Pending transactions hour glass at bottom of Quicken Window

raemo64

According to a Quicken page, there is an hour glass on the right bottom of the Quicken page that will turn on/off pending transactions. I can't find it. What do I do now, I want to download Pending Transactions instead of logging into my bank and copying and pasting it into Quicken. Thanks in Advance.

mrzookie

That functionality was turned on just after the 1st of the year, but was causing a lot of problems. As a result, it appears that they turned it off a couple of days ago.

UKR

If you rely on downloaded transactions to fill your account registers, I wouldn't bother with manually recording pending transactions into the registers. Wait a day or two and the real transactions will download and show up in your registers.

OTOH, I always record all my transactions based on credit card receipts and other statements. Downloaded transactions are only used to confirm that my handiwork is correct and/or that nothing unexpected has happened (like a fraudulent transaction).

mshiggins

@raemo64, pending transactions are not the same as scheduled payment instructions. If you are scheduling payments through your bank's website, those scheduled payments will not be downloaded to Quicken. Pending transaction are temporary transactions your credit card may use to check if funds are available or for a restaurant bill before the amount of the tip is known. 

raemo64

I check the bank and credit card bank for Pending Transactions every day to make sure there aren't any fraudulent activity, learned that the hard way. Plus I like to keep track of my balance that way so I know where I stand financially. When I saw there was a way to download Pending Transactions, I thought how nice it would be not to have to go through all of that logging into the two banks, and having to type in 2 way verification codes.

mshiggins

@raemo64, I have my bank and credit cards set so I get a text whenever there is a transaction. Then, if needed, I can login to the bank. 

raemo64

Thanks for the info, I used to do that, but it got to be too intrusive.

raemo64

I actually read the help button in Quicken and it said the pending transactions are having problems, and they're expecting a release 23 Feb 2023.

mrzookie

I sure hope not. The two times they implemented this functionality were both nightmares. Users have too many different ideas and expectations of what it will do and how it will do it. I have little faith that Quicken will get all the use cases designed, coded and implemented correctly in time for Feb re-release.

Chris_QPW

mrzookie said:

I sure hope not. The two times they implemented this functionality were both nightmares. Users have too many different ideas and expectations of what it will do and how it will do it. I have little faith that Quicken will get all the use cases designed, coded and implemented correctly in time for Feb re-release.

I agree, and what's more as I look at the problems that people have posted, it seems to me that the problems aren't just in what to implement (with as you said is a very gray area).  Different things seem to happen to different people.  Some of what might be explained by some using Sync to Mobile/Web, and some not.  One would think that the worst that could happen is that you see or don't see the pending transaction both in the register and in the balances.  But people also reported adding/removing and general changing of non-pending transactions.  Clearly whatever they are doing is disrupting more than "pending transactions" which is very dangerous.

mrzookie

I'm not even sure there's 100% agreement on what a "pending transaction" is. To me, its a temporary hold (credit card account) or an unprocessed transaction (checking or savings account). I've seen a few comments here referring to them as pending payments to be made in Bill Pay (or whatever its called these days). Some people want them, some don't. Some banks send them, some don't. Some include them in balances without sending them, some don't. Its a mess.

Chris_QPW

Well, frankly I fault Quicken Inc for most of this confusion between scheduled bill payments and pending transactions.

At the exact same time as the switch over on Chase started which removed the ability to download the scheduled bill payments, they also turned on the pending transactions feature.  They couldn't pick a worse time.  Having both problems show up at the exact same time means that the proper terms for each were very hard to communicate.

But in my opinion, there isn't any way these two features are the "gray area" of pending transactions.  They are completely different features.  The gray area comes in exactly how pending transactions are to be handled.  For instance, some are pre-authorized, and will go away and be replaced the real ones.  Some are "real" but not posted yet.  How are they going to properly handle the "removal" of the temporary ones?  What's more this time I got a chance to play with the feature more.  It allowed me to change the categories in the pending transactions, but when the real one came in, it reverted back to what my renaming/memorized payees had.  So, there is a feature that certainly doesn't work as expected.  And that is just with the pending transactions.  When you start to look at the balances it gets even crazier.  If I deposit a large check in my checking account Chase will instantly make some of that check available, but not all of it.  So, what it the right amount for the online balance?  Certainly, if I'm using the online balance for reconciling it should be that (including pending transactions), but if one is expecting any of the balances to tell them exactly how much they can spend, they are going to get burnt.  And BTW note that reconciling to the online balance with pending transactions, might later require them removing the "reconciled pending transaction".  Which is quite a statement in itself.  What the heck is a reconciled pending transaction?


And I might add that the turning back on of the pending transactions feature was done exactly at the same time they put out another release that had nothing to do with it again adding to the confusion of if the release had something to do with it or not.

mrzookie

Agree on all points.

One last thing to mention. Some people are saying they were receiving pending transactions and/or duplicate pending transactions when the functionality was turned on. I don't think I ever have. What I did receive, on multiple occasions, were duplicates of previously received and reconciled transactions. Sometimes multiple duplicates of the same transactions. That problem stopped as soon as they flipped the switch off. How that fits into this situation is beyond me.

As I said, I hope they don't flip it back on in Feb.

Chris_QPW

Yes, I saw the same thing with duplicate transactions, why that would happen is beyond me too, but only because I can't look at what convoluted code they are changing.