How can I stop the category from incorrectly pulling another account when downloading transactions?

Dschwartz19

Hello. Sometimes when I move money between accounts, the category pulls the bank account not involved in the transaction. Then it adjusts the amount in that account which reflects and incorrect balance. Can anyone help with this? It's very frustrating. Perhaps I need to change a setting? For example, I have several accounts with DFCU credit union. My main checking account is PNC. I recently transferred money from one DFCU account to another. When I downloaded my transaction, under the category column it shows [PNC]. When I delete that (because the money wasn't transferred from PNC) it adds the amount transferred to my PNC account! And I don't know how to undo it. There's no transaction in my PNC register showing that money so there's no way to correct it. I just had to delete my account and then re-add it. Just trying to understand why this happens? And how can I keep it from happening again? It's driving me crazy!

Sherlock

In addition to manually entering transfer transactions in advance of import, I suggest you disable Transfer detection: select Edit > Preferences...

Tom Young

Here is the dirt-simple bullet-proof way of keeping this from happening: When you initiate a transfer from any Account to any other Account, you simply enter the transfer manually.  That's it. 

When the transfer is processed at the "from" financial institution (FI) and that FI downloads the transaction to your Quicken Account, Quicken will find a "Match" and will not mess with the Category box.  In the same fashion when the "to" FI processes their side of the transfer, and sends it to Quicken in a download, Quicken will find a "Match", it won't mess with the Category box. and all's right with the world.

You really can't rely on Quicken to "do your accounting for you."  It's a retail-level product, it makes guesses, and sometimes those guesses just aren't correct.

"When I downloaded my transaction, under the category column it shows [PNC]. When I delete that (because the money wasn't transferred from PNC) it adds the amount transferred to my PNC account! And I don't know how to undo it. There's no transaction in my PNC register showing that money so there's no way to correct it. I just had to delete my account and then re-add it. Just trying to understand why this happens? And how can I keep it from happening again? It's driving me crazy"

I have a difficult time understanding what you're saying here.   If you allow Quicken to make entries to your register and Quicken guesses incorrectly that the money involved is a transfer to PNC ("Category" shows as [PNC], then the simple act of "acceptance" is going to result in that money being posted to the PNC Account.  If you then edit that "from" transaction and correct the receiving Account by entering a different Account in the Category box (e.g., [DFCU IRA] and hit the Enter key, then that money will simply disappear from the [PNC] Account and, instead, show up in the {DFCU IRA} Account.  That's completely different than what you've described, and I have no idea why you'd have to delete an Account in Quicken.

Make your entries manually when the occur, don't allow automatic entry, and your problems will disappear

Dschwartz19

Tom, thanks for your input. I will say that normally I do enter my transactions manually but occasionally when I don't get an opportunity to do this, I let Quicken download my transactions and then I accept them. When they download and I accept them, there is no category, so I didn't see that Quicken 'guessed' that the money was transferred from PNC. It was only after I accepted the transaction and it showed as cleared in my register, that it showed PNC in the category. For my own reference I deleted PNC and changed to DFCU just so that I knew where I moved the money from. But that is when the balance in my PNC account increased by this amount. And I couldn't remove any transaction or figure out how to change it back so that my account reflected an accurate balance. So I just removed it and restored from a previous backup. I understand what you mean by Quicken making incorrect guesses. I was just trying to figure out if I was making an error on my end for this to have happened.

Sherlock

In addition to manually entering transfer transactions in advance of import, I suggest you disable Transfer detection: select Edit > Preferences...

Dschwartz19

Thank you Sherlock! :)