Lost Accounts Receivables Customer List

Bob G

Sometime between end May and end June my Customer Invoice form lost the ability to automatically populate the "Bill To" box from saved data (same as prior invoices).

Went thru with Q. support who checked Address Book, and visually at least all appeared OK there. Did file validate & repair but no joy.

Tried adding a new (dummy) customer; found the customer name in the Customer drop down box, but still did not populate address.

The suggestion then from Q. support was to delete all and re-enter. Very helpful with hundreds of entries ....

However, as this was not working I saved all from Address Book, delete all, and reimported. I then went to Address Book and checked QuickFill List and Customer List on all.

Still did not work; worse, while I did now have my list of Customers, the Projects associated with those Customers no longer exists, and while the project name still appears in older invoices, there is no drop-down box any more to select for that customer (I am presume it is just a discrete entry no longer linked to anything. "Bill To" address is still not working.

Any thoughts on what is at issue here ... how to rectify beyond just starting over.

Bob G

Also, I do not believe it is my Quicken data file that is corrupted ... i have gone to backups a few months old that, at the time, were populating the "Bill To" window .. and in current version oF q. they do NOT work.

How do I obtain an old version of Q. to test this aspect ?

Bob G

Reason found ...

It was because I had unchecked "Complete Fields Using Previous Entries" and "Recall Memorized Payees (requires automatic completion)".

I had done this as (if I recall and if I followed correctly what I was told) I want to stop Quicken automatically assigning categories and comments to new transactions, because it does such a bad job of it. Example:

I have a previous transaction from xxx retailer for $50. The next time I have a transaction for this retailer it is for $25; but quicken still populates with the $50, and then has a negative $25 entry to balance the total (which is otherwise correct).

I am guessing that the above check boxes do not affect this aspect of things as, despite me trying to get it to stop auto-populating stuff and top let me do it all manually, it still did it even with them unchecked. So, maybe there is a different fix ... .which is all I want:

1. Download my transactions from credit card and bank
2. Leave me to fix everything else

UKR

> I have a previous transaction from xxx retailer for $50. The next time I have a transaction for this retailer it is for $25; but quicken still populates with the $50, and then has a negative $25 entry to balance the total (which is otherwise correct).

Are you automatically accepting downloaded transactions into your checking or credit card registers? In that case, if the memorized transaction contains a category split, the new transaction may not be able to correctly recalculate the split amounts and you end up with an unassigned amount.

Please read and review the following:

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.

Bob G

Thanks; I have adjusted per above and most importantly am now NOT automatically adding banking transactions to register (I will do manually).

The one I do not like is the suggestion to enter transactions into register BEFORE downloading .... seems to me to miss the whole point of downloading.

But, will see where this latest change takes me.

UKR

Bob G said:

Thanks; I have adjusted per above and most importantly am now NOT automatically adding banking transactions to register (I will do manually).

The one I do not like is the suggestion to enter transactions into register BEFORE downloading .... seems to me to miss the whole point of downloading.

But, will see where this latest change takes me.

The only type of transactions I suggest you always record manually are your transfer transactions. Quicken really has a hard time making heads and tails of transfers, because the information given by the banks is just not good enough to create a precisely matchable entry in both accounts.

Customer Invoice payments received by credit card payment or direct deposit should also be manually recorded before you download. This ensures correct marking of invoices as paid and you can avoid accidental duplicates.

All other transactions should be OK to be created by the download process, but, again, I recommend you do NOT automatically accept them, to ensure proper Payee Name and Category assignments BEFORE the new transaction is added to the register. This helps Quicken learn what you want. Once recorded incorrectly means Quicken may have learned something bad, and, like with a child, it can be  difficult to make it unlearn a bad action.