Zelle - How do you download these transactions?

ldranikoff

I often make payments through Zelle using my Chase banking app - I am new to Quicken so not sure I am looking at this correctly but it looks like Quicken views transactions made through Zelle as transfers from Chase to Zelle - and as a result they don’t show up in transactions — I would appreciate any advice - thx. 

Ps56k2

As per this other topic -

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20127722/#Comment_20127722

ZELLE is merely a conduit from your Chase bank acct to some else...

So, you will only see the transfers,
but would still expect them to appear in downloads from your Chase account..

Our VENMO transfers from Chase are downloading fine.

[EDIT] - also updated the topic title to better reflect the actual Q&A

jrich75

Interesting, I use Zelle occasionally with US Bank to receive payments from individuals.  These are downloaded as ZELLE INSTANT PMT FROM (name of sender).  I would think that any Zelle transactions would have to download as either deposits or withdrawals since they affect the balance of the bank account.  How do the payments appear on your Chase Bank statement?

Chris_QPW

@jrich75 I think you are taking this statement "Our VENMO transfers from Chase are downloading fine." too literally.  "transfers" is just a "generic term" for money that might be coming in or going out, not how it is recorded.  It would certainly be recorded as either a withdraw or a deposit depending on which way it is going.

Even when a person does a ACH transfer to another financial institution it is recorded as a withdraw or a deposit depending on the direction of that transfer.  If both accounts are in your Quicken then you might manually or with the help of Quicken's transfer detection turn it into one linked transfer, but that is all in Quicken.

ldranikoff

Thanks all - Comparing Venmo and Zelle: For Venmo, every time Venmo pulls money from the bank I believe Quicken views that as a transfer from say Chase to Venmo.  This is fine because you can add Venmo as a separate account so Quicken will download all Venmo payments directly from Venmo as expenses.  That works.  

But Zelle is the issue I am having.  Zelle serves the same function as Venmo but as was said above Zelle is just a conduit for payments from the bank.  You can’t log into Zelle as a separate account and download those payments.  So Quicken seems like it is viewing a Zelle transaction the same as Venmo and making it a transfer from my checking account to Zelle.  So that transfer doesn’t record as an expense and won’t show up in spending at all.  They are completely missed because transfers aren’t expenses.  I can see them when (BTW, if anyone thinks I have this wrong please lmk)
This is a big issue since I make a lot of payments from Zelle.  It would be great if Quicken recorded these as payments or even as checks - so at least the spending number would be accurate.  I did notice that in the mobile app these show up as “adjustments” but at least appear there. 
Any help much appreciated.  
Thx. 

Chris_QPW

ldranikoff said:

So Quicken seems like it is viewing a Zelle transaction the same as Venmo and making it a transfer from my checking account to Zelle.  So that transfer doesn’t record as an expense and won’t show up in spending at all.

OK maybe I'm getting a bit of an idea about what is going on now.

Do I read this right you have a Zelle account in Quicken?
It can't be a connected to an online account because it has already been stated that there isn't any "login" for a Zelle account and Quicken doesn't support downloading from such and account.  So it must a "Offline Account"/Manual entry account.

This is what is "unexpected".  There shouldn't be a Zelle account in Quicken.
In a way you can view what is happening like if you were using a atm card.  There isn't any such thing as am ATM card account.  The ATM card is connected to a checking account, it is just a way to make deposits/withdraws.

A payment from your Chase checking account using Zelle should be the same it shows up as a withdraw.  And that withdraw should download like any other transaction in that account.

Now if you are maintaining an Offline Zelle account I could see how Quicken's transfer detection or a memorized payee might have changed that withdraw transaction into a transfer between those two accounts, and then you would have what are describing as in a transfer between two accounts.

Not that if you don't have a Zelle account and there isn't a transfer for each of these payments in Quicken you are saying that "nothing downloads" for this transaction then there is something really wrong here because it should be impossible to have money withdrawn from your Chase account that doesn't show up in a download.

Note Chase accounts can be setup with either Direct Connect or Express Web Connect.  It should work the same in either case, but by having it setup as Direct Connect it is only between Quicken and Chase, which means less possibilities of something strange happening.

BTW I tried to setup Zelle up in my Chase accounts to test, and then realized that I only have a savings account and credit card accounts with them, and you have to have a checking account to use Zelle, so I couldn't test this.

ldranikoff

Thanks for this - before checking this out can you tell me where you would expect to see Zelle payments as a “withdraw” - which report or screen would you look to see that on? 

jrich75

Chris_QPW said:

@jrich75 I think you are taking this statement "Our VENMO transfers from Chase are downloading fine." too literally.  

Well, I wasn't referring to that statement at all.  I'm not a Chase customer so maybe I missed the issue being raised by @ldranikoff.  My assumption was that he was just talking about transactions being downloaded from his Chase checking account.  So, for US Bank, I see Zelle activity with all the other transactions I download from my checking account.  If there is something else regarding how Zelle transactions are handled by Chase, I apologize for causing any confusion.

@ldranikoff, I don't know if this helps or not but for US Bank my Zelle transactions appear along with all the other deposits or withdrawals on my statement:



And, they download along with all the other checking account transactions.

Chris_QPW

@jrich75 I can still see the name in that screenshot, you might want to edit it.

ldranikoff said:

Thanks for this - before checking this out can you tell me where you would expect to see Zelle payments as a “withdraw” - which report or screen would you look to see that on? 

One would expect to see something just like what @jrich75's screenshot shows.  The exact payee and memo might vary though since I don't know if all the financial institutions would pick up the information the same.

But the general assumption here is that the transactions aren't any different from any others you have.  In other words if you made a payment through Zelle you should get a transaction downloaded in your checking account for that date with a similar payee/memo as above as a withdraw and of course for the amount of that payment.

This is the information Quicken is going to get. From there it depends on your renaming rules to decide what the payee name will be in Quicken, and then the memorized payee name to pick out what category you want (or you hand editing it).

Past that the it will show up in the reports/spending views and such in that category.

ldranikoff

I solved the issue and putting it down here in case others have the same issue. I created a new category that will be just for zelle transactions.    Then I created a renaming rule which said anytime the word Zelle appears in a name rename it to something - I renamed it “Zelle” — then I went to memorize payee list and found a zelle entry and reclassified it to the new category that I created.  So now every time a zelle transaction happens it is reclassified as the new expense category I created rather than being downloaded as a transfer.  Hope that helps others