Zillow associated with wrong account

bobat

Hi folks!

Somehow, the Zillow feature that tracks your home value got associated with my "Cars" account. How can I fix this and make the proper association with my "Home" account instead?

Thanks in advance

Boatnmaniac

@bobat - Go to your Cars Account Register > upper right Gear icon > Edit Account Details and uncheck the box for Use Zestimate by Zillow (highlighted in yellow) and click OK. 

Then look at your Account type (also highlighted in yellow).  I suspect you set up your Cars account as a House type instead of as a Vehicle type.  Zillow Estimates can only be linked to House account types.  I don't know of any way to change this except to create a new Cars account with the Vehicle type and then delete the current account.  If you have transactions entered into your current account you can move all of them at once before you  delete your current account by left clicking on the oldest transaction and then while holding down the Shift key left click on the newest transaction to highlight them all.  Then right click on any one of the highlighted transactions, click on Move Transactions, select the new Cars account and click OK.

Now you should be able to set up your Zillow Estimates from either the House Account Register or by checking the Use Zestimate by Zillow and clicking on Check for Updates from the House Account Details.

bobat

@Boatnmaniac - many thanks for the quick reply.

The House account was set up as an Asset, not House (the House option probably didn't exist when I created the account in 1993). And, of course, the Cars account is simply another asset account. Neither have the "use Zestimate by Zillow" box in the account details.

I think when I clicked on the new Zillow feature some time back it just latched on to the first asset account alphabetically. (?)

I suppose I could try creating / copying / deleting the House account (as well as the Cars acct) as you described, but it makes me nervous... transactions have transfers to closed accts, etc - scary! :)

What do you think?

Thanks again!

Boatnmaniac

Ah, that makes sense.  I think you're right about copying.  Too much risk to what it might do to the historical transfers.

However, moving the transactions per the process I noted above should work well and keep the transfer transactions intact.  I've used it several times with accounts that had long histories with transfers to/from other accounts and I've never observed a problem.

Whichever process you use, be sure to make a backup of your data file first.  That way if something goes wrong you can always restore your back up so you will have lost nothing.

bobat

Thanks again. Maybe if I'm feeling brave sometime this week I'll give it a try (after backup).

Boatnmaniac

I understand the apprehension.  The most difficult and time consuming part will be confirming that the transfers migrated properly during the transaction moves. 

What might make this part of the process a little easier is to pull up a Transactions report (under Banking) and customize it to show only transactions for your current House account for "earliest to date" and to show all transactions, all transfers and all subcategories.  Then either export the report to Excel or print it out.

Then set up your new House account and after the transactions have been moved to it pull up that same Transactions report but for the new House account, not the current House account.  Export it to Excel or print it out.

Then compare the two reports side by side to see if there were any changes to the categories.  If the move worked properly you should see no changes to the categories for each transaction.  If the categories (including transfers) did not change then you can feel reasonably confident that the other linked accounts were not adversely affected.