Category Issues

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Wrong categories applied to repeating downloaded transactions.

LM454

I have been having the same problem, also for years. Quicken randomly assigns some transactions to Subscriptions:NYTimes that already have categories assigned to them. It does this for many transactions, usually those that have been paid through PayPal. This situation results in my spending hours correcting these categories every time I download transactions. How can I fix this permanently?

NotACPA

You need to look at your Memorized Transactions and your Renaming Rules.  Something in one of those is causing the mis-assignment of category.

jacobs

If you categorized one PayPal transaction as a Subscription, and allowed Quicken to create a QuickFill rule for Payee=PayPal to get Category=Subscription, then that's where your problem lies. Open Window > Payees & Rules, and click on the QuickFill Rules tab. Look for PayPal. Is there a rule to use the Subscription category? You'll then want to delete that, or perhaps to edit it, remove the category and amount, and then Lock rule and check the box to make this the Primary rule for this Payee. That should make future PayPal transactions come in as uncategorized.

On every transaction you enter manually, or on which you edit the category, there's the little blue pop-up asking if you want the transaction saved as a QuickFill rule, and you have to be careful to uncheck this for Payees like PayPal (or Amazon, or others which have a wide variety of categories).

Alternatively, you can change the global default in Preferences > Register to not create QuickFill rules for transactions unless you manually check the pop-up box above the category. that will prevent rules from being created without you wanting them to; you just need to remember to check the box when you do want to save a transaction as a QuickFill rule.