Another Quicken nightmare

mhead110

3.6.23

In the process of working on the taxes, in the process of looking at quicken reports on expenses associated with the apartments, I see that I only have ten gas bills listed. So I go through Quicken, and I search on gas and the gas company, etc. etc. can't figure it out. I see that the gas bills are paid out of a particular account, (schwab checking) so I search on that account (in Quicken) during the missing months, and there's nothing.

Then I open up Schwab in a different computer, and I find eventually that the missing gas payments are there, as well as other payments around the same time. Apparently, somewhere between three and six days worth of transactions in the Schwab account, did not get downloaded for those months (May and August). I called Schwab and there is no way to download from Schwab – that is, to push from Schwab — for a limited period, everything has to be hand entered. So I enter the transactions.

Then I look at the water and sewer bills— there should be 4— there are only 3. september is missing. Same drill, several days of transactions are missing.

So. What else is missing? what else didn’t get downloaded? there’s no way to know, without printing out every transaction, for every account, and comparing them to the quicken accounts.

AFTER I get done with taxes (which I may well need to re-file / file an amendment for later,.............

RickO

I'm going to start by asking: Quicken WIndows or Mac? And what does “3.6.23” at the beginning of your post mean?

Greg_the_Geek

Are you moving your Quicken data file back and forth between the 2 computers?

Jim_Harman

Are you reconciling your account regularly? That should immediately catch any missing transactions.

If you want, you can set it to automatically reconcile to the online balance every time you download.

mhead110

3.6.23 is the date I wrote the comment. Using Quicken Windows +20 yrs. I use the Mac for everything but quicken & Turbotax, I'm not moving quicken info back and forth. I download 15+ different account transactions into quicken every week or 2... I just look at each item to see if it makes sense, and categorize each as I go. I DON'T look to see what SHOULD be there, I don't assume that Quicken will randomly NOT download parts of some month's transactions. I find this very freaky because -- it's no good, if it's not all good. I have no idea whether everything is there, short of comparing every financial institution's web page with the associated Quicken account-- NOT a timesaver.

mhead110

Yes, I reconcile accounts regularly... BUT that doesn't help if there are things Quicken hasn't downloaded, it's all internal to quicken. FWIW, Quicken did a REALLY goofy thing several months ago: it downloaded charges from a credit card into a rarely-used credit union checking account. Neither of these were new accounts. The only reason I realized it was goofy was that I know I hardly ever use the C.U. acct. -- and I was able to figure out which credit card account they should have gone into. But again, if it's not all good, it's BAD. Because how do I know that other things haven't gone to the wrong accounts? If there were anything other than Quicken that does what it does, I'd be out in a hot minute. They have "first mover" advantage, and all the institutions have bought into them... but there is so much lame stuff. I suppose it's because they keep building on to an antiquated architecture. And of course there's the insanity with Schwab-- not this recent insanity, but what's been going on for months, since Schwab decided to reframe the way they consider money market funds, (as cash) and Quicken can't deal with it. they point fingers at each other and the only way I could fix hundreds of thousands of wrong numbers was to put in dummy transactions. heaven help me if I get audited. Many many hours with tech support were not successful, hence the dummies.

mhead110

clarification: I have 15 + institutions/accounts; hundreds of thousands of dollars off because of MMF issues

Greg_the_Geek

I'm still confused. Are you using 2 seperate Quicken data files on 2 different computers? If so, was one file a copy of the other? Are you syncing accounts to the Quicken cloud?

Jim_Harman

Let's work on one problem at a time.

When you reconcile after downlaoding transactions in a banking or credit card account, do you reconcile to the online balance? That is not 'all internal to Quicken" and should certainly catch any transactions that were not downloaded.

Handling of cash in investing accounts is a different matter.

mhead110

Hi, sorry if I wasn't clear. I only use ONE computer for Quicken, a PC. I do not move things unless I get a new computer. I do use a Mac for everything else in my life, (besides quicken and turbotax)-- I tried the mac Quicken some years back, and did not find it adequate. I mentioned looking something up on the Mac... BECAUSE I don't use the PC for anything but these financial programs-- but that's not really relevant to any Quicken question. Quicken, ONLY PC.

Jim, you are correct, when I reconcile to my banks / credit union / brokerage accounts, there is a "cash" balance. For the last several months, I have been unable to reconcile those accounts-- the cash portion-- at Schwab, where I have multiple accounts. (Except, weirdly, one of the accounts, which showed the correct cash balance.) the other schwab accts were grossly off. Schwab says it's because Quicken changed its secure download procedure, Quicken says it's because Schwab stopped considering MM funds as investments and called them cash. I also used more than one MM fund in some accounts. But none of this was a problem until 4-6 months ago. I have been on tech support with quicken for many hours over many days, gone through many different procedures. The only way I figured out how to deal with that problem was to create a dummy transaction to get the money fund to the correct amount (Quicken showed NO funds in the MMF) and another dummy transaction to get the cash to the correct amount. For each f***ed up account. Since I did that, the accounts seem to be maintaining accurate balances-- at least they agree with schwab.

It was much more alarming when Quicken randomly downloaded transactions from a credit card into the rarely used credit union checking account. As I tried to explain, It has been my habit for many years that every few weeks, I download all transactions, from all accounts at all institutions, into quicken. I examine each transaction as it comes in, to make sure that it "makes sense" to me-- either I remember the specific transaction, or it's a repeating transaction that I recognize. If I don't recognize it, I look it up, at either the institution or the vendor, or both, and figure it out. BUT as a rule, I do NOT compare every credit card statement with Quicken's downloads. Do you? Maybe your life is simpler than mine. I'm a frequent mile fanatic, and often run 10+ credit cards at a time. All I care about is that I'm not getting charged for something that I didn't buy. The only reason I happened to notice the weird payments out of the credit union was that I know I use that account only rarely. One of the charges was a repeater, so I was able to figure out which credit card it should have gone to. But, HAD the charge gone to a different credit card, I think it would have been more difficult to find.

I think it's like-- a few years back I mapped the circuits on my old house. Everything has to be right, or it's useless. "Part" of a circuit map tells you nothing, and is dangerous.

Now, the most recent problem, where more than one account seems to be randomly NOT downloading all transactions, is really a drag. In the example I gave: I pay the gas bill for the whole house, 3 apartments, so that 2/3 of that bill goes into schedule E rental expenses... I don't check every month to see if it gets paid. I KNOW it gets paid, I have it set up to automatically pay. But this year, preparing for taxes, looking at quicken reports, I found this issue, and I found it in multiple months, (randomly it seems ) and in multiple accounts. WTF?

(I do not trust quicken to transfer the info to Turbotax. Tried that once, didn't work. So I generate a report and use those numbers. And first I review any transactions I haven't categorized, etc. )

I don't know about you, but I have to make balance adjustments every once in a while. Sometimes I struggle to figure out exactly what the issue is, sometimes I just let it go and make a balance adjustment. Usually it's fairly small. Sometimes Quicken can't seem to figure out how to match an automatic credit card payment from a checking account (transfer)-- mostly it does great, but sometimes not. sometimes if I wait a month or two, it resolves itself. Sometimes not. Last year, I moved $60k from a Roth at one institution to another and that was a real kerfuffle.

Maybe this problem-- with random transactions not getting downloaded-- has been going on for a long time, and I didn;t realize it, and that's what the balance adjustments are. As far as I can see, the only way to figure this out would be to compare Quicken's transactions to every account at EVERY institution, Every month. And if I'm going to do that, why do I have Quicken?

Schwab tech support used to be MUCH better than Quicken at dealing with quicken problems, but they are no longer willing or able to do much.

It's too bad Quicken has so many issues. It's the only thing that allows me to manage multiple accounts at multiple institutions, but it does soo many weird things.

Gopal Madhavan

I have been using Quicken for many years. two days ago all my backups vanished( computer error- not Quicken) Was able to recover the backups but Quicken just does not open them and get an error that some files are missing. How does one get the recovered backup to install on Quicken?

Windows 11 Laptop and have a subscription

Gopal

Greg_the_Geek

https://www.quicken.com/support/how-do-i-download-quicken-quickencom-after-i-buy-it