Renaming Rules also look at Payment Amount

awking1987

I have 3 auto transfers into another account that are used for quarterly bills (Water, Sewage, and Trash). These all have the same payee of auto transfer but different amounts so I can't use the renaming rules currently due to this. I think it would be nice to use the name and then also enter a payment amount for a renaming rule.

NotACPA

In those 3 (presumably memorized) transactions, is your payee name actually "Auto Transfer"?

Why not use the REAL name of the payee, e.g., "Water  Dept", "Electric Co", etc?

THEN, renaming rules would work ... but probably not necessary.

Chris_QPW

Actually looking at this problem I think renaming rules/memorized payees are the wrong "tool".

One flow is like this:
Rename payee (if needed) -> match Memorized Payee -> get category.

But there is another flow like this:
Setup reminder -> Reminder for the payee, category and amount is put into register before payment shows up -> Transaction is matched to the one in register by the amount, category is of course not changed.

El Hilliard

It would be an improvement if the Renaming Rules could have a couple of other criteria. I think it should be possible to specify the transaction amount or the Memo field as available criteria for Renaming, in addition to Payee. I would also like to see what my current rules are for a Payee and to update them.

Rich_M

Currently both the Payee and Memo field are used to apply the renaming criteria specified.  You can view/update your renaming rules by selecting Renaming Rules under tools.

I don't have a need for my Payee descriptions to vary based on transaction amounts, perhaps can you can elaborate on that.

I don't know if this has been improved with newer versions of Quicken, but I would like to be able to search for any string in any order within the description.  Unless this has changed with newer versions, you can only search for white spaced strings in the order they would appear.

The biggest issue with Renaming Rules, which is beyond the control of Quicken, is that the transaction descriptions are often revised, so you must keep updating your rules to keep them working as you like.

Chris_QPW

@Rich_M What I have seen over the years with Quicken management and the renaming rules is that they believe that the users can't handle any kind of "complicated" renaming rules.

Every time someone has suggested any more flexible rules they haven't done it, and in fact the rules were reduced.  As in before there was StartsWith, and Contains.  Now there is just one rule that tries "contains with a bit of smarts".  The "smarts" are that it will match a specific rule before a more general, like Costco Gas, before Costco.  I drop "Quicken name" because frankly I can't see how anyone can setup a rule to match a database that they can't view.

bclarke01

Unfortunately I am still in the "writing checks for everything" camp (security reasons, don't ask). So month-to-month I write checks often for the same amount. Of course, the bank description is "check xxxx" with no idea of the payee. If rename supported checking for an amount, I would be able to have a rename each month to put these into the right name/category without any effort. As it stands, each month I go through the same tedious rename for a dozen-or-so accounts which I can identify myself due to the amount. So, please, add support for renaming based on amount!

Of course, my bank now supports downloading the check image so if Quicken wanted to add auto-download for images along with pattern recognition, that would take care of it as well (:->)

UKR

bclarke01 said:

Unfortunately I am still in the "writing checks for everything" camp (security reasons, don't ask). So month-to-month I write checks often for the same amount. Of course, the bank description is "check xxxx" with no idea of the payee. If rename supported checking for an amount, I would be able to have a rename each month to put these into the right name/category without any effort. As it stands, each month I go through the same tedious rename for a dozen-or-so accounts which I can identify myself due to the amount. So, please, add support for renaming based on amount!

Of course, my bank now supports downloading the check image so if Quicken wanted to add auto-download for images along with pattern recognition, that would take care of it as well (:->)

Because banks don't know about the actual Payee Name for a paper check that you wrote, for best results I recommend that you record each paper check in Quicken the moment you write the check. This ensures that you have a transaction in Quicken which is correctly named and categorized. When the check clears the bank a few days later and you download a "Check 1234" transaction, Quicken will be able to match this to the check transaction you already recorded and there won't be any problems.

Chris_QPW

bclarke01 said:

So month-to-month I write checks often for the same amount. 

That is where a reminder works quite well.