What changed recently (late 2022, early 23). How can I stop auto-renaming downloaded payees? (Q Mac)

tlauducc

I'm seeing the same as https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7926268/mysterious-application-of-categories-and-payee-names-to-dowloaded-cc-transactions

I think it’s a recent bug (late 2022 or early 2023?). Downloaded transactions are automatically getting renamed, e.g. from “WENDY’S XXX XXXX001LEWIS CENTER” to “Wendy’s.” The additional info is useful during review, and the all caps make unreviewed transactions easier to find visually. It used to work this way but recently (past few months?) started renaming without me changing any settings. How do I get it working properly again?

I confirmed I have UNCHECKED the box for “Automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names.” I do not have any renaming rules. I reported a problem using the Quicken Mac Help menu, but they say they won't respond. None of the suggested troubleshooting on the other posts about this issue have solved the problem. Right now I have to right-click every downloaded transaction and choose "Revert to Downloaded Payee Name" to get it to show up the way it used to by default.

Could this be related to migrating from Direct Connect to Quicken Connect? Am I missing another preference or setting? It's critically important to me that ALL of my transactions download unmodified, because Quicken's attempts at helpful auto-renaming and auto-matching have been wrong several times. It erodes my trust in the application when it introduces errors like this.

How do we get attention and effort put into a fix? All the prior posts going back several months have been closed without any effective assistance or resolution.

jacobs

Have you documented this (with screenshots) using Help > Report a Problem? That's how you get attention to the issue.

Unfortunately, you don't get any reply from Report a Problem submissions, so there's no way to know if they have been able to affirm the problem you're reporting and put it in their queue of bugs for fixing.

tlauducc

Thanks for the response. I was hoping you would pick this up, @jacobs, since you're so helpful in here.

Yes, per my original post, "I reported a problem using the Quicken Mac Help menu," and yes, I included a screenshot. I guess I'll try reporting it every time I download transactions to see if peppering them with bug reports has any effect.

lhossus

What I personally would do next if I had this problem:

1. Create a Test Quicken data file, connect one or more of the troublesome accounts and download transactions daily for several days.
2. If the same problem occurs in the test file, then I would contact official Quicken Support (not one of those 3rd party overpriced rip offs that take your money and run).
3. If the problem does not occur, then I would try to figure out what is different, or perhaps disconnect the account(s) for downloading and create entirely new account(s), watch downloading for several days, and if the problem has gone away then merging old transactions into the new account(s).

If you try this, we would be interested in what you find.

And yes, it does seem like the above has been tried before, but I never want to trust that my problem is exactly the same as anyone elses. I “trust but verify” before making a diagnosis. I might even see something others have missed.

Always, make a backup before trying unfamiliar or complex procedures on your Quicken file. Just in case.

jacobs

New thought: do you use Quicken Mobile or Web. Or more specifically, do you have Sync turned ON in Preferences > Mobile, Web & Alerts? I'm wondering ithe Quicken Cloud is downloading the transactions and renaming them before you see them. If you dopn't use the mobile app or web interface but Sync is On, I would turn it Off, then go to Preferences > Connected Services and click the Reset button for Quicken Cloud to see if this changes things over your next few downloads.

Another thing you could try, not as a solution, but a way to work around it, is to create some manual renaming rules to tell Quicken not to rename selected Payees. A rule to do that for your Wendy's transactions would look like this:

Try this for a few Payees and see if it works; if it does, you can create renaming rules for additional Payees to solve sthis for many/most of your recurring Payees. No, you should not need to do this. Yes, it is a pain, if you have a lot of Payees doing this. But it might make life better if it fixes the issue! ;)

Christian Bailey

I have the same issue.

About two software updates ago Quicken for Mac started renaming payee names on download, disregarding "Automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names and categories" being unchecked. I have to revert them all manually by right-clicking and selecting "Revert to Downloaded Payee Name".

jacobs

Everyone reporting this issue with Quicken Mac disregarding the setting to not automatically improve downloaded payee names should file a Help > Report a Problem report. Ideally, do this immediately after you download transactions which contain a renamed Payee, and then be specific in your report about which Payee was renamed so they can find it in the log file. More detailed reports will hopefully get this on the radar (if it isn't already) to be fixed.

Mark_Orlando

For a very long time my payees get changed to something completely wrong. The feature should really be called, "Automatically change a downloaded payee name to something that makes no sense at all". I have never, ever seen it change to something actually better. It has been unselected forever. Still for years it continues. "REXEL 1104 1104 ORLANDO FL"(an electric supply company) got changed to just "ORLANDO". "CENTURY STORAGE-RID 863-420-1811 FL" got changed to "Century Theaters" just to show two examples. Some people I think just noticed this. This has been happening for a very, very long time, at least 5 years. However, one can select an entire account's transactions and have all transactions revert to download payee name.

Mark_Orlando

Why doesn't Quicken look at this "community" to realize the things they need to work on? Answer: "Developers like developing software in a vacuum knowing nothing of how people use their software." Always adding new features before fixing stuff that doesn't work or never worked.

tlauducc

> @jacobs said:
> New thought: do you use Quicken Mobile or Web. Or more specifically, do you have Sync turned ON in Preferences > Mobile, Web & Alerts? I'm wondering ithe Quicken Cloud is downloading the transactions and renaming them before you see them. If you dopn't use the mobile app or web interface but Sync is On, I would turn it Off, then go to Preferences > Connected Services and click the Reset button for Quicken Cloud to see if this changes things over your next few downloads.
>

Nope, I do not use Quicken Mobile or Web. Mobile/Web sync is OFF. There is only one place my Quicken file is read/written from, and that's my computer. It's backed up to a Time Machine USB drive and an online backup storage provider, but never opened or copied back from those locations. I did notice that the Connected Services tab had a cloud, which I assume I had to setup for transaction downloads because that's the only online service I use. I clicked [Reset] on my cloud account and will monitor whether it changes any behavior.

> @jacobs said:
> Another thing you could try, not as a solution, but a way to work around it, is to create some manual renaming rules to tell Quicken not to rename selected Payees. A rule to do that for your Wendy's transactions would look like this:
> Try this for a few Payees and see if it works; if it does, you can create renaming rules for additional Payees to solve sthis for many/most of your recurring Payees. No, you should not need to do this. Yes, it is a pain, if you have a lot of Payees doing this. But it might make life better if it fixes the issue!

I absolutely appreciate the effort and creative thinking. I'm not yet at the point where I want to put that effort into playing whack-a-mole, but I'll keep it in mind if I get too frustrated reverting transactions to their downloaded name over and over.

What I AM doing is saving a text description for reporting this error with placeholders for the problematic transactions. Copy/paste the saved text > insert this round's improperly downloaded transactions > submit the bug report. Hopefully if enough others who see this ticket submit problems we'll get visibility and a fxi!

Christian Bailey

> @jacobs said:
> Everyone reporting this issue with Quicken Mac disregarding the setting to not automatically improve downloaded payee names should file a Help > Report a Problem report. Ideally, do this immediately after you download transactions which contain a renamed Payee, and then be specific in your report about which Payee was renamed so they can find it in the log file. More detailed reports will hopefully get this on the radar (if it isn't already) to be fixed.

I just reported it and even took a video screen recording demonstrating it. Shared a link to that in the problem report.