Re-Categorize Transfers Easily!

chris.olson

Hey all,

I'd really appreciate your feedback on this one as it's driving me crazy and being a real pain in the butt. I'm guessing I just don't know how to do it properly.

Often when a download a transaction that is a transfer to another account Quicken will auto categorize it for me but it will categorize it as a transfer into the wrong account. The transfer category will automatically trigger a matching transaction into the other account. When I change the category to be a transfer into the correct account it will create another matching transaction in the CORRECT account as well. That's all well and good but the thing that's frustrating is it doesn't seem to delete the matching transaction from the original WRONG account. It just turns that one to be "unmatched". When I try and delete that one though then it get's rid of ALL the Transfer transactions in all the accounts and i'm left with having to put it in manually which is incredibly frustrating.

Anyone have a workflow that will make my life a little easier in these cases?

Thanks!

Chris_QPW

The best thing isn't to go down that path in the first place.
You need to turn on at least "Confirm" on transfer detection or maybe even turn it off.
Edit -> Preferences -> Transfer detection

There certainly might be some bugs in the way Quicken handles you changing these after the fact, but there isn't any way that it is going to be an easy changing of the category field to fix it because of all that is involved.

First off what is happening?

Quicken sees a downloaded deposit in one account with the same amount as a downloaded withdraw in another account and guesses that they are in fact a transfer.  It is pure guess.  If you have lots of transactions for the same amount it can certainly be wrong.  Not only in what accounts are involved, but even if it is a transfer at all.

Let's imagine I have two transactions that fit that description above, but they are in fact not a transfer, but two regular transactions.

What transfer detection does is delete one transaction, and then change the other transaction into a transfer.  Needless to say if these were really separate transactions when you go to fix this you are probably going to have to manually enter both transactions.  Quicken doesn't remember that it deleted one transaction so you can't just select something to "undo it".

In theory it would go something like this.
You go to one of the transactions and change the category to an actual category instead of any account.  It would remove the transaction in the other register, because that is what is suppose to happen when the user changes their mind about having a transaction as a transfer.  That would leave you with only one transaction where there should be two.  So you would have to manually add the other one back in, in the other register.

Now for the case of connecting the wrong accounts.  I suppose if you had two actual transfers of the same amount between 4 accounts then you should be able to change the account in two of the transactions and get it right.  But if you are dealing with one actual transfer and any other combination of an amount that is the same, but isn't a transfer then you are going to be back in the boat where there is no way your going to be able to fix it without manual entry of transactions that were deleted. 

Chris_QPW

The best thing isn't to go down that path in the first place.
You need to turn on at least "Confirm" on transfer detection or maybe even turn it off.
Edit -> Preferences -> Transfer detection

There certainly might be some bugs in the way Quicken handles you changing these after the fact, but there isn't any way that it is going to be an easy changing of the category field to fix it because of all that is involved.

First off what is happening?

Quicken sees a downloaded deposit in one account with the same amount as a downloaded withdraw in another account and guesses that they are in fact a transfer.  It is pure guess.  If you have lots of transactions for the same amount it can certainly be wrong.  Not only in what accounts are involved, but even if it is a transfer at all.

Let's imagine I have two transactions that fit that description above, but they are in fact not a transfer, but two regular transactions.

What transfer detection does is delete one transaction, and then change the other transaction into a transfer.  Needless to say if these were really separate transactions when you go to fix this you are probably going to have to manually enter both transactions.  Quicken doesn't remember that it deleted one transaction so you can't just select something to "undo it".

In theory it would go something like this.
You go to one of the transactions and change the category to an actual category instead of any account.  It would remove the transaction in the other register, because that is what is suppose to happen when the user changes their mind about having a transaction as a transfer.  That would leave you with only one transaction where there should be two.  So you would have to manually add the other one back in, in the other register.

Now for the case of connecting the wrong accounts.  I suppose if you had two actual transfers of the same amount between 4 accounts then you should be able to change the account in two of the transactions and get it right.  But if you are dealing with one actual transfer and any other combination of an amount that is the same, but isn't a transfer then you are going to be back in the boat where there is no way your going to be able to fix it without manual entry of transactions that were deleted. 

chris.olson

Thanks @Chris_QPW !

I will definitely check out those settings. I agree, the automatic transfer detection may not be worth the trouble. It works great at times but in others it's a huge headache!

Just today it took me like 5 minutes to categorize the one transfer because after I changed accounts and deleted the one transaction, it deleted them all! I then couldn't remember the amount so I had to look it up on my credit card account...what a hassle!

Thanks again,

Chris Olson