Does Quicken for Mac support memorized transactions as I use them? see detail below.

Question

I have a question about memorized transactions in Quicken for Mac 2021. I have perused many discussions about memorized transactions and I cannot find any that address my question. I use Quicken for Mac 2008 because later Quicken releases for Mac appear not to support memorized transactions as I use them. I enter all spending transactions manually.  Many vendors/payees sell a variety of products, of course. Amazon is a good example. I may purchase household supplies, books, clothing, electronics and more from Amazon. With Quicken 2008, I can memorize multiple Amazon transactions, one for each of the categories named in the preceding sentence. When I make the next purchase from Amazon, as I type A-m-a-z, “Amazon” comes up as a quick fill payee. I can click the little down arrow in the category box to see a list of all the amazon transactions I have created. I simply scroll to the one with the category I want, select it and enter an amount. Does Quicken 2021 for Mac support multiple memorized transactions for the same payee as I have described?

jacobs · Answer

Since you have the old and new, I recommend doing a temporary import of your Quicken 2007 into Quicken Mac so you can play around with it and start your way up the learning curve before you make the final switch, while you continue to do your real work in Quicken 2007. When you're ready to make the jump for good, you can just ditch your test data file in Quicken Mac and create a new file with a fresh, final import from Quicken 2007.

There's a lot that's new and different in the modern Quicken Mac. Some things are better, some things are missing, but most things are neither better nor worse, just a little different. So getting started can be a little confusing and, for some people, frustrating after many years of using Quicken 2007. Many of us longtime Quicken 2007 users initially have knee-jerk negative impressions of some things in the new program, but come around to liking them as much or more than the legacy program.

One thing I recommend doing is taking advantage of a program Quicken Support offers called "1-2-3" for new users of subscription Quicken Mac. You can get a free one hour, one-on-one session with a Quicken representative to introduce you to the modern Quicken Mac, and help you learn how all the basics work. Click here for to sign up for a 1-2-3 session. I recommend playing around with new Quicken just a little bit first, either with a blank file or a test import of your Quicken 2007 file; that will help you develop "where is...?" and "How do I...?" questions you want to ask on your call.

Best wishes moving forward!

RobN34 · Answer

Thank you so much for your clear answers to my question. I’ve been waiting for this capability for years. I have been using Quicken for Mac 2007 and have had to keep an old computer running Mojave just to run Quicken since the recent versions of OS X no longer support 8-bit applications. I’ve purchased and installed Quicken 2021 but have not yet entered any transactions. Thanks again.

jacobs · Answer

As RickO said, QuickFill transactions in modern Quicken Mac now work very well. It took a number of years to get us here, but I feel it's now flexible enough for users to do whatever they need. You can have Quicken default to creating QuickFill rules for all transactions (but override on a transaction where you might not want a rule created), or have Quicken default to not creating QuickFill rules (but override to create a rule when you want one).

For some Payees, I have multiple QuickFill rules for different categories. (And you can specify which one to use as aa default when there are multiple rules if you wish.) For some Payees, where the category varies a lot (perhaps such as Amazon), instead of having a bunch of rules, I like creating a simple rule with no category and no amount, and then lock it; this means every time I enter that Payee, the name will auto-complete, but no category from a previous transaction will auto-fill, and I select the category each time.

Again, it's very flexible, even better than in legacy Quicken 2007, to use however best fits your needs.