Payee Field Length

Chris Summers

My bank just updated their backend system and it is annoying because their Payee field content has so much extraneous data it is truncated to the point where I find myself having to log into their web portal just to see who the payee is.

For example: "Withdrawal Debit Card Card 0616 Date 02/09/21 0 1040428872 4 554"

There is nothing unique about this that would allow me to use a renaming rule.

I am guessing this is something to take up with my Bank but was curious if there is a way to increase how much data is populated in the Payee field (for now).

UKR

Call your bank's upper level management and complain. Request that they change the downloaded data to
Payee = the true Payee Name, e.g., ARCO Gas

Memo = "Withdrawal Debit Card Card 0616 Date 02/09/21 0 1040428872 4 554"

There's nothing that can be done until they get their act together. AFAIK, the OFX file structure defines the Payee Name to a length of around 30 characters, the Memo to up to 250 characters

UKR

Call your bank's upper level management and complain. Request that they change the downloaded data to
Payee = the true Payee Name, e.g., ARCO Gas

Memo = "Withdrawal Debit Card Card 0616 Date 02/09/21 0 1040428872 4 554"

There's nothing that can be done until they get their act together. AFAIK, the OFX file structure defines the Payee Name to a length of around 30 characters, the Memo to up to 250 characters

Chris Summers

Thank you; that is what I thought the issue was but wanted to make sure!

tomnj

I have been submitting this request with Chase for ~15 years. Good luck. It's absurd. The payee must be the payee and NOTHING MORE! Put all the codes and transaction IDs and verbose text in the memo field!!

tomnj

Isn't it about time that the QIF standard is increased from 32 characters to 128 or, even better, 256?

NotACPA

tomnj.com said:

Isn't it about time that the QIF standard is increased from 32 characters to 128 or, even better, 256?

The QIF standard has nothing to do with this.  It's the QFX/OFX standard that needs updating ... but that won't happen until ALL of the thousands of banks that support Q agree to the change.

I.E., it ain't gonna happen.

Chris_QPW

BTW there isn't a QIF standard.  What happened is Intuit created the format mainly for tech support and others tacked on to it and started using it.  It was never standardized.  Different companies/countries (including Intuit) have added/changed things as they have seen fit.  For instance other countries might use a different format for the date, but Quicken won't accept them.

As for the OFX standard you can give the standards board feedback if you like:
https://www.ofx.net/

But here is a hint about how that plays out with financial institutions with a standard that allows for backwards compatibly.
Here the start of a QFX file I just downloaded from Chase:

102 is 1.02 version.  The most recent version of the OFX standard is 2.3.

splasher

Chris Summers said:

…
There is nothing unique about this that would allow me to use a renaming rule.
…

The Quicken Renaming Rules use the combination of Payee+Memo, so maybe there is something in that combination that you can key off of.