Mac Categorization [edited]

bethwr

I have been a (nearly) daily Quicken user since 1994.  I had a PC platform until about two years ago when I switched to Mac.  And I've been patient, but I'm at my wit's end with the miscategorizations!  It doesn't recognize things I've modified in the past, and it downloads payees with ridiculous categories.  I've even deleted the categories that I don't use, and they've reappeared!  

I've tried adding transactions with the same name and amount as a downloaded transaction, then dragging the manually-added category over the downloaded one.  I've done it in reverse.  No luck.

I often overlook something that's been miscategorized when I'm in a hurry, so it makes the budget and actual feature useless.

What the heck??  Do I give up and go back to the PC platform?  It takes me hours each month to clean up all of these things.  I'm so frustrated!
   

jacobs

The Mac product manager has said they were planning to release enhancements that will bring back some form of "memorized" or "quick fill" transactions to Quicken Mac. I am just speculating that some of architectural work they did 2 or 3 updates ago to pave the way for this temporarily broke some of the functionality of auto-categorization. What the new features will be, and when they'll be released, remains uncertain; it might be the next release, but if they run into delays in development or quality testing, planned features can always slip later. It's frustrating, but there's nothing we can do but wait.

jacobs

@bethwr As I wrote in the post just above yours, memorized or quick fill transactions is something the Mac product manager has said is coming in the future. Until then, Quicken defaults to using its own categories.

There was a feature that used to work which you can try; there have been reports that it works only sometimes or not at all these days: create a manual transaction for a Payee like Starbucks, and use the category you want. When you next download a transaction from Starbucks, make your manual transaction have the same amount and date, and then drag it over top of the downloaded one (or visa versa). Quicken should merge the manual and downloaded transaction into one, and it should learn (e.g. store some internal rule) to use the same category the next time it download this Payee. I don't download my transactions, so I can't verify if this is working or not currently, but you could try it on one or two Payees. If it doesn't work for you, then you'll have to wait until they release an update that addresses this area of functionality -- hopefully sometime this summer. 

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jacobs

The Mac product manager has said they were planning to release enhancements that will bring back some form of "memorized" or "quick fill" transactions to Quicken Mac. I am just speculating that some of architectural work they did 2 or 3 updates ago to pave the way for this temporarily broke some of the functionality of auto-categorization. What the new features will be, and when they'll be released, remains uncertain; it might be the next release, but if they run into delays in development or quality testing, planned features can always slip later. It's frustrating, but there's nothing we can do but wait.

bethwr

Still absolutely maddening. How does Quicken recreate categories?? I've deleted all of the categories that are irrelevant, but they keep auto-populating. For example, Starbuck's, shows up as "coffee shops" instead of dining or entertainment (as I've re-categorized it). Absolutely crazy. If I go back to Quicken for Windows, do I still have the memorized transaction option?

jacobs

@bethwr As I wrote in the post just above yours, memorized or quick fill transactions is something the Mac product manager has said is coming in the future. Until then, Quicken defaults to using its own categories.

There was a feature that used to work which you can try; there have been reports that it works only sometimes or not at all these days: create a manual transaction for a Payee like Starbucks, and use the category you want. When you next download a transaction from Starbucks, make your manual transaction have the same amount and date, and then drag it over top of the downloaded one (or visa versa). Quicken should merge the manual and downloaded transaction into one, and it should learn (e.g. store some internal rule) to use the same category the next time it download this Payee. I don't download my transactions, so I can't verify if this is working or not currently, but you could try it on one or two Payees. If it doesn't work for you, then you'll have to wait until they release an update that addresses this area of functionality -- hopefully sometime this summer. 

Tom Schaefer

I am new to Quicken, and took one of the tutorial sessions a couple weeks ago and specifically asked if future transactions would know to use the categories that I was assigning to the 18 months of transactions that I managed to import or create. He answered YES. I am very disappointed to observe otherwise.

kem

Quicken: Please fix this. Memorizing payee with category is an absolute must. I just spent hours assigning the correct categories with the payee (again) Monthly activity.