Q2020 imports bank transactions into wrong account. How to fix??

drcuddy

I've just upgraded from Q2007 to QMac 2020 (v5.13.3).
The conversion of my Q2007 data file (containing financial data back to the 1990s) completed successfully, though not without errors. It's taken me several hours to clean it up, fix incorrect cash balances, etc.

Yesterday I attempted to import the first set of banking transactions, using the 'web connect' method. I logged into my bank's portal, navigated to the proper webpage, and downloaded a Quicken-formatted QFX file (just as I've been doing for decades with Q2007 and its predecessors). The QFX file contains a month's worth of recent transactions for five different bank accounts. I then used Quicken's File/Import... command to import the QFX file into QMac 2020.

The transaction data for 4 of the accounts was imported into the corresponding Quicken 2020 accounts. But the fifth account (my day-to-day checking account) was untouched. No new transactions appeared in its register. After a lot of poking around, I finally discovered the missing records. QMac 2020 had imported them into another Banking account - an old account dating from 2016. I had hidden that account long ago, and in Q2020 it does not appear in lists or reports. It was a fluke that I happened to unhide it.

I can't figure out how to coerce Quicken to import the transactions into the correct account. Having unhidden the old archived account, I've examined the settings for it. At the top of the settings window (titled At your financial institution), it shows "This account is not set up for transaction download". For the other (the correct) account, it shows the name of my bank, indicating "Connection type: Web Connect", and "Import downloaded QFX file to get your latest transactions". In other words, it appears to be properly configured for import of the QFX data.

Even so, when I do the QFX import, the transactions for the checking account get imported to the wrong place.

Ideas/suggestions for how to fix this will be gratefully received. Thanks.

jacobs

Someone else will hopefully weigh in on how to change the import account for the future (I have some thoughts, but I don't use any Web Connect accounts and would prefer to defer to others on that), but I can tell you how you can quickly move the transactions which are in the wrong account. 

If you open the "wrong" account where Quicken imported your recent transactions, it's easy to move them to the right place. With the register sorted in date order, select the first transaction in the register by clicking on it. Now scroll to the last such transaction, and Shift-Click on it -- which will highlight all the recently-imported transactions. Now, click-and-drag any of the highlighted transactions over to the correct account in the left sidebar, and when that account name turns blue, release your drag. All the transactions will be moved from the "wrong" account to the correct one.

I know this doesn't solve the problem of how to get the transactions into the right account in the future, but it gives you a way to work until you get that squared away.

drcuddy

@jacobs
Thanks for the tip on how to move transactions between accounts. I discovered that 'feature' last night. It's well hidden (not the best UI design...).

While dragging/dropping the misfiled records moves them into the correct account, QMac2020 didn't perform any matching. I ended up with a bunch of duplicate records in the destination account. A fair number of the transactions had been programmed as scheduled items, and were already present in the account. After dragging/dropping, I had a dozen or duplicates which I had to repair. I thought I'd be able to 'merge' the pairs by dragging/dropping one on top the other, but Quicken refused. I had to manually delete each of the duplicates, one by one. I was careful to delete the ones that had been moved across, as the pre-existing records (the scheduled transactions) already had correct details re payee, category, etc. Very painful, and not a sustainable work flow going forward.

jacobs

Matching would only happen at the time of download, not when you manually move transactions. So once you get your transactions showing up in the correct account, you should see the matching you expect.

Here's one way you could possibly try to get the accounts squared away (but I'm hoping someone more familiar with Web Connect accounts might have a better solution)…

To avoid confusion, let's call your old "old" account -- the one you had previously hidden -- Account 1. And let's call your "live" account Account 2. Now create a new account -- call it Account 3 -- not set up for download. In your "old" Account 1, select ALL the transactions, and drag-move them to the new Account 3. Now open your active Account 2, select all the transactions, and drag-move them to the now-empty Account 1. Delete Account 2, and re-hide Account 3. So now all your old transactions are in Account 3, and your current transactions are in Account 2, which it the one Quicken is importing into. It's not elegant, and we don't know why Quicken is importing into Account 2, but this would take less than a minute to do, and if it works, why not? (P.S. If you decide to do this, please make a backup of your data file before you make any changes; in case you slip while dragging or make any other mistake and mess things up, it can be easier to revert to a backup than to clean up a problem.)

The other solution that I'm aware of involves disconnecting all your accounts with this financial institution from downloads, and then setting up each one and linking it to the appropriate account in Quicken. But I don't want you to go through those steps unless someone else states that that is the "right" way to do it.

drcuddy

Not a bad idea! (and of course, I'd make a backup first:-)
I've just spent some time looking through all the various files in /Application Support/Quicken looking for a plist/prefs/config file that might contain the mapping between QFX data and Quicken accounts. No joy.

My latest notion is to delete the "old" account entirely. It contains archived records from my checking account from 2010-2016. I don't really need them anymore. Certainly don't need to keep them 'on-line' in Quicken. I could export all the records from the "old" account into a CSV and archive that. Then delete "old". In the unlikely event that I ever had to go back in time, the info would be in the CSV spreadsheet. But that begs the question of why QMac's import process is putting the records in the wrong account in the first place. If the "old" account has been deleted, it might decide to import the records into some other incorrect location.

UKR

Someone with Mac experience will be able to point you to the correct display in Q Mac 2020, better than I can do.
You can go into the old, hidden account settings and look up the download connection settings. You'll probably find that this account is connected for downloading. If it is, disconnect (deactivate) it.
Now, when you go to the same screen in the correct checking account you should be able to set up this account for downloading. Be aware that after successful connection, a whole bunch of transactions may be downloaded again, necessitating some more cleanup ...

drcuddy

@UKR,
As described a few posts back, I had looked at the connection settings for the old (previously hidden) account. At the top of the settings window (titled At your financial institution), it shows "This account is not set up for transaction download".

In addition, for the other (the correct) account, it shows the name of my bank, indicating "Connection type: Web Connect", and "Import downloaded QFX file to get your latest transactions". In other words, it appears to be properly configured for import of the QFX data.

Even so, QMac 2020 imports the transactions contained in the QFX file into the old account.

In one experiment to fix this bug, I changed the name of the old (previously hidden) account. I thought that if the name got changed, whatever mapping in the bowels of Quicken that controls the import-from-QFX process would be broken, and that it would then prompt me, asking what account should be linked. No joy -- even after changing the name of the old account, the import process persists in putting the records from the QFX file into that old (re-named) account.

In another experiment to bypass the bug, I disabled the download settings for the correct account, and then set it up again (selecting my bank's name, etc). I hoped that by doing so, Quicken would override whatever stale data is causing it to import the records into the wrong account. Nope - it persists in putting the imported records into the wrong account. However, a side effect of disabling then re-enabling download settings for the correct account: Quicken changed the currency for that account from CAD to USD!

drcuddy

Update from the OP:
Thanks to UKR and jacobs for replying. Alas, various methods suggested above to coerce QMac 2020 to import the transactions for my checking account into the correct Quicken account were not successful. Eventually, I deleted the 'old' account (the one into which QMac insisted on adding the QFX transactions), after first exporting the contents of its register into a CSV file. Having done so, the import-from-QFX completed successfully, putting the new transactions into the proper destination account.

It's a shame that I was forced to delete the old account, which contained several years of banking transactions, including a great many transfers to/from other accounts. Those transfers are now orphaned in the remaining Quicken accounts.

I'm still undecided whether to stick with Q2007 or cut over to Q2020. The latter has made data entry for some of my monthly investment transactions much more onerous and error-prone. (It's no longer possible to enter the $ amount per share of dividend reinvestments).

rexarus

This issue is a big deal for me. I have the same exact issue, and I've tried all the things you mentioned and many more to get quicken to allow me to change the download to different accounts.

 After talking to tech support, I found out that indeed there is a bug in Quicken for Mac. There is no way to transfer the transactions between accounts by dragging and dropping if the accounts are brokerage accounts - that work around only works for banking accounts.

 I have many transactions that I download from Interactive Brokers, and some of them go to the futures account, and some to the brokerage account.

 In the Windows version, I could deactivate the account I did not want to transfer to, and activate the one that I did want because sometimes I would want download stock transactions into the brokerage account.

 Other times, I'd want to download to the futures account. Now I am unable to change from one to the other.

 I even went so far as to export my entire datafile out of the Mac back to Windows format, and then import it back in to the Mac format in order to reset the file, and then after many hours of editing and correcting the accounts to get the import errors corrected, I discovered that the same problem occurred.

 Interestingly, the problem did not occur until the second time I switched the download accounts. At first I thought the problem was resolved because one time I was able switch the download from futures to brokerage. But after the second time, Quicken was again stuck downloading to the last account that had been linked. It didn't matter that I had deactivated it, and linked the other account. The transactions still download to the other account, and locked to that account.

 I never had this issue with the Windows version of Quicken, and since I rely on this accounting software for tracking my trading accounts, I am at an impasse. Each day I get further and further behind in my bookkeeping. If I can't resolve it soon, I will be forced to go back to the Windows version, and go through the misery again of correcting all the errors involved with that transfer, or leaving Quicken altogether, and getting the data imported to a different piece of software.

 I am disappointed that the developers have been so sloppy in getting the Mac version up to speed. There is no excuse in this modern era to not have that Mac version ready for smooth integration from the older Windows versions. However, the bottom line that I learned from tech support is there is a bug in the Mac version, that causes it to get stuck on the old account, and as of right now, no way to fix the issue.