The same WRONG PAYEE name applied to NUMEROUS different DOWNLOADED PAYEE names.

gene.miller

When downloading transactions for a certain credit card account, about half of the downloaded payee names are being automatically changed to "NY State Tax - Amendment" (This wrong payee name was used in a checking account deposit about 6 months ago, but it has nothing to do with the downloaded payee names for the credit card).

For example, downloaded payee names like"Brooklyn Bagels", "Westside Market", "Barcade New York", "NYTimes", "WM Supercenter", and "Red Berry Farm", are all atomatically changed to "NY State Tax - Amendment". But other downloaded payee names are converted in a sensible way. E.g. "Shoprite Monticello" is changed to "Shoprite".

The original Quicken credit card account created about 2 years ago seemed okay until about 9 months ago. Around 6 months ago I deactivated the online setup for the original Quicken account and created a new Quicken account linked to the same bank credit card account. It is with the new Quicken account that I am seeing this problem. I am avoiding touching the original Quicken credit card account to prevent it from becoming corrupted.

To debug this problem:

1. In "Edit > Preferences > Downloaded transactions" I disabled "Automatically apply Quicken's suggested name to payee", and disabled "Use my existing renaming rules". But these changes did not fix the problem.

2. I also "reverted select payee names" for all the bad transactions in the register. But this did not fix the problem either.

Quicken phone support agent Noel created Ticket ID #8959602 and I followed these tests that he suggested:

3. I created a new test file (Test.QDF) with the problem credit card account. It downloaded the past 3 months of transactions, but all of the payee names looked okay (similar to the downloaded payee names). This verified that the problem was not in the bank's downloaded data.

4. I backed up and ran Verify for my QDF data file.

5. I logged out of Quicken online and logged back in.

After each of the above steps, I checked whether the problem was fixed by
(a) deactivating the credit card account online set up
(b) creating a new credit card account linked to the bank
(c) downloading and accepting past 3 months transactions
In all cases, the same downloaded payee names were all changed to "NY State Tax - Amendment".

Quicken phone support agent Noel also suggested that I go back to a backup file from before the time this problem appeared (around 6 months ago), and try to download the intervening transactions for the accounts. UNFORTUNATELY, manyinstitutions only download the past 3 months. And my file contains all the banking and credit card accounts for me, my wife, and our several businesses (16 accounts in total), Plus nine investment accounts. In addition, we would have to re-enter all the manual transactions, account transfers, categories, memos, etc.

PLEASE HELP!!!

gene.miller

BRIEF QUESTION:
How can I see or edit the actual renaming rules used by Quicken?

Menu > Tools > Renaming Rules shows only a list of Payee names that I used in the distant past. It does not include any of the names that are giving me trouble now.

Also note: one of the other questions that dealt with renaming says that there is some sort of pulldown in "Add a Renaming Rule". I don't see a pulldown there.

gene.miller

ANOTHER BRIEF QUESTION: To eliminate this corruption, must I rebuild the Quicken file from a backup made before this problem appeared (six months ago)?

gene.miller

THIRD BRIEF QUESTION: If I must rebuild from an earlier backup, then is there a reliable way to export all the unaffected intervening transactions (or registers) from the current file and import them into the backup file?

I would love to avoid a lot of manual entry. Especially transactions that I can't download anymore as well as manually entered categories, tags, transfers between accounts, corrected payee names, memos, etc.

Quicken Alyssa

Hello @gene.miller,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and telling us about your issue, though I apologize that you are experiencing this. And thank you for providing all of the details that you have!

As I was reading through the entire discussion, my mind kept going to Renaming Rules. Renaming Rules are what would cause this. However, you also stated that you do not have a rule for NY State Tax - Amendment, correct?

To confirm, the Renaming Rules are in the Tools menu. If you have one on the list called NY State Tax - Amendment then you should delete it.

As for the corruption questions. The best way to get rid of corruption, while still salvaging as much as possible from your original file, is to create a copy of the file. However 

To do this;

1. Click on File.

2. Click on Copy or Backup File...

3. Choose the second option, Create a copy or template and click Next.

4. Click Save Copy.

5. When it asks which file you want to use, select the New Copy and click Ok.

6. Once you are in the new file, you now need to reconnect all of your previously connected accounts. Be aware that this can possibly cause duplicate transactions, among other small inconveniences.

I would say copying the file would be the way to go, ONLY if you do not have a renaming rule with the name mentioned above. I do hope this helps, let me know how it goes!

Quicken Alyssa

gene.miller

Thank you, Quicken Alyssa!

When I click "Menu > Tools > Renaming Rules" I see a list of ~200 Payee names that were used in the past. None of these names look anything like the invalid replacement name "NY State Tax - Amendment". And none of them look like the names that were incorrectly changed to "NY State Tax - Amendment" (e.g. Brooklyn Bagels", "Westside Market", etc.).

I noticed the other replacements that look valid are in the Renaming Rules list. E.g. "Shoprite Monticello" is changed to "Shoprite".
There are also some rarely used downloaded names that did not change at all (e.g. "WWW.CLARKSUSA.COM #907 NEWTON U F MA")

Also note: I could not discern any pattern that differentiated the names that were incorrectly changed to "NY State Tax - Amendment" to the ones that looked valid.

Again, please note that this very STRANGE replacement behavior is affecting only this one Quicken register.

Also note, in a DIFFERENT Credit card register, there are many valid automatic replacements that are NOT listed in the Renaming Rules. E.g., download name "BLUEMOUNTAIN*1010-11888-254-154" was replaced by "Blue Mountain". But nothing like "Blue Mountain" is listed in the Renaming Rules.

My QUESTION is how does Quicken know how to make automatic replacements like these that are NOT listed in the Renaming Rules?

Thanks!

Quicken Alyssa

@gene.miller,

Thank you for providing further insight on this for me. 

To answer your question, Quicken should not be successfully nor unsuccessfully renaming anything if you turned off all of the preferences and have not given it a renaming rule. 

You mentioned that this is only happening in one account. Can I have you save a backup of your file and then disconnect the account with the issue? After that is done, go in and add the account like new without linking it to the existing account in your Quicken. This will help us to determine if the issue resides in the account itself. If the newly added account does not display the same behavior then we have our answer and we can move you into the newer acct and hide the old one.

Let us know how this process goes!



Quicken Alyssa

Boatnmaniac

@gene.miller - One thing you might want to do is to take a look at what Payee name(s) were actually downloaded for those transactions.  A quick way to do this:  Account Register > upper right Gear icon > Register Columns > check the box for "Downloaded payee" > Done.  Now there will be a new column in the Account Register showing the payees as they were downloaded from the financial institution.  Are they accurate or do they show this same problem?

Also, have you looked at your Memorized Payee List for the incorrect payee?  If you see it listed there, click on the Edit button on the right side of the screen and then click on the Edit Renaming Rule button on the bottom left of the Edit popup.  This will then show you the Renaming Rule(s) that are associated with the Memorized Payee (if there are any).  Once you know the Renaming Rule(s) that might be causing this issue, you can either edit them to correct them or delete them.

gene.miller

@Boatnmaniac - Thank you. I already checked what you said: the "Downloaded payee" names are fine, and ​the Memorized Payee List does not contain any of the misbehaving Payee names (e.g. "NY State Tax - Amendment", "Brooklyn Bagels", "Westside Market", etc.)

I also verified that none of the misbehaving Payee names are in the Renaming Rules list either.

I've been using quicken for 20+ years, and this is the strangest behavior I've ever seen. Interestingly it is affecting only one Quicken account. I might need to rebuild as suggested by @Quicken Alyssa

gene.miller

@Quicken Alyssa and @Boatnmaniac:

FORTUNATELY, I found a work-around. USAA has been phasing out Express Web Connect for their credit cards and they created another randomly generated customer ID to use with Direct Connect. (My original customer ID worked only with Express Web Connect).

I don't know how Express Web Connect could cause this crazy renaming behavior, since the Downloaded Payee names were all correct??

In any case, I will continue to use Direct Connect with the randomly generated customer ID, and forget about this crazy experience.

Thank you!!!

Boatnmaniac

@gene.miller - Yes, that certainly appears to be some odd behavior with the EWC connection.  But it's good to see you have a DC connection option as that is a faster and more reliable connection method.  And thanks for for letting us know that your issue is now resolved with using DC.  Have a great day!

gene.miller

Thanks @Boatnmaniac @Quicken Alyssa

Glad that I can forget about this issue for myself.

Yet it seems that there's still a problem lurking somewhere in Quicken software. While USAA is not fully supporting EWC, there may be something in their data stream that is triggering this strange renaming behavior. If this is the case, then Quicken should be able to detect non-compliant data and issue a warning message, instead of gleefully posting nonsense in my register. This would have saved me about a week of testing and hairpulling, not to mention the time you and other Quicken staff spent puzzling this.

Assuming that I am not the only user that might be affected, you may want to escalate this issue to Quicken development. I would be happy to provide debugging information and data. Please let me know. BTW: Last week I reported this problem and provided sanitized data via the program. But I have not heard back.

-- Gene Miller

Quicken Alyssa

@gene.miller ,

Thank you for all of your feedback on this issue. Unfortunately for your situation, Quicken does accept whatever information the bank sends over. It seems strange that the financial institution would provide inaccurate information for your transactions regardless of the connection type. At any rate, you sharing your experience with this is appreciated! Now we will know to watch for this in the future. 

Also, just a side note, when you report a problem in the software, it does send us the information but you will not get a response after reporting one. 


Thanks again,
Quicken Alyssa

Bradpreach

My issue is similar, except the payee each month. The most recent (Cookshack) is not in the memorized payee list. I have recently switched banks and the problem has followed me to the new bank. Please help
Brad Foster