will Quicken be improving the data capture in payee field?

MAC2

it is frustrating to have to update all the payees on checks I have written or payments made through ach -- I would like to see the actual payee on the check captured when I upload my accounts. Any idea when that might be part of an upgrade?

Quicken Anja

Hello @MAC2,

Thank you for taking the time to reach out to the Community with your request.

I went ahead and changed your post to an Idea so other users who have the same or a similar request can vote on your idea by clicking the up arrow (see below).

Ideas are also reviewed by our Development and Product teams in order to improve Quicken and implement new features requested by customers.

Please, be sure to add your own vote as well.

RickO

This is not likely to happen and here's why: Quicken can only know who the payee is to the extent that the bank transmits that information. For manually written checks, the bank will not normally have the information about who the payee is. To have that info, they would have to OCR the payee line on the check. They don't do that, so what you see on your statement is something like "Check# 1234". Since that's what's transmitted to Quicken, there's no way for Quicken to know who the payee is. 

It all depends on what the banks puts on their statements/website and transmits to Quicken. For ACH transfers, it could be different depending on the bank. If the bank only puts something like "ACH Transfer" on the statement/website, then again, Quicken isn't going to be able to know the actual payee. However, if the bank records something like "ACH Transfer - Acme Widget Company", then you can use Renaming Rules to transform this into "Acme Widget Company" so you don't have to edit the "ACH Transfer -" portion out of the payee name each time.

Again, it all depends on what the bank records and transmits to Quicken,

UKR

Are you automatically accepting downloaded transactions into your registers?

If you are relying on Quicken to "automagically" fill your account registers from downloaded transactions, you may run into problems. Despite all efforts by the Quicken programmers, the "Autopilot" (that's my name for the part of the Quicken program which processes downloaded transactions and converts them into new register transactions) is not infallible. For that process to work 100% of the time one would need a crystal ball because the information downloaded from the banks often is just too terse and cryptic (see prior reply by @RickO ).

You should, at least for a while, turn off the "automatically accept downloaded transactions into registers" setting to gain better control over what is downloaded and what to do with it. Click on and review each downloaded transaction, make changes if necessary (e.g., to get a payee name = "Starbucks" instead of "POS TRANS 070119 STARBU", "POS TRANS 070219 STARBU", "POS TRANS 070319 STARBU" or to assign a category) before you click to accept each transaction.

Any changes you make to downloaded Payee Names are remembered in Renaming Rules.

Any other changes you make (add/change Category or Memo text) are remembered in the Memorized Payee List.

Next time the same transaction for this Payee comes along, Quicken should remember and give you a better new register transaction.

Paper checks you write should be recorded in Quicken as you write the check (and BEFORE you download transactions which might contain the cleared check). That gives you a register transaction with correct check number, payee name and category. No matter what information is downloaded from the bank, you already have a correct register transaction which the downloaded data cannot mess up.

In case you have issues with transfer transactions not being generated correctly:

For best results manually enter transfer transactions into your register BEFORE you download transactions from the bank which contain the transfer confirmations. For recurring transfers use scheduled reminders and enter them a day or two before the due date. Be sure to use distinct Payee Names for each transfer / credit card payment to avoid confusing Quicken - memorized payee entries.
That takes the guesswork out of the Autopilot's process. Because a correctly entered transfer transaction already exists in your account registers, the Autopilot should just match the downloaded transfer transaction to the existing one in both accounts.

Where are the "Auto-accept downloaded transaction" settings?

There are two places where this is controlled in Quicken for Windows:
 - Globally, for all accounts, in Edit / Preferences / Downloaded Transactions
 - For each account individually, the global setting can be overridden from the Edit Account Details screen, Online Services Tab. Look for blue text "Automatic Entry is: ON / OFF". Click the text to change the setting.

OK, so the above was written for Quicken for Windows users, but the ideas presented still apply to Quicken Mac users ... in some way ...

RickO

Some of the above doesn't apply to Mac. For example there's no setting for automatic register acceptance. All downloads go straight to the register. Automatic creation of renaming and QuickFill rules depends on settings in Preferences > Registers. I believe these are both on by default but if not, they would need to be turned on. 

One more QMac setting that might help: In Preferences > Connected Services, you can turn on "automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names and categories".

jacobs

If you write a lot of checks, what many people do is enter them manually in Quicken as they write them. Then, when you download from your bank, those transactions will be automatically merged, or you can manually merge them (by dragging the manual transaction over the bank one or visa versa); this will preserve the Payee name you entered. And by entering them manually in Quicken as you go, you have a record of any checks which haven't cleared the bank.