Quicken has reversed normal auto categorizing of transfers, Why? It seems senseless.

Lee E. Foster

Here is how it previously worked! But NOW the reverse is true. Likely broken in favor
of pleasing MAC ?

About transfers
When you transfer money between accounts, one account balance increases and the other account balance decreases—but your net worth remains the same. Quicken records a transfer in your "transfer from" account register and creates a parallel transaction in the "transfer to" account.

The category field in a transfer transaction shows the other account involved (for example, if the current account is the transfer to account, the category field displays the transfer from account).

Rocket J Squirrel

Lee E. Foster said:

Also, "Automatically create transfers when detected" -- is selected.

Turn this off and confirm possible transfers before entering in register.

volvogirl

Do you have a question?  Is it not working as before?  Nothing has changed about Transfers.

Lee E. Foster

YES... It is Broken. They are Reversed. The problem may be unique to accounts within the same FI.

Chris_QPW

What do you mean by reversed?
And what are you talking about for auto categorization?

Quicken fills in the category in one of three ways.
Match to a manual/reminder transaction that is already in the register.

Match a memorized payee that has a category that is a transfer.  Note that memorized payee matching is global so if I have a memorized payee of Transfer and I have memorized the transfer account to be Savings, then it won't matter what account downloads the payee as Transfer, filled in transfer account will always be Savings.

Transfer detection.  This is just a guess base on the amount and the approximate date.  If Quicken sees a deposit for a certain amount downloaded in one account, and the same amount (but with a reversed sign) around the same date it will assume this is a transfer and link the two together.  Given this is a guess you should always have the "confirm" for transfer detection on if you are using it.

Lee E. Foster

The debit & credit are not reversed, but the automatic categories are assigned improperly.

Being reversed, the assigned categories point to themselves and not to the matching account.

We have 9 FI's, several of them are involved. Therefore, it is unlikely the problem lies with the FI's data.

As far as has been determined, this has been happening for weeks and may only involve transfers to accounts within the same FI.
The result is that it is not possible to switch between the 2 accounts, BECAUSE --> Each Points to itself.

Chris_QPW

Transfer matching is done in one of two ways, with payee to category, or "transfer detection".
And neither of these are "perfect", and that is the reason a lot of SuperUsers advise people to pre-enter transfers (manually or with a reminder) and then have them match to downloaded transactions.

The downloaded transactions have no information about the "other account" only about the account that the download is for.  In fact, most downloaded transfers aren't even coded as transfers.  They are coded as either a deposit or a withdraw depending on what side/account that is being downloaded.

For the payee to category matching, you start with the payee for the transfer in the first account and depending on the timing this may be a deposit or a withdraw.  The first thing that might happen is that a payee renaming rule might match and change the payee's name.  Say, from "Transfer Xxcdfd" to "Transfer".

Next, if there is a matching memorized payee for "Transfer" it will then use the "category" in it for that transaction.  Given that the "category" is like [Other Account] that is what is going to be applied.  Now it gets complicated.  First, entering any transaction with the [Account] syntax creates a linked transaction in the other account.  So, even before the other transaction is downloaded in the other account, we have a duplicate transaction that has to be matched otherwise you will have a duplicate transaction.  Next if the payee "Transfer" in both the deposit and withdraw accounts, the fact that Quicken only has global memorized payees then both the download in the deposit account and the withdraw in the other account will both match "Transfer" and get [Other Account] as the "category" even if you are in the "Other Account".

As you can see this is very complicated and prone to being wrong.

The "transfer detection" is turned on with this option:
Edit -> Preferences -> Transfer Detection -> Scan downloaded transactions for possible transfers

If you have this on, you REALLY want to also have the confirm preference on too.

What this does is scan the downloaded transactions for a deposit in one account and a withdraw in another for the same amount around the same date, and then combine them into a linked transfer.
This is only "guessing".  If you happen to have a few transactions with the same amounts around the same time it can connect the wrong two downloaded transactions.

It should also be noted of when this kicks in.

If you have automatic transaction entry mode on where the transactions go directly into the register, this transfer detection will happen at the end of the downloading process for the second side of the transfer.

If you have automatic transaction mode off your downloaded transactions go into the Downloaded Transactions tab and you are supposed to accept each of them individually into the register.  If done properly when you get to the one that is a transfer, you will have either matched it to the one manually entered into the register (if following the SuperUser's advice) or you will fix the "category" to be the proper account with entering [Other Account] (which will create a transfer transaction in the other account that can be matched when you are accepting transactions into that register).

In the case of using the Downloaded Transactions tab the automatically transfer detection wouldn't kick in until after accepting all of the transaction in the second account.  And so, it would only apply if someone didn't properly change the "categories"/match like they should have, maybe say selecting Accept All, which really should never be done.

Lee E. Foster

Your explanation of how it is intended to work appears flawless to me. Cheers!

I checked to make sure, and there has been no changed in the settings for "Transfer Detection".
i.e. --Scan downloaded transfers for detection--, Remains ON.

Also, "Automatically create transfers when detected" -- is selected.

Your caution regarding the CONFIRM option is understood. It is sometimes used, but typically is not, and is not ON at this time.

Chris, what we have experienced for YEARS is: Transfers are created... They continue to exist properly... But, Account "A" NOW indicates that the transfer's opposite side resides within... not in "B"!

The category Points to itself "A" instead of Account "B" where the transfer really should exist, AND in fact is there!

That is different than what we have been accustomed to.

re: YEARS... (Above)
We started with Quicken DOS in 84 or 85. In 2005, we paralleled DOS with Graphical. Switched to Windows in 2008. At that time (2008) we were VERY disappointed with sluggishness compared to DOS.

Chris_QPW

Are you using automatic transaction entry mode or going through the Downloaded Transactions tab?

Lee E. Foster

Thanks Cris, for the prompt reply-- eating supper myself.

Both your queries have been viewed. I am not perceiving anything askew.
I do hope that a setting has been mistakenly changed though.

Passing the settings of the areas mentioned by you:

From prior post, the settings for "Transfer Detection".
i.e. --Scan downloaded transfers for detection--, Remains ON.

Also, "Automatically create transfers when detected" -- is selected.
****************************
FOR "Downloaded Transactions"
"Automatically add to Banking Registers" is checked
"Automatically Categorize Transactions" is checked
"Automatically apply Quickens Suggested name to payee" is checked.
"Capitalize first letter only ...." is checked.
"Use my Existing renaming rules" is checked.
"Automatically Create rules when...."
"Let me review/confirm the auto..."

Your thoughts? suggestions!

lef

Lee E. Foster

I will mention again that it appears to only effect transfers within the SAME FI. Transfers from any bank to a different bank seem to still be intact.

Lee E. Foster

Chris, i suspect It is likely payee related. ?

lef

Rocket J Squirrel

Lee E. Foster said:

Also, "Automatically create transfers when detected" -- is selected.

Turn this off and confirm possible transfers before entering in register.

Lee E. Foster

Thanks everyone... Volvogirl, Cris, & Rocket for the help.
Everyone had good knowledge and gave sound advise.

Whatever the reason, the problem would not have occurred if confirmation had been required.

Just need to get busy and cleanup the mess. Fortunately, it only involves "same bank"- "same day" transfers so will be easer to chase down than if it included all transfers.

TNX!
lef

Chris_QPW

OK.  You have automatic transaction entry mode on.  That means that automatic transfer can certainly be kicking in.  And as mentioned before it is just a "guess", and certainly having "confirm" on would be a very good idea.  But I suspect it isn't the problem.  And the reason is it would "reverse" the transfer.

Like I said before the automatic transfer detection looks for a downloaded deposit in one account and a downloaded withdraw in another account for the same amount around the same date and links them.  It isn't going to take a downloaded transaction and change the "category" to [Account] where you are in that account.

And the fact that it only happens in the same financial institution is a hint.  As in, a given financial institution would use the same payee for a transfer no matter what account you are in.

If two accounts both have "Transfer" for the payee, then it is impossible to memorize a payee that is going to be correct.

If you have a transfer from A to B, being entered into account A, then the "category" would be [B].  But if you have a transfer from B to A, being entered in account B, then the "category would be [A].

It is impossible to have one payee mapped to transfers in two different accounts and always be correct.

If you memorize payee "Transfer" to be [B] then it will work fine when the transaction is put in account A, but the same memorized pay entered into account B will set the category again to [B], which is wrong for that account.

That is why I purposely add a memorized payee that will not categorize the transfer, like this:


The first checkbox is "Never Auto-categorize", the second is "Lock".  And note that the category is blank.

You should do this for whatever payee is being used for your transfer.

This does assume that there isn't any difference between the payees used in the A and B accounts.

Chris_QPW

A bit more information.  If I purposely turn off automatic categorization for transfers, one might ask how they get properly linked.  There is two possible ways.

1. Pre-enter it correctly manually or with a reminder.  And the download transactions would get matched to these pre-entered transactions.
2. Rely on automatic transfer's guess to connect the two downloaded transactions.

Chris_QPW

And also, people might want to vote this idea up:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7854603/memorized-transactions-or-renaming-rules-by-account-2-merged-votes

Because if Quicken allowed one to create memorized payees (or renaming rules that allow changing the payee name) by account then you could have one "Transfer" payee for account A memorized with category [B] and another memorized for account B that would have the category [A].