Duplicate Entries

david6fl

On a somewhat random basis, Quicken Premier keeps making duplicate entries in my check register. I am getting tired of trying to track down all of them. What can I do to stop this?

Tom Young

How do you have things setup in your file?  Are transactions automatically entered into your register?  Do you enter transactions manually at the time they are made or do you rely on entries from your bank to populate the register?  How is the download process handled, as Direct Connect or as Express Web Connect?

If you're allowing transactions to be entered into the register when received then I'd suggest stopping that.  At least that way transactions will show up below the register in the Downloaded Transactions area and you'll have a chance to prevent duplicate entries.  Doing so might also shine some light on why you're getting duplicate entries in the first place as that's not supposed to happen.

david6fl

I guess I don't understand your answers. What's the difference between Direct Connect and Express Web Connect and does it make a difference with what it is?
When I schedule payments with my bank's bill pay, they appear immediately in my check register regardless of the date scheduled for payment. Then when on the scheduled date the bank pays them, they appear in the register again. Other times without the scheduled payment, the payment just appears as two entries. This problem occurs with all three of my account, checking, saving, and credit card.

david6fl

I want to add that this problem started about three months ago right after an update.

Tom Young

"When I schedule payments with my bank's bill pay, they appear immediately in my check register regardless of the date scheduled for payment. Then when on the scheduled date the bank pays them, they appear in the register again. "

Well, that situation should be fairly easy to remedy if a future payment scheduled "today" is showing up with "today's" date in the register, not the expected date of the payment.   For whatever reason it appears that Quicken is not recognizing that the actual payment - maybe made a month or so after "today's" date - is already in the register.  What I'd recommend here is to change "today's" date on the transaction that appears "immediately" when scheduled to the date the payment is actually expected to be made.  Presumably Quicken will then be able to "match" the actual payment downloaded from the financial institution to the existing entry, not post it as a new entry.

You didn't answer directly my question of "Are transactions automatically entered into your register?" but based on your response I have to believe the answer is "Yes."  I strongly suggest you change that behavior in all your Accounts: Edit each Account (hover over the Account name in the Account Bar, left click and select "Edit/Delete account"), click on the "Online Services" tab and change "Automatic entry is" to OFF.  That way to can look at each downloaded entry before it enters the register.  If the transaction is a duplicate (indicated as "New" when it's not), then delete the transaction.

"Other times without the scheduled payment, the payment just appears as two entries"

I'm reading that as as saying that a transaction will download one day and be accepted into an Account, and then later - maybe next day or a day or two later - will show up again and is automatically entered into the Account again.  That should not be happening as each downloaded transaction is supposed to have a unique ID and if Quicken encounters that ID again it doesn't process it, it just skips over it.  Again, having Automatic entry turned off should allow you to identify duplicates and eliminate them before they enter the register.

Offhand I can't think of a release that introduced this "duplicate transactions" bug (though Quicken can be fairly oblique about their fixes of problems) and you might try updating to the most recent version of Quicken to see if that improves things, though my guess is that it won't: https://www.quicken.com/support/patching-updates-windows

This may be a problem associated with your particular financial institution, but that can be difficult to uncover, particularly if you're not an experienced user.   You might want to disclose the financial institution(s) involved and what method of downloading the institution(s) uses.  (That information is right there on the "Online Services" tab for the Account.)