Issue renaming 'AMZn Mktp' payees

SeanMag

I have a rule to rename to 'Amazon.com' if the the payee name contains 'Amazon' or 'Amzn Mktp' or the Quicken name is 'Amzn Mktp'. It works when 'Amazon' is matched, but not for the 'Amzn Mktp' names (which would show up something like 'Amzn Mktp Us*rz44e2511'). Additionally, these are being auto-categorized as 'Shopping' and I have set Amazon to not auto-categorize.

I assume it's the same issue for both, not recognizing it, so not renaming or adhering to the not-categorizing, but I've tried various versions and cannot figure out why this not working. Any suggestions?

UKR

Hmmm ... IMHO, a Renaming Rule like this should work, but I can't test it myself right now (haven't got any Amazon orders pending)

Set the account where your Amazon orders appear in to "Do not automatically accept downloaded transactions". Review them as they come in and see if the renaming rule triggers.

Boatnmaniac

Make sure the renaming rule says "If payee contains" Amzn Mktp and not "If payee is" Amzn Mktp. 

"If payee is" requires the payee name to match it exactly in order for the rule to work...anything in excess of the exact spelling of the payee name will cause the rule to fail. 

"If payee contains" will allow the rule to work whenever any part of the payee name is matched regardless of how many other words or characters are included in the payee name.

Chris_QPW

The key is to use "If payee contains".  Unfortunately, the default is "If Quicken name is".  What's more the "Add rule" dialog doesn't even give you a choice.


So, what you have to do is go to the renaming rule after it is created and click on "If Quicken name is" to get a pull-down menu so that you can change it.

UKR said:

Set the account where your Amazon orders appear in to "Do not automatically accept downloaded transactions". Review them as they come in and see if the renaming rule triggers.

That really won't give you any advantage over using the automatic entry mode.

The renaming is done before the transaction is put in the Downloaded Transactions tab or the register for automatic transaction entry mode.  So, by the time you see it, you can't change the rule and try again.  You have to do another download to test it.  Note the main way I do such a test is to make a copy of my data file before I do the download, and then if the renaming rule doesn't work and I want to try again I just copy that file over the current one, and try the download again.  Note restoring from a back frequently isn't advised so that is why I do such tests just using a copy of the data file.

In both modes the only thing you can do after the download/renaming is done is to revert the payee to what was downloaded (or of course change it manually).

SeanMag

Thanks for the quick responses. I couldn't figure out how to post pictures here, I just tried to copy/paste a screenshot, so we'll see if that works, bu tit's my current rule config with a couple entries that just downloaded and didn't change. If it doesn't show up, it's definitely using a 'contains' on the payee name, but I put in a few different options there as 'or' to try and pick it up.

It sounds like there's no good way to troubleshoot why it's not working other than to try again after each change, or revert/restore a backup to try again (not worth the effort)? That said, I wouldn't even know what else to try, it's a simple renaming rule and I've not noticed issues with anything else not renaming properly, but given Amazon is one of the most common payees, it gets a bit annoying, inserting the generic 'Shopping' category is probably the worst as I sub-categorize most items and if I don't catch it it's not as easy to identify and update it.

SeanMag

I'll add that there's the find/replace search thing, and if I use the exact same search string there it finds all of them, and I can replace/rename them from there no problem, it's just in the download auto-renaming rules that it's not working. I don't know if it could be because there's different versions, if it's from Amazon it has that in the name, the 'Amzn Mktp' is from marketplace sellers, so maybe if some transactions match one option it's not allowing it to match on additional criteria for other transactions?

Chris_QPW

I don't know what to tell you if that didn't work here is mine, second filed is the downloaded payee:

Boatnmaniac

I've had this happen to me a few times in the past.  I seem to recall that what I did to fix it was to delete all of the Memorized Payees even slightly related to the name of the payee.  It might not fix your issue but it can't hurt to try it.

SeanMag

Thanks Boatnmaniac, should have thought to try that; deleting the renaming rules and recreating them seems to have done the trick for renaming, though it's still auto-categorizing them even though configured not to in the Memorized Payee List.

The Memorized Payee List had several sub-items with categorization, so I deleted all of them and created a new entry for just 'Amazon.com' with no category, set to not auto-categorize, no dollar amount, etc. We'll see next time if that works correctly as well.

That said, it does bring up a question about how that works. I found another thread that indicates you should lock the payee if you want it to always follow that rule else when you edit them in the register is can auto create a new rule with those edits even if you don't want it to. So I tried locking it as well, but my question is on the dollar amount in there, does it first look for an exact match on the memo & dollar amount, and then if not found use the next closest match? So for example if you had an ABC Co. memorized for $50 and $25 for two different categorizations and a charge came through for $45, would it use the $50 entry because that's closest?

Amazon has been one of the less consistent/annoying payees for both renaming and auto-categorization, but it's not the only one that hasn't worked as expected; it seems I may need to go through and clean up some of the auto stuff that's been created and might be tripping up the rules.

Chris_QPW

If you are still getting automatic categorization when there isn't an entry in the Memorized Payee List make sure this preference is off:


Note that if a memorized payee is matched then the above preference shouldn't be used, it is for "if nothing picked the category, do it".  I'm not 100% sure if just setting the memorized payee to nothing is enough to avoid the use of the preference since I always have it off.  But for sure the use on "Never Auto-categorize" on the memorized payee should do the trick.  I have that set on payees like Check and Transfer.

As for the amount in the memorized payee.  It isn't used when it is matched to a downloaded transaction.  The downloaded transaction amount wins.  It is used when you use a memorized payee to fill in a transaction while manually entering a transaction.  As in you enter the payee, and the rest fills in.  That is controlled by these preferences:


The lock determines what happens to the amount and memorized payee if you change the category/amount after it has been filled in.  If you don't have it locked Quicken will change the amount/category in the memorized payee (and maybe create a new entry in the memorized payee) as you make such changes.