Manual Match Transactions

Marvin Gardens

I have an instance of Quicken Premier that I use for my mother’s checking account. She has some regular electronic deposits and withdrawals which clear when I run an OSU to her bank.

Each month she uses her bank’s online bill pay to donate to her church. I set up a reminder in Quicken to enter that payment into her register on the first of each month. When the transaction is downloaded, it does not match the register so I use “Match Manually”.

Today something strange happened. When I ran the OSU the payment appeared, but when I clicked on “Match Manually, the popup list of transactions did not include that single, uncleared check in her register. But it did include dozens of old, reconciled transactions, both payments and deposits, from June 2021 through September 2021.

I know I can just manually clear the check, but does anyone have an idea what caused this and how I can fix it?

splasher

I'd be more interested in why it doesn't "match" to begin with.  Are you creating the transaction with the reminder with the exact same Payee of the downloaded transaction?  If not exact, then I'd create a Renaming Rule (Tools menu) to make the downloaded Payee the same as the one created by the reminder.

Chris_QPW

The payee doesn't have to the same for a match, it is mostly done by amount and if there is a check number, by check number.  And there is a special behavior with the check number if it exists.

If you put in the check number and the downloaded information doesn't have the check number, then it won't match that transaction.  And the reverse is true.  If you put in a transaction without the check number and the downloaded transactions has the check number information in it, it won't match.

Note in all cases the amount needs to match.

Note even though people have stated at times that the payee is used as "hint" to match I have never really pinned down such behavior and it doesn't really make sense especially for a check.  Note that "online bill pay" may or may not have a "check number".

As for the rest with the listing of past transactions to match to, I don't have anything really to suggest there.  I don't use that mode.  I use automatic transaction entry mode and its manual match works differently.

Marvin Gardens

I use her bank’s online bill pay service. I have a Payee for “First Presbyterian Church”. I set up a regular automatic payment of $25 for the first of every month.

In the Quicken reminder the payee is “First Presbyterian Church”, the date is the first of every month and the amount is $25.

The bank actually prints a paper check and mails it to the church so I don’t know the check number until it clears,

When it clears, the transaction is “Check #123456”, the date varies. It’s usually about the 14th of the month. (I assume that’s how long it takes for the church to take the paper check to their bank and for their bank to present it to Mom’s bank)

I am puzzled why the bank doesn’t know the payee of the check they printed, but that’s not Quicken’s fault.

I understand why Quicken can’t match the transaction. What I don’t understand is why Quicken is showing me cleared transactions and not the only uncleared transaction.

Chris_QPW

Marvin Gardens said:

I am puzzled why the bank doesn’t know the payee of the check they printed, but that’s not Quicken’s fault.

Most banks don't do OCR for the payee.

Marvin Gardens said:

I understand why Quicken can’t match the transaction. What I don’t understand is why Quicken is showing me cleared transactions and not the only uncleared transaction.

The way the manual match works when used from the Downloaded Transactions tab is it will show any transaction that hasn't been already matched to a downloaded transaction, and it doesn't care about the cleared status.  So, that is the reason for the other transactions to be there.  Why the uncleared one isn't there, I have no idea.

I did a test with a transaction entered without a check number and with one downloaded with a check number, and it showed up properly in the manual match dialog.

splasher

Paper checks that I have my CU send via their bill pay system come back as Check #1234 also and it kind of makes sense since they don't actually run the bill pay service.  It is a third party company that actually issues the check, not the CU. 
Just like any paper check you write, the CU never "reads" the payee, just the info on the bottom of the check (routing #, account #, check # and the amount that is added by the first FI in the chain, nothing else is important to the FIs past those four pieces of information.