How can I setup one transaction to transfer funds to many savings goal accounts?

JoeBo

I have about 20 savings goal accounts that I contribute to once a month on the same day. I attempted to setup a single bill reminder that split the amounts into each account, but it wouldn't complete and gave no error message. I then tried to just do it manually and got the error message attached stating that "you cannot transfer money to a savings goal in a split". How else can I do this without having to enter 20 separate transactions at the start of every month?

mshiggins

I recommend researching Scheduled Transaction Groups in the in-product Help. 

Scheduled Transaction Groups enable using one reminder to enter multiple Memorized Payees. Memorized Payees have the transaction info - payee, category or transfer account, and amount. 

JoeBo

Any article that looked related to "Scheduled Transaction Groups" took me to help files related to bills & reminders, which does not allow transfers to savings goals in a split transaction. If there's a specific article title I can search in help, I'll try that.

JoeBo

Correction: After more digging, I did locate how to create a scheduled transaction group. It requires that you pick existing or past transactions, which I thought was fine, but then I realized that the category of the transactions were blanked out on most of them. So, when it is applied to the register, the transfer doesn't get added to the savings goal account and is just left as an uncategorized transaction. I did find one of my past transactions where the category was listed. When I chose that, the transaction processed moving the money into the savings goal account. This is definitely my answer, but now how do I get the categories setup in the pick list? I couldn't find a way to edit the list or edit the group to update the categories.

mshiggins

Tools | Memorized  Payees. Locate the Memorized Payee you wish to edit in the llist, right click and choose Edit. Make the desired change, click OK or Save. 

UKR

Instead of using Savings Goals to control your spending in a way similar to what's referred to as "envelope budgeting", how about using the Budget feature in Quicken to plan and control your spending? This would eliminate the need to manage multiple transfer-to-saving-goal transactions every month?

https://help.quicken.com/display/WIN/Budget+your+spending

mshiggins

@UKR once the Scheduled Transaction Group is set up, the only effort will be to Enter the one  reminder once per month. Seems far less work than setting up and tracking a budget. 

JoeBo

@UKR, I'll take a look at the budgeting. If it allows me to hide my funds so they don't get spent accidentally and I don't need to revisit each transaction monthly, I might make the switch.

@mshiggins, I could not right click the transactions to change the categories. To be clear, I am not going into the register to change the categories. The register shows all the categories correctly. I'm in the Scheduled Transaction Group setup window and the list of transactions don't have the categories populated in most of my savings goal transfer transactions, even though they do in the register. Right clicking in this window does not permit me to edit the transaction.

UKR

JoeBo said:

@UKR, I'll take a look at the budgeting. If it allows me to hide my funds so they don't get spent accidentally and I don't need to revisit each transaction monthly, I might make the switch.

Savings goals, in a way, are playing with "funny money". The real money is still held in your bank account.
The only way to make sure that you don't accidentally spend funds set aside for specific purposes is if you really move those funds away from your actual spending accounts, i.e., you actually transfer the money from your checking account at the bank to your savings account at the bank. When it comes time to spend the money, you transfer if back from savings to checking.

JoeBo

My savings goals sometimes serve as overdraft protection 🙂

Moving money in and out of a savings account actually doubles the work I do today. I’m trying to reduce it. I thank you for the advice, though.

mshiggins

JoeBo said:

@mshiggins, I could not right click the transactions to change the categories. To be clear, I am not going into the register to change the categories. The register shows all the categories correctly. I'm in the Scheduled Transaction Group setup window and the list of transactions don't have the categories populated in most of my savings goal transfer transactions, even though they do in the register. Right clicking in this window does not permit me to edit the transaction.

You need to edit the Memorized Payees to add the category. Tools | Memorized Payee List. 

JoeBo

@mshiggins Thanks for all the hand-holding advice. I got the scheduled transaction group setup. It works great. Cheers to you!

mshiggins

@JoeBo you are quite welcome!