I just want to account for an intrabank transfer that already happened, not initiate one.

Question

I use quicken to account for my financial activity, not to make it happen. I do not want to initiate an intrabank transfer. I find it horrific that Quicken allows this. How do I just record something that has happened and not trust my bank to get it right?

Quicken Jared · Accepted Answer

Hello @Boopsie,

I am sorry for any confusion or frustration you may have experienced. Thank you for speaking with us here on the Quicken Community in regards to this matter.

In order to avoid intrabank transfers when entering transactions between bank accounts, you could manually create a Transfer transaction in each of the two separate banking account registers for the same  by going to the Add Transaction button beneath the register in the lower left-hand side, denoted by the '+' icon. There should then be a drop-down menu that allows you to select between a standard transfer and an Intra-bank only option when doing this. Be sure to choose the standard transfer when doing this.

Another method would be to change the Connection Type of the relevant accounts. First, go to File > Save a Backup in the upper menu at the top of the screen while Quicken is open. Be sure to save a backup before any further troubleshooting steps; this is extremely important in a wide variety of contexts. Next, go to Accounts > Settings > Downloads in the upper menu at the top of the screen where you had previously saved a backup and then click Change Connection Type. Choose Quicken Connect, if this is available. This should prevent the automatic Intrabank Transfers, as well.

I want to hear more from you regarding this issue, and I hope to keep working with you on this problem, if necessary.

Thank you,

Quicken Jared

jacobs · Accepted Answer

Unless the explicitly direct Quicken to initiate an interbank transfer, it won't; if you are just recording what happens, then your bank isn't involved. There's nothing "horrific" here.

Do you download transactions from your bank, for one or both accounts, or do you enter them in Quicken manually?

When you download transactions from a bank, there's no concept of accounts in Quicken, so a download by itself can't record the transfer into the other account; at best, it will use Category=Transfer to indicate that money came or went somewhere, without Quicken knowing to/from where.

If you download such transactions in both accounts — e.g. one showing a transfer of money out and one showing a transfer of money in — you may not need to do anything further. If you want to link these transactions in Quicken so you can later see the connection which existed with these transactions, you can (1) change the Category from "Transfer" to "Transfer:[account name]" to make it a linked transfer, and then (2) in the other account, since the linked transfer now duplicates the transaction you originally downloaded, you can either drag one over the other to match them, or simply delete the downloaded transfer transaction.