Resetting my account on-line connections I often receive may duplicates

Dave Robinson

Sometimes when I "RESET" an account under "ONLINE SERVICES". I will receive many numerous, already reconciled, in the download list. How should I handle those duplicates? Should I simply delete them from the download list or "ACCEPT" them then go back and delete the original "R" entries than return and "ACCEPT ALL" to reconcile the freshly downloaded transactions? I don't understand the "data file" reconcile process as in weather the one, main. data file record is marked as reconciled or if a new data file record is created from the RESET download and deleting those download entries without "ACCEPTING" them simply ignores the reset process.

Chris_QPW

The reason that you get duplicate transactions when you reset the account is because it has the connection method of Express Web Connect and Intuit is providing the Downloaded Id, and they have a long standing bug in the way they generate these unique Ids.  Here is an example of such Ids.


Quicken uses this Id to decide if the transactions has already been downloaded.
It records all the Ids that it has already downloaded and if a transaction is downloaded with the same Id it skips it.  This very important because Quicken is setup to actually overlap the dates requested to make sure it didn't miss any transactions.

With Express Web Connect most of the time Intuit doesn't get the transactions from the financial institution in OFX/QFX format which already has the unique Id generated by the financial institution. Instead Intuit has to generate one for each transaction.  If done right the unique Id would be unique for each transaction even after a reset, but Intuit uses some kind of "seed number" that changes when you do a reset or if you deactivate/reactivate for downloading.  The result is that you get completely different unique Ids for the transactions that you have already downloaded.  This results in them showing up again in Quicken as duplicates.

As for how to handle them.  I would delete the duplicates that were just downloaded and not touch any of your reconciled ones.  You have to be careful not to delete any transactions that are in fact new.

Chris_QPW

The reason that you get duplicate transactions when you reset the account is because it has the connection method of Express Web Connect and Intuit is providing the Downloaded Id, and they have a long standing bug in the way they generate these unique Ids.  Here is an example of such Ids.


Quicken uses this Id to decide if the transactions has already been downloaded.
It records all the Ids that it has already downloaded and if a transaction is downloaded with the same Id it skips it.  This very important because Quicken is setup to actually overlap the dates requested to make sure it didn't miss any transactions.

With Express Web Connect most of the time Intuit doesn't get the transactions from the financial institution in OFX/QFX format which already has the unique Id generated by the financial institution. Instead Intuit has to generate one for each transaction.  If done right the unique Id would be unique for each transaction even after a reset, but Intuit uses some kind of "seed number" that changes when you do a reset or if you deactivate/reactivate for downloading.  The result is that you get completely different unique Ids for the transactions that you have already downloaded.  This results in them showing up again in Quicken as duplicates.

As for how to handle them.  I would delete the duplicates that were just downloaded and not touch any of your reconciled ones.  You have to be careful not to delete any transactions that are in fact new.

Dave Robinson

Thank you Chris... a very understandable explanation.