Incorrectly attributed transactions to credit card account

gt00tx

Strange.... in that last month, during a few day period, a number of downloaded transactions (Updating accounts), were assigned as Payments to my Citi card account when they had nothing to do with that! For instance, one was a payment for health insurance and clearly downloaded that way but Quicken(?) assigned it as a payment TO my Citi card. There were 4 others. Thoughts? Thanks!
P.S. - I should say that in BofA, they are correct of course, as payments to the proper payee. But in Quicken, the payee shows just 'Payment' and goes to Citi as noted.

UKR

Access the OFXlog file in Quicken (Help / Log Files), then search backwards from the bottom for the downloaded transaction detail. What gets transmitted by BofA other than "Payment"? Is there enough data in downloaded Payee and downloaded Memo for Quicken to be able to make a distinction?

If these transactions are recurring events, I recommend you use scheduled reminders with proper payee names and categories and record each of them a couple of days before their due date. This should give you correct register transactions and allow Quicken to simply match the downloaded payments to their already existing register transactions.

gt00tx

The log data is shown below. (my x's for security) Looks sufficient to me but what do I know? LOL
1) This has never happened before to my knowledge and happened for five transactions, so far, about a month ago. 2) One of these might be a recurring event, but I don't want to have to create work-arounds for software I'm paying a subscription for every year. If it doesn't work right, then I'll find something else. Maybe this was just a weird glitch.
<STMTTRN>
<TRNTYPE>DEBIT
<DTPOSTED>20200721
<TRNAMT>-13.2
<FITID>00094320721-13.2002007217668.29
<INTU.CC_TXN_ID>1015096xxxxxxxx
<NAME>xxxxxx INSURANCE COMPANY Bill Pa
</STMTTRN>

So... Is there a way to enter a scheduled transaction that will automatically match an incoming downloaded transaction and match them and toss out the downloaded transaction? Maybe that's basic but I've never tried it and usually end up with two transactions and have to delete the downloaded one. Make sense? Thanks!

gt00tx

> @UKR said:
> Access the OFXlog file in Quicken (Help / Log Files), then search backwards from the bottom for the downloaded transaction detail. What gets transmitted by BofA other than "Payment"? Is there enough data in downloaded Payee and downloaded Memo for Quicken to be able to make a distinction?If these transactions are recurring events, I recommend you use scheduled reminders with proper payee names and categories and record each of them a couple of days before their due date. This should give you correct register transactions and allow Quicken to simply match the downloaded payments to their already existing register transactions.

Thanks UKR!

UKR

Based on the <NAME> field, I would have expected the transaction to arrive in your register with the correct insurance company name, unless there's a Renaming Rule in your Quicken which translates all "Bill Pa" to Payee = "Payment". If there is, delete this rule.

Transaction download problems with matching and adding new transactions correctly

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.