quicken couldn't properly match the downloaded transaction to the paycheck transaction. You can effect a "manual match" by dragging the downloaded transaction over the existing paycheck transaction.

Unknown

John M said:

I also don't understand exactly what you mean, but here's something to consider if you're not already doing it.

You should have only one transaction for your paycheck. The transaction should be entered into the account that has the main deposit. Then the other two accounts that also receive deposits should be shown as withdrawals (transfers to other accounts) on that transaction. Here's an example:

Net Pay into Account A on the top line (positive amount).

Splits:

Gross Pay (positive amount)
Taxes (negative amounts)
Benefits and retirement contributions (negative amounts)
Account B (negative amount as a transfer to Account
Account C (negative amount as a transfer to Account C)

Then when the transactions are downloaded into Accounts A, B, and C, they will already be there to match against and there will not be a duplicate transaction to delete.

For what you mention as Account B and Account C, why does it do it this way?

When someone is paid from their employer, the employer pays it to separate accounts as opposed to Account B transferring part of the amount to Account C.

This looks weird, especially if you're using two different banks as I am. In my case, in quicken it appears as if my employer is paying Chase, then Chase splits off a portion of the paycheck to Bank of America, when in reality, my employer sends a chunk to Chase and a chunk to BofA.

Unknown

John M said:

I also don't understand exactly what you mean, but here's something to consider if you're not already doing it.

You should have only one transaction for your paycheck. The transaction should be entered into the account that has the main deposit. Then the other two accounts that also receive deposits should be shown as withdrawals (transfers to other accounts) on that transaction. Here's an example:

Net Pay into Account A on the top line (positive amount).

Splits:

Gross Pay (positive amount)
Taxes (negative amounts)
Benefits and retirement contributions (negative amounts)
Account B (negative amount as a transfer to Account
Account C (negative amount as a transfer to Account C)

Then when the transactions are downloaded into Accounts A, B, and C, they will already be there to match against and there will not be a duplicate transaction to delete.

I posted the answer to this in this thread:
https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/why-does-direct-deposit-show-as-transfer

But as a quick explanation, is that it is impossible to enter the "from side" of a transaction that isn't from any account in your Quicken data file.  So it it is being done as a split line in the paycheck reminder.