How can I require categories to be used?

mdeehl

Is there anyway or any settings that I can make Quicken require a category to be used in my downloaded bank accounts transactions? I don't want to have any uncategorized saved transactions.

Bob_L

Try going to preferences, downloaded transactions, and selecting option to automatically categorize.

Boatnmaniac

You might want to go to Edit > Preferences and check the boxes highlighted as shown below. 

Note:  By relying on Quicken to automatically categorize transactions you might find that sometimes the categories assigned do not reflect what you might want to see.  For instance, if you went shopping at Walmart it will likely be assigned as "Shopping" when maybe you would want it to be "Groceries".  Or it might pull a previously used category from a Memorized Payee that does not really apply to the new transaction (ex, if the Payee is your bundled auto insurance company and the previous payment was "Auto Insurance" when you make a new payment for Home Insurance it might get categorized as "Auto Insurance").  So, it will be important to review the transactions either as they are being entered or after they have been entered to see if there are any changes/corrections that might need to be made.:

If for some reason a transaction does not have a category assigned to it, then checking this Preference will tell Quicken to notify you to decide whether or not to enter a category for it before entering the transaction into the register.

Bob_L

Try going to preferences, downloaded transactions, and selecting option to automatically categorize.

Boatnmaniac

You might want to go to Edit > Preferences and check the boxes highlighted as shown below. 

Note:  By relying on Quicken to automatically categorize transactions you might find that sometimes the categories assigned do not reflect what you might want to see.  For instance, if you went shopping at Walmart it will likely be assigned as "Shopping" when maybe you would want it to be "Groceries".  Or it might pull a previously used category from a Memorized Payee that does not really apply to the new transaction (ex, if the Payee is your bundled auto insurance company and the previous payment was "Auto Insurance" when you make a new payment for Home Insurance it might get categorized as "Auto Insurance").  So, it will be important to review the transactions either as they are being entered or after they have been entered to see if there are any changes/corrections that might need to be made.:

If for some reason a transaction does not have a category assigned to it, then checking this Preference will tell Quicken to notify you to decide whether or not to enter a category for it before entering the transaction into the register.

Chris_QPW

There are worse things that an uncategorized transaction, and that is transactions that are categorized incorrectly.
That is why after one has got most of their payees memorized, I suggest turning off Quicken automatic categorization.