Bill payment transaction: Half of transaction disappeared

wmwallberg

I have been noticing some strange things over the past number of months and today I caught an item that just happened so I tracked down the details and I wanted to ask if there are any thoughts about causes.

I am using Quicken for Windows Desktop. Version R38.30 Build: 27.1.3.8.30
My desktop is Windows 10 Enterprise.

Today (Fri March 11, 2022) I downloaded transactions and an entry got downloaded from E*Trade Bank that did not match any items in my register. This is VERY unusual except for month end interest deposits. The entry was a payment to a credit card. When I looked in Quicken, the payment was recorded against the credit card account but the matching transaction was NOT in the E*Trade bank account. I typically use the Bills & Income section to enter my payments.

I have noticed a few other transactions go missing over the past few months (including paychecks!) but I've just fixed the entries and ignored it. Now I would like to get the the root cause of the problem.

I restored old backups to try and locate when the entry went missing from the register. I found the entry in a backup from Feb 20, 2022 but it was not in the backup from Feb 25, 2022. I backup at the end of the day anytime I have opened Quicken to do work. Both of these backups did show the payment in the credit card account.

Have there been reported problems of this nature? What technique can I use to find out what is going wrong.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Wayne

Quicken Jared

wmwallberg said:

I have been noticing some strange things over the past number of months and today I caught an item that just happened so I tracked down the details and I wanted to ask if there are any thoughts about causes.

I am using Quicken for Windows Desktop. Version R38.30 Build: 27.1.3.8.30
My desktop is Windows 10 Enterprise.

Today (Fri March 11, 2022) I downloaded transactions and an entry got downloaded from E*Trade Bank that did not match any items in my register. This is VERY unusual except for month end interest deposits. The entry was a payment to a credit card. When I looked in Quicken, the payment was recorded against the credit card account but the matching transaction was NOT in the E*Trade bank account. I typically use the Bills & Income section to enter my payments.

I have noticed a few other transactions go missing over the past few months (including paychecks!) but I've just fixed the entries and ignored it. Now I would like to get the the root cause of the problem.

I restored old backups to try and locate when the entry went missing from the register. I found the entry in a backup from Feb 20, 2022 but it was not in the backup from Feb 25, 2022. I backup at the end of the day anytime I have opened Quicken to do work. Both of these backups did show the payment in the credit card account.

Have there been reported problems of this nature? What technique can I use to find out what is going wrong.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Wayne

Hello @wmwallberg, 

I am sorry to hear about this problem with disappearing transactions. Thank you for inquiring about this here on the Quicken Community. 

I want to be sure that I understand where and when these transaction appear to be missing. Are some of them appearing in older backups from the same data file?

Also, I hope to confirm that the sorting order and the filters in the register are not hiding any of these transactions. Be sure to hit the Reset button just above the register itself in order to clear any possible filters, and try clicking on the triangular arrow next to the word Date in the associated column to change the sort.

I hope to hear back from you regarding this matter, and I intend to continue working with you on this issue.

Thank you,

Quicken Jared 

wmwallberg

Thank you for the response. Regarding the confirmation of the sorting order and filters: The reset button is grayed out because there are no filters (The filters show All Dates, Any Type, All Transactions). I've resorted and the transaction is missing. The details of how the transaction was created are:

I use The Bills & Income tab to track my monthly payments and income. For credit cards the entry shows me the current balance due. In this case it was a credit card payment. When the credit card statement arrived, I paid the bill, went into Quicken and selected Enter. The 'Enter Expense Transaction' window appears and I enter the amount paid, date paid and method. The category is already set with the name of the credit card account and the account to use for payment is the checking account. Entering the transaction will create 2 entries in Quicken: The payment out from the checking account and the payment received against the credit card account. The specifics of this transaction were a $217.02 entry to pay a credit card statement on March 9, 2022. It creates a payment record for $217.02 in the checking account and a payment (received) record in the credit card account.

What started my digging into this entry was a download of transactions into my checking account from E*Trade Bank. The download showed a payment on 3/9/2022 of $217.02 that did NOT match any entries in the Quicken checking account. This was unusual. When I went looking I saw the the payment transaction DID appear in the credit card account for 3/9/2022. At this point I backed up my Quicken data file and began restoring old backups to find out when the transaction disappeared. I discovered that the transactions (both transactions) were in a Feb 20, 2022 backup file but the next backup I restored (Feb 25, 2022) only had the credit card payment transaction, not the checking account payment transaction. That's when I initiated this post to try and figure out where the bug was from. I also used the 'Report a Problem' on the Quicken Help tab to send data to Quicken support. This all happened on Friday March 11, 2022.

I have since restored my most current backup from Friday 3/11/2022 and I have manually created the Quicken transaction. But I am very concerned that the software tool that has been storing all of my financial information for decades would create these type of errors. I would like to find out what may have happened.

If there is any additional information I can provide, please feel free to ask.

Thank you,

Wayne

Quicken Jared

wmwallberg said:

Thank you for the response. Regarding the confirmation of the sorting order and filters: The reset button is grayed out because there are no filters (The filters show All Dates, Any Type, All Transactions). I've resorted and the transaction is missing. The details of how the transaction was created are:

I use The Bills & Income tab to track my monthly payments and income. For credit cards the entry shows me the current balance due. In this case it was a credit card payment. When the credit card statement arrived, I paid the bill, went into Quicken and selected Enter. The 'Enter Expense Transaction' window appears and I enter the amount paid, date paid and method. The category is already set with the name of the credit card account and the account to use for payment is the checking account. Entering the transaction will create 2 entries in Quicken: The payment out from the checking account and the payment received against the credit card account. The specifics of this transaction were a $217.02 entry to pay a credit card statement on March 9, 2022. It creates a payment record for $217.02 in the checking account and a payment (received) record in the credit card account.

What started my digging into this entry was a download of transactions into my checking account from E*Trade Bank. The download showed a payment on 3/9/2022 of $217.02 that did NOT match any entries in the Quicken checking account. This was unusual. When I went looking I saw the the payment transaction DID appear in the credit card account for 3/9/2022. At this point I backed up my Quicken data file and began restoring old backups to find out when the transaction disappeared. I discovered that the transactions (both transactions) were in a Feb 20, 2022 backup file but the next backup I restored (Feb 25, 2022) only had the credit card payment transaction, not the checking account payment transaction. That's when I initiated this post to try and figure out where the bug was from. I also used the 'Report a Problem' on the Quicken Help tab to send data to Quicken support. This all happened on Friday March 11, 2022.

I have since restored my most current backup from Friday 3/11/2022 and I have manually created the Quicken transaction. But I am very concerned that the software tool that has been storing all of my financial information for decades would create these type of errors. I would like to find out what may have happened.

If there is any additional information I can provide, please feel free to ask.

Thank you,

Wayne

@wmwallberg,

Thank you so much for providing this expansive detail. It is especially helpful. I am sorry that the exact source of this problem remained unclear.

Just so I am sure: was the issue resolved after you restored from a backup? Also, did you make the newer payments (wherein the checking account transactions began to go missing) through QuickPay, or outside of Quicken?

I do look forward to your response, and hope to provide further detail momentarily.


Thank you,

Quicken Jared 

wmwallberg

The issue was NOT resolved via a backup restore. All the backup restore assisted me with was identifying when the error happened and confirmed that the transactions had been in Quicken at one point.

I fixed the problem by manually entering the missing half of the transaction. And regarding payments: I do not use QuickPay. I manually make payments outside of Quicken. I use the Bills and Income section to plan on upcoming Bills and Income. When I manually pay a bill I enter it from the Bills and Income section so it appears in my Quicken registers. Some of the more valuable information this provides is a calendar of my financial positions that I have created in the Home tab showing activity in my primary checking accounts.

I have made additional transactions using the same technique in the interim. I have been monitoring them closely and so far everything appears to be OK. But having seen this problem has me feeling a little 'gun-shy'. I have been hoping that there is some way to identify what happened and ensuring that it doesn't happen again.

Thank you,

Wayne