Transactions with parallel Quicken files

lliuphx

My husband is trying to learn Quicken. We successfully installed Quicken on his desktop and copied my latest backup file to become his data.
With me running my data file on my laptop, we are noticing that transactions downloaded to his computer won't show up on my transaction download. This is true for banking and credit card accounts. I haven't looked into our investment accounts yet. I would imagine that vice versa is true as well; i.e. the first to download grabs all the pending transactions. Is this normal or a glitch? I don't see any way around this!

splasher

The problem is that you used a COPY of your data file for his installation and Quicken is confusing the two data files.

You need to use the new file copy feature in the latest versions of Quicken that disassociate the new file from the old file.  You will need to reestablish the connections to the financial institutions in the new file, but then you should not have any issues after that.

lliuphx

Thanks a lot !
So for my and others reference, I should use the provided answer to
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20186347#Comment_20186347

Chris_QPW

Note what follows is a lot of speculation because Quicken Inc doesn't make it clear of exactly how Express Web Connect works, but the very fact that you are running into this problem suggest something like this is going on.

My guess would be that this won't happen for the investment accounts, because they are connected using Direct Connect.  I bet the problem is in the Quicken cloud dataset syncing which Express Web Connect uses.  Since it considers both Desktop data files to be the same because of the fact that the unique Id it uses to connect the Desktop data file to the cloud dataset would be the same, it probably thinks it has already synced those transactions and doesn't do it again.

Direct Connect (which all investment accounts have to use):
Quicken/Desktop data file -> Financial institution's OFX server.  What to send is determined by a date in the Desktop data file sent in the request.  Duplicate transactions are filtered out by looking at the unique Id for each transaction provided by the financial institution, and stored in the Desktop data file.

Express Web Connect:
Quicken/Desktop data file -> to QCS (which is the syncing of the cloud dataset) -> Intuit server -> financial institution's website.

The QCS definitely keeps data and state information about what it thinks the Quicken Desktop data file has in it.  There is certainly some "tolerance for not being in sync" like if one use a different copy of their data file, but it hard to say how much "change" it can tolerate, and in this case it also seems that it is remembering "last download" and thinking it has already happened because it happened in another copy of the data file.

lliuphx

Another odd thing, Quicken seems to think that downloading didn't happen (guess cause there were zero transactions). So, if I do the download (0 transactions), add the transactions manually and try to reconcile- I get the popup that I didn't download yet. Try downloading again and yep, zero transactions! No biggie, I just reconcile without downloading.

splasher

The problem is that you used a COPY of your data file for his installation and Quicken is confusing the two data files.

You need to use the new file copy feature in the latest versions of Quicken that disassociate the new file from the old file.  You will need to reestablish the connections to the financial institutions in the new file, but then you should not have any issues after that.

lliuphx

Thanks a lot !
So for my and others reference, I should use the provided answer to
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20186347#Comment_20186347

Chris_QPW

Note what follows is a lot of speculation because Quicken Inc doesn't make it clear of exactly how Express Web Connect works, but the very fact that you are running into this problem suggest something like this is going on.

My guess would be that this won't happen for the investment accounts, because they are connected using Direct Connect.  I bet the problem is in the Quicken cloud dataset syncing which Express Web Connect uses.  Since it considers both Desktop data files to be the same because of the fact that the unique Id it uses to connect the Desktop data file to the cloud dataset would be the same, it probably thinks it has already synced those transactions and doesn't do it again.

Direct Connect (which all investment accounts have to use):
Quicken/Desktop data file -> Financial institution's OFX server.  What to send is determined by a date in the Desktop data file sent in the request.  Duplicate transactions are filtered out by looking at the unique Id for each transaction provided by the financial institution, and stored in the Desktop data file.

Express Web Connect:
Quicken/Desktop data file -> to QCS (which is the syncing of the cloud dataset) -> Intuit server -> financial institution's website.

The QCS definitely keeps data and state information about what it thinks the Quicken Desktop data file has in it.  There is certainly some "tolerance for not being in sync" like if one use a different copy of their data file, but it hard to say how much "change" it can tolerate, and in this case it also seems that it is remembering "last download" and thinking it has already happened because it happened in another copy of the data file.

Boatnmaniac

Another thing to consider doing if you want to get all of the missing transactions downloaded into your data file, if you have a backup of your data file from just before you originally set up your husband's copied data file and if that backup is less than 30-60 days old:

1. After your husband's new data file is set up and he is no longer using the original copied data file, create a new file from your computer and name it TEST.  During file set up, do have Mobile & Web turned on but do not set up any accounts.
   
2. Edit > Preferences > Cloud ID & Cloud Account > Cloud accounts associated with this ID > look for your husband's copied data file name or your main data file name in the File Name column > click on it > Delete > Yes > Delete > Close.  Your previously shared Cloud Account is now deleted. 
   
3. Restore your backup file.  During this process Quicken will likely ask you to sign in with your Quicken ID and PW and will then recreate your Cloud Account pretty much as it existed before you created the original copy of your data file for your husband.
4. Run OSU and all transactions for the last 1-2 months should download, including the ones that were missing in your main data file.
5. If there are still any missing transactions they will need to be either manually downloaded & imported from the financial institution website or manually entered into the register.

The added benefit for restoring the backup file instead of simply opening your main data file:  The issues caused by sharing the Cloud Account between two files will no longer exist at all.  There are "cross-talk" issues that can occur in shared Cloud Accounts (such as file changes that he might have made such as category changes, deletions, additions, etc.) that you might not find out about until sometime in the future.  Creating a new Cloud Account from your restored backup will totally eliminate that issue.

lliuphx

Boatnmaniac,
This approach sounds interesting but I don't use the mobile and web functionality. I prefer to have only one point of entry (my laptop) that can be locked down. Thanks tho!

Boatnmaniac

@lliuphx , I don't use Mobile and Web, either.  And you can do what you want to, of course, but I have been in your shoes before and have found the process suggested can save a lot of time and headaches, not just now but down the road when I suddenly find an previously unknown issue that was introduced earlier when I had a shared Data File.

Rest assured I was not suggesting you turn on Mobile & Web Sync for your main data file.  It would only need to be turned on for the TEST file and only for as long as it takes to delete the shared Cloud Account.  Since you do not set up any accounts in the TEST file there is no financial information to be sync'd to the Cloud Account.  And when you are done deleting the shared Cloud Account you can close that TEST data file and delete it, too.  So no financial or personal data is put at risk.

But you should know that you cannot turn of sync entirely. Every Quicken data file will have a Cloud Account it syncs with, even with Mobile & Web Sync turned off.  There is absolutely nothing we can do to stop that or block it without disabling Quicken entirely.  That Cloud Account is what will communicate between Quicken.com and your Quicken installation and data file confirming that you have a valid license for it, what the status of your subscription is and which edition you have subscribed to (so Quicken knows which program features are to be blocked or unblocked).  There is some other data also saved there, such as your Express Web Connect logins and some other non-financial and non-personal data.  And your Quicken installation and data file will continue to sync with the Cloud Account whenever you use any of Quicken's online services...such as, OSU, manually downloading/importing transactions from your financial institutions, downloading of stock quotes, updating your house value with Zillow, etc.  But the much more extensive Mobile and Web financial data is not sync'd or saved there if you have Mobile and Web Sync turned off so you don't need to be concerned about that.

So, you do what you are comfortable with.  It was just a suggestion that could help you to get the missing transactions downloaded and to help prevent other potential issues from popping up in the future because of using a previously shared data file.