Renaming Rule Not Working (Q Mac)

hawks28

Hello, I would like to set up a renaming rule that changes transactions that start with HLLFR to Hello Fresh. I have some historical transactions where I would like the renaming to also apply. I created the rule, but Quicken Mac doesn't "see" the historical transactions which suggests the future transactions may also not work. Attached are three screenshots: (1) 8 existing transactions where the payee starts with HLLFR, (2) renaming rule searching for statement name containing HLLFR to rename to Hello Fresh including existing transactions, (3) results of the renaming rule showing no existing transactions impacts. Any ideas what isn't working with my renaming rule set up? Thanks!

jacobs

Ah, now I see the problem! When you set up the renaming rule, you notice that it creates individual words or "tokens" it uses for matching. Unfortunately, there isn't such a thing as a wildcard in this type of text search, so these search tokens are created by separators such as spaces, punctuation, or special symbols. Unfortunately in this case, Hello Fresh uses no such separator. So you've created a rule to look for HLLFR, but the transaction comes in as HLLFRSH236987693929, and Quicken doesn't see that as a match. If they instead sent "HLLFRSH-236987693929" or "HLLFRSH.236987693929" or "HLLFRSH/236987693929", the renaming rule search would work.

I looked back and found a discussion I remember having with the Quicken Mac product manager, Marcus, about this issue earlier this year. If you're interested in reading the discussion about tokens in renaming rules, click here to read the question and read down a few posts down for the replies by Marcus. He agreed that it would be good if they could separate tokens by a change between letters and numbers -- e.g. pull out HLLFRSH in your case -- but concurred that it didn't work that way. (You could do a quick test searching for HLLFRSH in the renaming rule, not HLLFR, to see if they slipped in a fix for this in one of the subsequent releases.)

Meanwhile, the partially good news is that the Search box in Quicken works differently; whatever you search for is an exact text match. So if you search for "HLLF", it will find all these Payees, and you can mass edit them all in one edit. But you'll have to do that manually, without it working automatically on new incoming transactions or existing transactions.

jacobs

Renaming rules are applied when transactions are created, so they will never affect existing transactions.

If you have older transactions with a Payee name of HLLFR, you can quickly and easily fix this in either of two ways:

1) Select All Transactions in the left sidebar and in the Search box, enter HLLFR. (Selecting All Transactions instead of Banking or Credit Card will make the Search include any hidden accounts.) Select all the transactions. Then do Transactions > Edit Transaction (or Command-E), edit the Payee Name to Hello Fresh, and it will rename the Payee in all those transactions.

2) You could simply merge Payee HLLFR with Payee Hello Fresh, which will rename transactions with the former into the latter. Open Window > Payees & Rules. Select HLLFR, then Command-Click Hello Fresh. Next, click Merge Payees at the bottom of the window, and make sure the "Into" field is set to Hello Fresh. 

hawks28

Thanks @jacobs! Good suggestions for fixing the existing transactions. I'll give those a try.

That being said, are you sure the rules won't affect existing transactions? If that's the case, what is the purpose of the checkbox option for creating/renaming a rule that says "Also apply rule to existing transactions"?

Thanks!

jacobs

@hawks28  You're right. QuickFill rules can't be applied to existing transactions, but Renaming rules can. But... it will work on downloaded transactions, not ones you've entered manually. The renaming rule is based on what's in the Statement Payee field for downloads; it won't rename transactions based on the Quicken Payee name you've manually entered. 

hawks28

Thanks, @jacobs. I think all of the transactions in my screenshot are downloaded. I have attached details from the 6/19/2021 transaction. The detail indicates the transaction shows on my statement starting with HLLFRSH which I would think the renaming rule would catch with the logic of contains "HLLFR". Is there a separate "Statement Payee" field that isn't shown in the transaction details? Thanks for helping me try to figure this out.

jacobs

Ah, now I see the problem! When you set up the renaming rule, you notice that it creates individual words or "tokens" it uses for matching. Unfortunately, there isn't such a thing as a wildcard in this type of text search, so these search tokens are created by separators such as spaces, punctuation, or special symbols. Unfortunately in this case, Hello Fresh uses no such separator. So you've created a rule to look for HLLFR, but the transaction comes in as HLLFRSH236987693929, and Quicken doesn't see that as a match. If they instead sent "HLLFRSH-236987693929" or "HLLFRSH.236987693929" or "HLLFRSH/236987693929", the renaming rule search would work.

I looked back and found a discussion I remember having with the Quicken Mac product manager, Marcus, about this issue earlier this year. If you're interested in reading the discussion about tokens in renaming rules, click here to read the question and read down a few posts down for the replies by Marcus. He agreed that it would be good if they could separate tokens by a change between letters and numbers -- e.g. pull out HLLFRSH in your case -- but concurred that it didn't work that way. (You could do a quick test searching for HLLFRSH in the renaming rule, not HLLFR, to see if they slipped in a fix for this in one of the subsequent releases.)

Meanwhile, the partially good news is that the Search box in Quicken works differently; whatever you search for is an exact text match. So if you search for "HLLF", it will find all these Payees, and you can mass edit them all in one edit. But you'll have to do that manually, without it working automatically on new incoming transactions or existing transactions.

hawks28

Thank you, @jacobs. You have described the exact issue I was having and it sounds like there is no automatic fix. I did try using HLLFRSH without success. It's unfortunate that "if statement name contains" doesn't really mean contains in terms of how I think of it. Hopefully that's something that can be updated in the future. In the meantime, I will use the more manual approach of searching for all the transactions that match the applicable criteria (e.g., "HLLFRSH" or some subset) and apply the update to the found transactions. Thanks!