Quicken for Mac v5.12 Released

smali

@RickO

So, with this morning's transaction download, "Automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names and categories" is turned off and every credit card payment and account transfer downloaded as the category "Transfer". All purchases, deposits, and direct deposits downloaded as "Uncategorized", as they should have been.

If it was filling in the last used category for that payee, shouldn't it only do that when I enter the payee name as I am actively editing the transaction, not automatically assign it when it downloads a certain payee from my bank? I'm all good with it doing so when I am editing the payee, but not on the download of the transaction. If it's offering a suggested category based on a previous entry when I am actively working on that entry, I can see what's happening and make adjustments as necessary.

It would seem that turning off the "Automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names and categories" should make it so it doesn't assign *any* categories to *any* transaction when they are downloaded. It's too hard for me to keep track of what's been changed and what hasn't.

I've been using Quicken since 1997 and have seen too many times when Quicken's otherwise well intentioned automations have really messed things up in my and other people's data files. Just look at this botched roll out of 5.12.x series as one of many examples. I'm good with a little bit more work on my part just to make sure my file is completely accurate.

How can I stop it from automatically assigning *any* categories to *any* transactions when they are downloaded?

RCinNJ

smali, I'm not sure how to accomplish QM bringing every transaction in as "Uncategorized". I have "Automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names and categories" turned off because that seems to lead to the least amount of recategorizing for me personally. For me it leads to greater than 80% "touch free" downloads. Spotting things I need to reassign is an annoyance, but much less than entering every single transaction (which, given my memory and impatience, is not likely to lead to 100% accuracy either). YMMV

smali

> @RickO said:
> I actually still enter everything first before downloading for a couple of reasons. First, if I'm going to go through and review everything, I find it just as easy to enter since Quicken makes the entry so easy with autocomplete and pre-fill of the last used transaction for the payee. Second, if an unmatched transaction every downloads, it's a big flag for me that I have an unrecognized transaction or other problem.
>
> I understand that this doesn't work for or appeal to everyone. But it works for me. 

Bingo. You got it. That's what I've been trying to say. That's why I don't want my transactions to download with categories. I think Quicken needs to look at making sure that there's an option to have any transaction that isn't matched to a pre-existing transaction is downloaded as "Uncategorized".

I can see how automatically categorizing when transactions are downloaded could be extremely beneficial for some people, but for people like RickO and myself, who like to enter transactions manually, it can introduce inaccuracies. Having them automatically categorized should be an option, for sure, but there should be a way to completely disable it if the user desires.

So, Quicken Marcus, would you be willing to look at the issue and see if there is a way to make transactions download as "Uncategorized" unless they are matched? This is how it used to work in 5.11.x. Simply making sure that going to Quicken Preferences > Connected Services and unchecking the box for "Automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names and categories" makes it so no categories are auto-populated upon download would do the trick. This would allow those who find the auto-categorization feature beneficial to use it and those who do not wish to have that "feature", can disable it completely.

smali

> @RickO said:
> (Quote)
> Using my methodology, it doesn't matter to me if a non-matched downloaded transaction comes in uncategorized or not. This is because in this case, I know something's "wrong" and I'm going to deal with it by manually matching it, or categorizing it, or some other way. I don't use the category to find those downloaded-not-matched transactions. I indetify them by the blue dot in the Status column and by "Downloaded" in the Match-Status column. It's a pretty rare event.

Right, but if we had the option of all unmatched transactions coming in as uncategorized, it wouldn't mess up your reports or budget if you missed one that was automatically categorized incorrectly. I would just like to see the download functionality restored to how it worked in 5.11.x. It has nothing to do with the improved payee-category matching, it's fixing what I think is an unintended bug that was introduced as a result.

John Randolph

Quicken Marcus, Tom Anderson - The issue of the changes to editing Scheduled Transactions (future) has been discussed thoroughly, but there's one approach that seems to have been overlooked which may resolve some user's issues similar to concerns I also had. I have numerous scheduled split transactions in my registers, and often have to edit the split amounts and memo/notes content. Previously, to do this I just clicked on the "Splits" icon and the Transaction Editor opened providing access to all the fields. Things have changed, but the same view and access is still available, just harder to find.

In order to access the old familiar Transaction Editor view for a current, or future instances, you can Select/highlite the (future) Scheduled Transaction in the Register, then use the Main Menu/Transactions-Show Detail (or the keyboard Shortcut) to reveal the "old" Transaction Editor pane. Just click on Splits to edit the splits content.

If this Transaction Editor "pane" will remain in future releases, it would be nice if this was accessible via a right mouse click menu item.

This solved my concern on this, a simple "option-command-E" brings up the old pane and I click on Splits, and go on my way.

Just want to add that you guys are doing an awesome job making Quicken Mac a 1st class financial tool. Thank you.

caram

> @"Quicken Marcus" said:
> (Quote)
> Interesting.  I don't think that was intentional.  Let me have someone investigate. 
>
> UPDATE: I can't seem to replicate this issue except with the OPT+TAB but that key combination always worked that way. caram, How are you exiting the field?  Are you using Tab.  Are you seeing the right word selected in the drop-down menu prior to tabbing out of the field? 

Hi Marcus. Sorry it took me a while to go back to this thread.

I do use TAB. But in trying to reproduce the bug, I've noticed that I hit TAB really quickly. If you do that, the popup menu has no time to show up and the first letter is not capitalised as it should.

I don't think the speed of typing should have an effect on the autocomplete behaviour.

BTW, there is another related issue which I've had for a while and never took the time to report. Every now and then, when I press TAB, autocomplete will popup an Add New Payee dialog.

I could never quite predict when it would happen, because it happens only sporadically, nor why, because the Payee who's first letter I had typed was already know to QM so the dialog should never have popped up in the first place.

But I'm starting to think it may be related to the same TAB+timing issue.

lhossus

caram said:

> @Quicken Marcus said:
> (Quote)
> Interesting.  I don't think that was intentional.  Let me have someone investigate. 
>
> UPDATE: I can't seem to replicate this issue except with the OPT+TAB but that key combination always worked that way. caram, How are you exiting the field?  Are you using Tab.  Are you seeing the right word selected in the drop-down menu prior to tabbing out of the field? 

Hi Marcus. Sorry it took me a while to go back to this thread.

I do use TAB. But in trying to reproduce the bug, I've noticed that I hit TAB really quickly. If you do that, the popup menu has no time to show up and the first letter is not capitalised as it should.

I don't think the speed of typing should have an effect on the autocomplete behaviour.

BTW, there is another related issue which I've had for a while and never took the time to report. Every now and then, when I press TAB, autocomplete will popup an Add New Payee dialog.

I could never quite predict when it would happen, because it happens only sporadically, nor why, because the Payee who's first letter I had typed was already know to QM so the dialog should never have popped up in the first place.

But I'm starting to think it may be related to the same TAB+timing issue.

1) I can confirm the "quick TAB" behavior. I type one or two letters followed by TAB, in quick succession. The result is not capitalised, even though the name in the pop-up is.

And while we are picking apart the autocomplete feature:

2) I type a few letters in the Payee field. I see a value appear due to autocompletion. I press TAB. The value in the Payee field changes to another value from the popup menu.

The problem here seems to be that, while the first candidate from the popup menu populates the Payee field, a different candidate is selected in the popup menu itself, and it is that value that becomes the Payee value after the TAB is pressed.

This problem occurs infrequently - perhaps only the first time autocomplete is used during a session. I was able to reproduce it by quitting and relaunching Quicken, then retrying by typing in the Payee field of a new banking transaction.

caram

Hi Marcus, any chance of supporting SplitView on Catalina?

I'd love to have QM and Excel side-by-side. If the SplitView API is the same as on iOS, it shouldn't be too hard to squeeze in.

Shing

> @RickO said:
> I will add that I don't find it all that problematic that a single entry might be missing capitalization under some circumstances. What I don't understand it the stored payee name getting changed. To make it worse, I had this happen recently to a stored Bill Pay payee. Since you can't edit the name of a Bill Pay payee, now I cannot fix it.

Agree. The stored payee is in all caps but the download changes it to upper/lower case.

Dave461

I'm running 5.12.5. I have a question regarding Renaming Rules. When Editing Payees for my downloaded transactions I don't get the Existing & Future dialog or checkbox that Quicken Marcus describes (his image attached below). Does this need to be turned on somewhere?

caram

This issue came up again today after I created a scheduled transaction from an existing transaction. The "Setup a Cloud account" dialog should NOT appear after the scheduled transaction is created, in my opinion.

> @caram said:
> I just got this unexpected dialog box after adding a scheduled transaction.
>
> I remember there used to be such an issue on startup when you don't sync your account to the cloud. But this was fixed a while ago and suddenly it seems to b e coming to the surface again.
>
> Here are the steps I followed that led to the unexpected dialog:
> 1. Select a transaction
> 2. Schedule selected transaction
> 3. Save the transaction just created
> 4. A dialog box pops up to setup a new Cloud account

(I simplified the steps from the original message.)

caram

In 5.12, there is an issue that cleared/uncleared transactions cannot be filtered in reports.