Spending Tab does not exclude transfers to pay the with credit cards - Calculating incorrectly

Karthic

Spending Tab does not exclude the transfers that are to pay the with credit cards thus calculating incorrectly. There is no way I see to customize it to remove the transfers. Is it a defect in the Quicken? Any help?

Sherlock

Transfers are not spending.  The spending occurred when you payed with the credit card.  Any interest or fees on the credit card payment transactions would be spending but the principal entry should be a transfer to the credit card register - not spending.

Chris_QPW

I think the question/answer are "backwards"  @Karthic is saying that the transfers are being included, when the shouldn't.  @Sherlock you are explaining why transfers shouldn't be included.

Personally, I'm not seeing any transfers on the Spending tab, which is exactly how it should work.

Sherlock

Chris_QPW said:

I think the question/answer are "backwards"  @Karthic is saying that the transfers are being included, when the shouldn't.  @Sherlock you are explaining why transfers shouldn't be included.

Personally, I'm not seeing any transfers on the Spending tab, which is exactly how it should work.

I attempted to explain why the payment transaction may appear on the Spending tab but that a transfer entry should not be included in the Total.  If an expense category is being used to implement the transfer, the expense category should be included in the Total.

Chris_QPW

Good point @Sherlock "real transfer" where the "category" is [Other Account Name] syntax, aren't included.  And "regular" category would be even if the user thinks it is a "payment/transfer".

Karthic

Just to clarify, I am talking about spending and the transfer from my checking account to pay the credit card spending.
Example, I pay
$500 on store 1,
$250 on store 2,
$150 on store 3, and
$100 on store 4
totaling $1,000.
I transfer $1000 from my checking account to pay the $1000 credit card payment.
I see the spending tab is counting as $2,000 in spending instead of $1,000.

There is no option I see to fix this issue. When I look at my year to date spending, it shocked me.

Chris_QPW

EDIT:  Oops I created the transfer as a payment from the credit card to the checking account, instead of the other way around.  I have corrected that in the screenshots below.

Are you entering the credit card purchases in a credit card account, and a transfer from the checking account to do the payment.  This should work.  As an example, looking at the transactions from the "All Transactions" register:


Looking at it from the Spending tab:


As you can see, there aren't any transfers in the spending tab (opening balances), just the spending.

If you are seeing transfers on the Spending tab please post a screenshot so we might be able to understand what is going on.


You can attach an image to a comment by dragging and dropping it on the comment box.

Karthic

Here is my screenshot. I masked some of the amounts while posting over the internet. You can see two items selected as "Citi Online". Those two are the payments made from my checking account that is messing up the spending calculations.

[Deleted User]

@karthic - unless you have masked categories, most of your transactions don't have a category.  Every transaction in Quicken should have a category (the exception is some investment transactions).  As both @sherlock and @chris_qpw mentioned, CC payments are usually a transfer from your checking account to your CC account.  Those Citibank credit card payments should have a transfer category from your checking account.  

Chris_QPW

Karthic said:

Here is my screenshot. I masked some of the amounts while posting over the internet. You can see two items selected as "Citi Online". Those two are the payments made from my checking account that is messing up the spending calculations.

None of these are transfers, or maybe better stated none of these are linked transfers in Quicken.
I'm sure they are transfers in the real world, but you have entered them in Quicken as if they are two separate transactions (not a linked transfer).

A linked transfer, which is what Quicken considers a transfer and will not include in the spending, is a transaction that is entered where it the "category" is in the form of [Creditcard Account].

When you enter a transaction in this way a duplicate transaction is created in the other account with an offsetting amount.

Example:
A payment transaction/transfer in my credit card account.

That same transaction in the checking account:


The recommended way to do this is to pre-enter the transfer transaction either manually or with a reminder and then when downloading it should match the downloaded transactions to the ones in the two registers.

Karthic

Thank you, Chris. I could fix the empty categories for this year, and it is better now. There are a few more things I had to investigate and hope it may give a real picture of my spending.

Here is my observation - When quicken downloads the data for the accounts online, it marks TXFR on so many external financial institutions that supports electronic funds transfer thus leaving the category empty if the transaction date and posting dates are different for the same transaction amount. Moreover, due to TXFR markings, category lookup/pulldown prefills only the accounts in my list for the transfer. I had to manually remove TXFR, keep it empty so that I can assign the right category.

It's a lot of manual work after downloading to get the right picture.

Once again, I appreciate your help. Thank you!

UKR

Transaction download problems with matching and adding new transactions correctly?

First please ensure that all optional settings in Quicken pertaining to recall, memorization, automatic categorization and renaming of payee names are enabled. You find those settings in Edit / Preferences / Data Entry & Quickfill and Downloaded Transactions. Additional settings for the detection and processing of transfer transactions can be found in Edit / Preferences / Transfer detection.

 

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.

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.

Chris_QPW

Karthic said:

Thank you, Chris. I could fix the empty categories for this year, and it is better now. There are a few more things I had to investigate and hope it may give a real picture of my spending.

Here is my observation - When quicken downloads the data for the accounts online, it marks TXFR on so many external financial institutions that supports electronic funds transfer thus leaving the category empty if the transaction date and posting dates are different for the same transaction amount. Moreover, due to TXFR markings, category lookup/pulldown prefills only the accounts in my list for the transfer. I had to manually remove TXFR, keep it empty so that I can assign the right category.

It's a lot of manual work after downloading to get the right picture.

Once again, I appreciate your help. Thank you!

By any chance is your financial institution USAA?

The reason I ask is that USAA has bug that they mark "non transfers" as transfers and this causes Quicken to put in TXFR which in turn restricts the "category" to only be other accounts/transfers, not normal categories.

This will of course mess up any normal categorization.

The only workarounds I know for this are:

1. Switch to another financial institution that doesn't do this (no other financial institution I know does this).
2. Put in reminders/manual entries for all your transactions and then match the downloaded transactions to them.  This will override the fact that USAA has marked them as transfers.
3. Manually delete the TXFR and then put in the correct category.

Note if this describes your situation, then what @UKR posted has no bearing on this problem.  It will happen no matter if you use automatic transaction entry mode or not.  The only difference will be fixing the problems (if you go with #3) in the register or if automatic transaction entry mode is off, as you select the transaction from the Downloaded Transaction tab.

Karthic

By any chance is your financial institution USAA? - Yes

I will go for the workaround 2 and 3 till USAA resolves their defect. I have been with USAA for a long time (since 2004) and have no thoughts or plans to change my Bank.

Thank you for the insights and I appreciate your help.

Chris_QPW

Sounds like a plan.  I would also certainly complain to USAA about the problem.  The more attention it gets the more likelihood it will be fixed.