Where do I find the manual matching?

jimscott3

Quicken Deluxe for Windows 33.19

I want to match a transaction in my checking account (debit, payment out) with a payment in to my CC in another account. Quicken isn't auto matching... so I want to manually match. I cannot find how to do that! In the FAQ it says I should be able to "edit transaction" and it will have a matching function. Mine doesn't. Edit transaction will popup only a find/replace window.

Another help file says I should be doing the edit from a "downloaded transaction" tab at the bottom of the register. I don't have that - just a transaction count and balance ino (online and register). No where can I find information on how to get a downloaded transaction tab.

Basically in no menu or popup is match even mentioned for me!

Ron S

Try this.  Enter your payment information in the account you are transferring the money from.  Click on the Category field (below payee) a popup window appears.  Select Transfers, then select the account you are transferring the money to.  Enter your transaction and Quicken will create a matching transaction in the "transfer to" account.  You can memorize the transaction to save from searching transfers in the future.

jimscott3

Thanks Ron. That doesn't work unfort. I follow those steps -- but the result is the FROM account is still ok but the TO account (where I am transferring into) didn't do a match - it created a new transaction in that register. So now I have a dupe in the TO account - the original and this new transfer transaction (in 'uncleared' status)..

UKR

The fly in the ointment with transfer transactions is that one should be recording a proper transfer transaction BEFORE the next download brings in the confirmations. That allows Quicken to match in each account individually the downloaded portion of your credit card payment transaction to what's already in the register.

Giving the quality of the downloaded information it's practically impossible for Quicken to properly create a transfer, especially in situations where the checking account portion of the transfer is downloaded today and the credit card portion is downloaded 2 days later.

About the duplicate transaction in the credit card register: Delete the one that was created from the download, not the one that's showing Category = [name of checking account].

Chris_QPW

EDITED for some typos, and a bit clearer explanation in some parts.

There are a lot of moving parts going on here, and some missing questions haven't been asked/pointed out.

First off @jimscott3 is clearly in the default mode "automatic enter transactions in the register".
This mode works differently than the one covered by the FAQ.

The proper use of manual matching in this mode would be to first correct the transaction amount that was manually entered into the register to match the one downloaded.  I know it is wrong, because if it had been the right amount Quicken would have matched it automatically.  The second part would be to click on the status/red pencil/uncleared icon and that will bring up the Manual Match dialog.

Example:

Change the amount:

Clicking on the Uncleared text/red pencil (expand the Status/blue dot column to see this text).

Clicking on the Match to a downloaded transaction tab brings up this dialog.

Selecting Accept Match "merges" the two transactions.

Side note, click on New Match/blue pencil there these options:


Now taking a moment out to discuss pre-entering transactions. Even though it hasn't been stated I believe that you are already doing that because if you weren't you wouldn't have a transaction in your register to match to.  There is automatic transfer detection, but it really works differently as in it is already trying to match up two transactions that are the same amount in both accounts, where one is a withdraw and the other is a deposit.  So by definition they can't be a different amount that needs to be manually matched.
I highly recommend not using automatic transfer detection or at least have confirm on so you are sure that it is doing the right thing.

So if the transaction is pre-entered then why didn't it match?
The simple answer is because sometimes you don't know what it is going to be.  Either an estimate utility bill or in the case of a credit card even the last statement balance isn't necessarily going to be correct.  If you have refunds after the statement close then the balance you have to pay is different and it can change right up to the moment the payment is made.  So short of checking the balance right before the payment is made it is really a "guess".  So it is quite common in these cases for one to have to manually match.  This true even if you use Online Bill presentment to get the amount, because it is going to get the statement amount, not the actual balance at the point you decide to pay.

Now since was discussed and is in the FAQ I will go through where this mode is off:




So here is the same situation:


Notice the status of the transaction in the Downloaded Transactions tab is New, not Matched.  If it had matched when you click on it, it would have shown the transaction in the register that it matched to.  When it doesn't match like above click on the transaction put it in the register "blank spot" as shown above (the transaction below the uncleared one in the register).  Note it isn't recorded in the register until you select Accept or Enter.

Now here is where I will tell that any suggestion to use manual match will be wrong.
I will start with correct way to handle this and then show you the wrong "manual match" result.

If I go to the uncleared transaction in the register and change the amount to the downloaded one here is the result.

As you can see Quicken immediately changes the status to matched.  And If I was to hit Enter/Accept it would merge the two transactions as expected.

OK now for the "wrong use" of manual match.  Selecting Edit (or right clicking) on the transaction in the Downloaded Transactions tab.  Selecting Match manually and the Manual Match Transactions dialog comes up.


So it looks like what you would do is select check box on the transaction and then Accept Match, so lets do that.


Hmm, what happened to my payee of Chase 9766?
And why is it a split?
Opening the split:


Probably not what you wanted, right?

That is just it, manual match basically assumes that the manually entered amount is the correct, and shouldn't change it, but it has to make the transaction total to the downloaded one.  There is certainly a use case for this, and especially since you can select multiple manually entered transactions in the manual match dialog and they will be combined into a split transaction, that might in fact balance with the downloaded one.  But personally I would argue that the use case of the manually entered transaction being an "estimate" and what you really want is to change its amount instead of doing a split transaction happens a lot more often.  But it is what it is.

So unless have that situation the real workflow is the same, change the amount of the manually entered transaction in the register and then do the match.

Note that manual match in "Downloaded Transaction tab" mode is also used when Quicken matches to the wrong transaction.  In that case you do a unmatch and then the manual match.

I will also point out that in "Automatic transaction entry mode" the manual match will not match to any transaction that doesn't have the exact amount.  It doesn't do matching to multiple transactions, and it doesn't create split transactions.