Customizing reports by Payee

Noel COBB

I have a very cluttered Payee List being displayed in the Payee Tab of the Customised Reports section of my Quicken Accounts Home & Business 2015.

I have read the comments made by Keith HOWARD - Member June 2013 and the advice given by Howard ROARK - Member June 2013 and have tried the recommended fix.

My problem still exists.

HELP !!!!

Jim_Harman

I edited the title to be more descriptive.

As you have seen, the selection list contains all the payees you have used in the past 3 years, not the ones in your memorized payee list.

What I am seeing with QWin 2019 is that if editing a payee creates a new one, the selection list changes to show the new payee. Deleting the last instance of a payee removes it from the list.

So the only real solution I can see would be for you to un-clutter your payees, which is probably a good idea anyway. Here is what I do:

• Back up your data file in case you make a mistake and want to revert, then:
• Go to Edit > Preferences > Data Entry and Quickfill and un-check "Automatically memorize new payees". Check "Remove memorized payees not used in the last" and set it to 14 months.
• Go through your memorized payee list and remove any duplicates and variations. This will not affect your existing transactions, but will help prevent variations going forward.
• Click on All Transactions at the top of the Account bar (usually on the left side of your screen). This will display all the transactions in all your registers. Click on Payee at the top to sort by Payee.
• When you see variations on payee names - like US Treasury, U.S. Treasury, United States Treasury, etc. - pick the one you want to keep, copy it, paste it over each variation, and hit Enter to save the change. This goes surprisingly quickly. You can also use the transaction Find and Replace (see Help) to do this if there are a lot of changes to make. Be careful when you do this!
• If you are downloading credit card transactions, use Renaming Rules along with memorized payees to standardize the payees going forward.
  

Jim_Harman

Quicken, not Reckon, right?

Could you post links to the discussions by Keith Howard and Howard Roark on this issue please? I can't find them.

I don't have Q 2015, but the Q 2019 Help says,

When you create one of the reports grouped by payee, Quicken displays a Choose Payee button that you can click to select different payees to display in the report. Clicking this button opens the Payee tab of the Customize dialog which, by default, displays the payees used in the transactions for the last three years. If the payee you want isn't in the list, at the top of the Customize dialog, in the Date range field, select a date range that covers more than three years. Then try searching the list in the Payee tab again.

Thus the payee list defaults to all the payees for the past 3 years. You can search the list by typing the beginning few letters of the payee you are looking for in the box above the list. You can repeat this process to find and select multiple payees. You can also do a "Contains" search for payees in the "Matching" section at the right.

Noel COBB

Hi Jim

Thanks for your response.

I am happy selecting individual payees when preparing a Transaction Report. Unfortunately this selection task is arduous because the Payee tab throws up all current Memorised Transaction payees as well as those superseded and deleted. This is both arduous and potentially confusing.

I have this afternoon re-loaded my yes Quicken (Reckon) Accounts Home & Business 2015. Sadly this has not changed the outcome.

Is it possible I have missed a Service Pack which might have addressed this issue ?


I am a little challenged with computer software. I grew up before the electronic calculator was invented let alone computers. However I challenge myself to persist and prevail, and prevail I will.


Help ! 

Jim_Harman

I edited the title to be more descriptive.

As you have seen, the selection list contains all the payees you have used in the past 3 years, not the ones in your memorized payee list.

What I am seeing with QWin 2019 is that if editing a payee creates a new one, the selection list changes to show the new payee. Deleting the last instance of a payee removes it from the list.

So the only real solution I can see would be for you to un-clutter your payees, which is probably a good idea anyway. Here is what I do:

• Back up your data file in case you make a mistake and want to revert, then:
• Go to Edit > Preferences > Data Entry and Quickfill and un-check "Automatically memorize new payees". Check "Remove memorized payees not used in the last" and set it to 14 months.
• Go through your memorized payee list and remove any duplicates and variations. This will not affect your existing transactions, but will help prevent variations going forward.
• Click on All Transactions at the top of the Account bar (usually on the left side of your screen). This will display all the transactions in all your registers. Click on Payee at the top to sort by Payee.
• When you see variations on payee names - like US Treasury, U.S. Treasury, United States Treasury, etc. - pick the one you want to keep, copy it, paste it over each variation, and hit Enter to save the change. This goes surprisingly quickly. You can also use the transaction Find and Replace (see Help) to do this if there are a lot of changes to make. Be careful when you do this!
• If you are downloading credit card transactions, use Renaming Rules along with memorized payees to standardize the payees going forward.