Best way to clear up duplicates on one credit card?

teryg

I started using Quicken for Mac at the end of Sept 2021. Most accounts are fine, but it downloaded a lot of duplicate transactions for my PNC CC. It looks like the duplicates were all downloaded on 10/29/21 but I'm not sure I've found them all yet.

I'm wondering if the best way to clear this up is to go through and compare each transaction and date to a spreadsheet of downloaded transactions, delete the duplicates, and hope the balance then matches the bank balance (though I don't know what to do if it doesn't; in other financial software I've tried, forced balancing has been a disaster) OR to delete the account and recreate or relink it. I have several accounts at PNC. The others are fine and I don't really want to delete all of them in order to fix this one account, especially since this could apparently happen again.

I'm also wondering if I should just go back to what I was doing--all financials in a spreadsheet. That's time-consuming, but accurate.

The version I'm using is 6.4.4 (Build 604.41834.100)

Quicken Anja

Hello @teryg,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and telling us about your issue, though I apologize that you are experiencing this.

If you haven't already, please take a moment to review and follow the guidance found in this support article regarding this topic. Also, please be sure to click the Mac tab for proper guidance.

I hope this helps!

teryg

I installed Quicken last month. Immediately got duplicate transactions, but only on one credit card. I followed the instructions to remove the duplicates, with the assurance it would not happen again. It just happened again.

I called Quicken tech support and was told I had to contact the bank (PNC) because the FITID for the duplicate transactions was not the same. I called the bank and they said they can't see the FITID and it's not there when I download a CSV file, so I have to contact Quicken.

So Quicken says it's the bank's problem, the bank says it's Quicken's problem, and I have a useless piece of software. I spent hours cleaning out the duplicates last month and cannot do that time and time again.

Can anyone help with this or do I need to just trash Quicken and go back to the spreadsheets I was using?

teryg

The support article was helpful. I cleaned out the duplicates. But I just synced for this month and now there are more duplicates. Quicken says it's the bank's problem. The bank says it's Quicken's problem . . .

jacobs

I'm afraid PNC support gave you a wrong answer. The FITID numbers are created by them. But they won't be in a CSV file, and Quicken doesn't import from a CSV file in any case.

They may have a separate download of a "QFX file" or "Quicken file"; this uses the QFX format, and contains FITID numbers for each transaction. The other method is if you use Quicken Connect to download directly into Quicken, it will also be using the QFX format for downloading to Quicken's server and then to you, again with FITID numbers they generate. The only time there should be duplicates is if you switch between downloading a QFX file and using Quicken Connect; depending on the financial institution, they may generate different FITID numbers for each of those methods.

So you'll need to contact PNC again, and this time, press to talk with someone who is very familiar with Quicken/Intuit/QFX downloads. The first-tier support people often just don't know enough about this to be helpful; you need to get someone who understands how they interact with Quicken (Intuit actually), and knows what a FITID number is. Before you call, you should capture a screenshot showing some duplicate transactions, with the FITID column visible showing that the numbers are different. Hopefully, a knowledgeable support person will look at that and recognize that something is wrong on their end. 

There's noting Quicken can do if the bank is sending wrong data. These FITID numbers exist specifically so Quicken can track them and prevent and duplicates from getting into your data. In the bank screws up with the numbers, then Quicken can't distinguish which transactions are duplicates.

teryg

Thanks. I'll try PNC again. But not today.