Citi Visa payee field

RSeal

My payees from my Citi Visa appear with what seems like a truncated second field. Here's some examples:

COSTCO WHSE#1491 VERONA
WDW DISNEY RES 4078285
BESTBUYCOM806697680552 888BEST

Clearly the latter two are the beginning of phone numbers.

I was told this was Citi doing this, but I find it hard to believe everyone just tolerates that.

Is there something I can do?

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @RSeal, 

Thank you for contacting the Quicken Community, though I do apologize that you are experiencing this issue. 

First, I suggest creating a test file and adding the Citi Bank account(s) to see if it produces the same issue with the payees. It is recommended to save a backup before proceeding with troubleshooting steps in the event that you would like to return to your original starting position. Below are instructions on how to create a test file:

1. Choose File menu > New Quicken File.

1. Select New Quicken File.

1. Click OK.
2. In the File name field, enter the name of the new file, then click Save. Use a name like "Test File" to tell it apart from your main file. 

Don't use any of these characters: * ? < > | " : \ / (asterisk, question mark, left and right-angle bracket, pipe, straight quotation marks, colon, BACKSLASH, FORWARD SLASH). Also, don't add the .qdf extension; Quicken does that for you.

1. Sign in with your Quicken ID. If you are prompted to create a Quicken ID but already have one, click Sign In under the Create Account prompt. 

1. Select to not use Mobile.
2. Click Add Account to start adding accounts to the new file.

After adding accounts, see if you are experiencing the same problems in this test file. 

Please let me know how this goes, I look forward to hearing your response. 

RSeal

I tried adding it in a new file, and everything looked good in the new file! How do I fix it? :)

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @RSeal, 

Thank you for attempting the test file. 

Next, I suggest you try to deactivate all accounts for this financial institution, then force Quicken to "discover" all available accounts and see if this will help resolve it. Please, follow the instructions below in order to do so. It is recommended to save a backup (just in case).

1. Open the Account List in Quicken (Tools > Account List OR Ctrl + A)
2. If present, select the Show Hidden Accounts checkbox at the bottom of the Account List
3. Edit each account with this financial institution to Deactivate (or Remove From One Step Update) on the Online Services tab
4. Click on the General tab and remove any info displayed in the Financial Institution, and Account/Routing Number fields. Note: The account must be deactivated first before these fields can be edited.
5. When finished, close the Account List
6. Close, then re-open Quicken
7. Navigate to Tools > Add Account 
8. Walkthrough this process as if you were going to add a new account, providing the login credentials and answering any security questions/processes presented until you reach the screen where Quicken displays the Accounts Discovered at the financial institution
9. Very carefully LINK each of the found accounts to the appropriate account you already have set up in Quicken.

Once that is done, see if the issue still continues to persist.

Please let me know how this goes!

RSeal

I've done that - I'll check tomorrow when some new transactions post.

If it does work, is there a way to update existing transactions, even if only for a period of time, to show the correct data in fields?

UKR

RSeal said:

I've done that - I'll check tomorrow when some new transactions post.

If it does work, is there a way to update existing transactions, even if only for a period of time, to show the correct data in fields?

To update update existing transactions' Payee Names use the Edit Menu / Find/Replace function, e.g.,

Find all Payee Name contains COSTCO WHSE, from the results select the ones you wish to change, Replace all selected Payee Names with "Costco Warehouse".

As always, before beginning a task which makes updates to several transactions, be sure to have or create a backup of your data file. Should something go wrong, you can restore your data file to undo the error.

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @RSeal, 

Thanks for the response. 

You can select multiple of these transactions that need to be changed to the same payee by holding CTRL and clicking on each transaction that you want to modify. After they have been selected, release the CTRL button and right-click on the selected transactions then choose Edit transactions. The Find and Replace window will open and on the bottom you can select which field you want to replace and fill out the name that you want them to be replaced with, then click Done. See the screenshot below for an example. 

  

I hope this helps!

RSeal

I should have been clearer - updating existing transactions, even en masse, is straightforward. I'd like to have them re-downloaded/updated from the bank.

Quicken Anja

Hello @RSeal,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and telling us about your issue, though I apologize for any trouble experienced.

RSeal said:

I'd like to have them re-downloaded/updated from the bank.

Unfortunately, once transactions have been downloaded, they cannot be re-downloaded even if you were to delete them first. The only way you would be able to do this is to restore a backup that was saved prior to when they were originally downloaded. Keep in mind that doing so will also revert the entire file back to the state it was in the day the backup was saved.

If needed, please, review this support article regarding backups. Scroll down and open the blue dropdown section(s) titled Restore Quicken data and/or Restore an automatic backup for instructions on how to restore a backup.

I hope this helps!

RSeal

Downloaded new transactions today, after following the steps above to deactivate and re-link the account, and the fields are still showing extraneous info. :(

UKR

You probably will need to set up a few Renaming Rules to, e.g., fix up "COSTCO WHSE#1491 VERONA" and get "Costco Warehouse" instead.

The rule for a Payee named "Costco Warehouse" will be "if payee contains costco whse" (uppercase/lowercase not important.
When done, you can also add an entry "Costco Warehouse" to the Memorized Payee List with the default category or Split category list.

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.  (This also includes Cash Withdrawals if you record them as transfers from Checking to a Cash account register)
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.

RSeal

I appreciate your suggestion, but it's every single transaction. I'm not looking to clean up to simpler names - just to remove the extra characters from an additional field that appears in the payee field.

Looking more specifically at what it's doing, it's taking up to 25 characters of the actual payee given, truncating it there, and then mashing whatever the next field is at position 26. It's clearer when you look at it in Excel in a fixed-width font.

WDW POPCORN CARTS LAKE BU
WDW BELLE VUE LOUNG LAKE BU
WDW WORLD OF DISNEY 407-828
TST* JALEO BY JOSE ANDRESLAKE BU
WDW CREATURECOMFORT LAKE BU
WDW GEYSER POINT LAKE BU
WDW UK BEER CART LAKE BU
WDW NOMAD LOUNGE LAKE BU
FLAME TREE BBQ 407-828

RSeal

Update: I tried the whole process again and noticed Citi lists Citibank and Citi Cards as options. I tried Citibank this time, and the transactions seem to be cleaner...odd both work?