How do I make quicken pick up transfers from accounts in the bank?

Chuck88

I have multiple accounts at my bank and I transfer money in these accounts constantly. When I download, reconcile, the missed transfers mess my balance up. I saw the transfer button in Quicken, do I transfer it that way? Transfers between these accounts is imperative. Help!

UKR

First please ensure that all optional settings in Quicken pertaining to recall, memorization, automatic categorization and renaming of payee names are enabled. You find those settings in Edit / Preferences / Data Entry & Quickfill and Downloaded Transactions. Additional settings can be found for the detection and processing of transfer transactions in Edit / Preferences / Transfer detection.

Are you automatically accepting downloaded transactions into your registers?

If you are relying on Quicken to "automagically" fill your account registers from downloaded transactions, you may run into problems. Despite all efforts by the Quicken programmers, the "Autopilot" (that's my name for the part of the Quicken program which processes downloaded transactions and converts them into new register transactions) is not infallible. For that process to work 100% of the time one would need a crystal ball because the information downloaded from the banks often is just too terse and cryptic.

You should, at least for a while, turn off the "automatically accept downloaded transactions into registers" setting to gain better control over what is downloaded and what to do with it. Review each downloaded transaction, make changes if necessary (e.g., to get a payee name = "Starbucks" instead of "POS TRANS 070119 STARBU", "POS TRANS 070219 STARBU", "POS TRANS 070319 STARBU" or to assign a category) before you click to accept each transaction.

Any changes you make to downloaded Payee Names are remembered in Renaming Rules.

Any other changes you make (add/change Category or Memo text) are remembered in the Memorized Payee List.

Next time the same transaction for this Payee comes along, Quicken should remember and give you a better new register transaction.

 

In case you have issues with transfer transactions not being generated correctly:

For best results manually enter transfer transactions into your register BEFORE you download transactions from the bank which contain the transfer confirmations. For recurring transfers use scheduled reminders and enter them a day or two before the due date. Be sure to use distinct Payee Names for each transfer / credit card payment to avoid confusing Quicken - memorized payee entries.
That takes the guesswork out of the Autopilot's process. Because a correctly entered transfer transaction already exists in your account registers, the Autopilot should just match the downloaded transfer transaction to the existing one in both accounts.

 

Where are the "Auto-accept downloaded transaction" settings?

There are two places where this is controlled in Quicken for Windows:
 - Globally, for all accounts, in Edit / Preferences / Downloaded Transactions
 - For each account individually, the global setting can be overridden from the Edit Account Details screen, Online Services Tab. Look for blue text "Automatic Entry is: ON / OFF". Click the text to change the setting.

Chuck88

Ok, I read your instructions and will adjust a few things, I dont auto accept. I auto reconcile, is that bad? My last reconcile I had to enter an adjustment. Now should I delete the balance adjustment and try and find the difference which as I said are the transfers OR do I start over, new file and download 90 days worth of bank data?

NotACPA

The need to enter an adjustment means that there's an error, somewhere in your Q account.

To correct, you need to pull out your old paper statements, and work backwards in time until there's a match of BOTH date and Amount between Q and the statement.

THEN, re-reconcile every month, month-by-month, from then until the present 

Month-by-month is critical, because if you try to do one big reconcile, you'll probably miss the error.

NotACPA

Going back to your original post ...

When you transfer between accounts (say, checking to savings) there should be a Payment transaction in the checking account and a Deposit into the savings account.

Are these not downloading from your bank?

I don't understand your "missed transfers" statement ... unless they're not being downloaded.

Chuck88

That is correct, when I download my transactions and examine the transactions before I accept. Now it could well be how I enter the transfer. I am defintely going to take your guidance and pre-enter the transfers. I dont think it is the banks fault its how I am handling the transactions. I will try and categorize the transfer I often get you are transfering back into the same account. There is a glitch somewhere becuase Q will not download new accounts. I get new acounts often, refiancing loans, etc. I wont have to go back to far, the last reconcile right before this one, after correcting a few times came out a few items. My last launch of q was tonight and it updated yet again, where do you go to see what was fixed? Finally, Is auto reconcile ok to do??