Memorized Payees Not Working

Jan Ingle

Quicken for Windows. My memorized payees are not auto populating the category, which is what I use them for. I have a number of memorized payees for payments. Example: Fresh Thyme Market auto categorizes to Grocery. My payee list has not changed. Not sure if it's related...but this problem cropped up after a recent Quicken update where my downloaded transaction preferences were changed. I needed to go in and uncheck some boxes on those preferences. Any ideas to fix? Thanks.

Sherlock

If you haven't already, I suggest you check the data entry preference: select Edit > Preferences...

Jan Ingle

Those two items are already checked.

Quicken Jared

Jan Ingle said:

Quicken for Windows. My memorized payees are not auto populating the category, which is what I use them for. I have a number of memorized payees for payments. Example: Fresh Thyme Market auto categorizes to Grocery. My payee list has not changed. Not sure if it's related...but this problem cropped up after a recent Quicken update where my downloaded transaction preferences were changed. I needed to go in and uncheck some boxes on those preferences. Any ideas to fix? Thanks.

Hello @Jan Ingle, 

I am sorry to hear about this issue with Memorized Payees failing to populate. Thank you for inquiring about this here on the Quicken Community. 

First, when you navigate to Tools > Memorized Payee List, are either the boxes under Never Auto-categorize or Lock checked off?

If not, save a backup by going to File > Copy or Backup File... in the upper menu at the top of the screen, and then create a 'test' data file by going to the same menu and selecting New Quicken File... Next, choose New Quicken File in the screen that follows, and then click OK. After this, choose a file location on your computer and then click Save. Choose Don't use mobile and web when prompted.

You may then add your non-Charles Schwab affiliated accounts in the newly created data file by choosing your financial institution and entering your credentials as prompted. I am curious whether or not these issues continue in this data file.

I hope to hear back from you about this. 

Thank you,

Quicken Jared 

Sherlock

Jan Ingle said:

Those two items are already checked.

If you haven't already, I suggest you rebuild the Memorized Payee ListI: press Ctrl + Shift and select Tools > Memorized Payee List

Before making any significant changes to the Quicken file, always save a backup: press Ctrl + B

Jan Ingle

Neither of the boxes are/were checked in Tools > Memorized Payee List: Never Auto-categorize or Lock checked off.

I decided to try the suggestion to delete all items in my Memorized Payee List and rebuild it. After doing so, I created a test transaction and it seems to work now. However, I won't know for sure until tomorrow when I get some "real" downloaded transactions that need to be categorized. I'll update this post after I am able to test end to end.

Jan Ingle

I had one transaction to download from my credit card today. The payee was Turnstyle Consignment, which I had in my payee list to categorize to Clothing. Initially, the category did not populate. I noticed that the actual payee name was Turnstyle Consignment S Richfield MN. I edited the name of the payee in the Memorized Payee List to the longer name and it then worked. I don't remember it needing an exact match before, as long as the first few words of the payee matched. Is there a setting for this?

Also, I noticed that the payees in my register are all capitalized, since around June 9. Prior to that, they were not. I found the setting for capitalization in the data entry preferences. Could the capitalization have caused a mismatch or just a coincidence?

Quicken Jared

Jan Ingle said:

I had one transaction to download from my credit card today. The payee was Turnstyle Consignment, which I had in my payee list to categorize to Clothing. Initially, the category did not populate. I noticed that the actual payee name was Turnstyle Consignment S Richfield MN. I edited the name of the payee in the Memorized Payee List to the longer name and it then worked. I don't remember it needing an exact match before, as long as the first few words of the payee matched. Is there a setting for this?

Also, I noticed that the payees in my register are all capitalized, since around June 9. Prior to that, they were not. I found the setting for capitalization in the data entry preferences. Could the capitalization have caused a mismatch or just a coincidence?

Hello @Jan Ingle,  

I am sorry to hear that the source of the problem remains somewhat unclear, although I am happy that this most recent transaction seems to have populated the associated register columns as expected, and that some progress seems to have been achieved.

Regarding the exact naming of each transaction, and the capitalization of the first letter in the register: these items should not impact the populating of the Payee column. I recommend watching to see if this behavior continues, and testing this in the test file that was created earlier to determine whether or not the register seems to respond to small differences like the capitalization of each letter, or whether or not the payee names must match exactly. 

I hope this is helpful, and feel free to reach out again anytime with additional questions or concerns. 

Thank you,

Quicken Jared 

Jan Ingle

Actually, the capitalization is on every letter of the payee name in the register, not just the first letter. This started around June 9th. See attached. I will keep monitoring things.

Sherlock

Jan Ingle said:

I had one transaction to download from my credit card today. The payee was Turnstyle Consignment, which I had in my payee list to categorize to Clothing. Initially, the category did not populate. I noticed that the actual payee name was Turnstyle Consignment S Richfield MN. I edited the name of the payee in the Memorized Payee List to the longer name and it then worked. I don't remember it needing an exact match before, as long as the first few words of the payee matched. Is there a setting for this?

Also, I noticed that the payees in my register are all capitalized, since around June 9. Prior to that, they were not. I found the setting for capitalization in the data entry preferences. Could the capitalization have caused a mismatch or just a coincidence?

I suspect you have disable the renaming rules used to map the imported transactions to the memorized payees.  If you haven't already, I suggest you check the Use my existing renaming rules preference:  select Edit > Preferences...



 If you haven't already, you may want to review: https://help.quicken.com/display/WIN/About+the+way+Quicken+suggests+categories+and+payees

Jan Ingle

Thanks. I have never used renaming rules but I may try a few to see if it helps. The fact that the memorized payee list was working fine and now it's not, leads me to believe something else changed.

Jan Ingle

Things are still not working. The renaming rules that I created did not work. And yes I do have renaming rules checked. The downloaded transactions are still not recognizing the memorized payees. I'll let things ride for awhile and see what happens.

UKR

Jan Ingle said:

Actually, the capitalization is on every letter of the payee name in the register, not just the first letter. This started around June 9th. See attached. I will keep monitoring things.

Please add the columns Downloaded Payee and Downloaded Memo to your account register. You want to see what the bank downloads to you. (If the register is set to 1-line-per-transaction mode, change it to 2-lines per transaction: Press CTRL-2 to do so.)

And here comes my question: What does the bank download? All Caps?

Jan Ingle

I added those columns that you suggested, and the fields are blank. No entries. I also changed to 2 lines per transaction and I don't see anything unusual.
The bank downloads in all CAPS started on June 5. Prior to that, it was upper and lower case.

UKR

If the transactions were downloaded using One Step Update, these Downloaded xxx fields should contain data.

How do you download transactions? Using One Step Update? Or do you log on to the bank's website and download a Quicken-compatible QFX data file and import same into your registers?

Jan Ingle

I use One Step Update. Every day.

UKR

If you haven't done so already, I'd say it's time to call Quicken Support on the phone and request help.  Let them do a screen share session with you to review the situation on your computer, to determine the nature of the problem and to figure out how to fix it. They need to review a download log file to see what's really being downloaded.

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Jan Ingle

I misspoke earlier. When I added the additional columns that you suggested in my transaction register, I didn't notice where the new columns had inserted themselves and I misread them. There ARE values in the downloaded payee column. They match the value in the payee column for the most part. I don't have any values in the downloaded memo column.

UKR

Jan Ingle said:

I misspoke earlier. When I added the additional columns that you suggested in my transaction register, I didn't notice where the new columns had inserted themselves and I misread them. There ARE values in the downloaded payee column. They match the value in the payee column for the most part. I don't have any values in the downloaded memo column.

OK, no problem.
So that means, your bank is already downloading payee names in all caps.
Please contact your bank and see if they can fix that.
Until they do, I can think of no workaround other than trying a whole bunch of Renaming Rules:
Rename the downloaded payee to "Home Depot" if payee contains "home depot"  <-- upper/lower case shouldn't matter here

Jan Ingle

Ok thank you for your help and efforts.

UKR

You're welcome. Please let us know if the Renaming Rules help get a handle on the situation.

Jan Ingle

I found the solution to my original problem, which was the memorized payees were not populating into the category field. The check box was somehow unchecked for automatically categorize transactions on download. See attached image. After I rechecked this box, the problem was resolved. I can only guess the check box was unchecked during a system update that occurred around the 5th-9th of June.

Enabling renaming rules didn't have any affect on the original problem. Thanks.

Quicken Jared

Jan Ingle said:

I found the solution to my original problem, which was the memorized payees were not populating into the category field. The check box was somehow unchecked for automatically categorize transactions on download. See attached image. After I rechecked this box, the problem was resolved. I can only guess the check box was unchecked during a system update that occurred around the 5th-9th of June.

Enabling renaming rules didn't have any affect on the original problem. Thanks.

@Jan Ingle,  

Thank you for checking back in with us to let us know more about how things turned out, and for telling us about how you were able to resolve the original issue. Also, thank you to @Sherlock and @UKR for all of your helpful advice in this Discussion. 

Feel free to reach out anytime with additional questions or concerns.

Best wishes,

Quicken Jared