How can I stop the downloaded payee name from automatically changing to something wrong? (Q Mac)

Mark_Orlando

How can I stop the downloaded payee name from automatically changing to something wrong?

NOTE: "Automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names and categories" is not checked off.

For instance "CENTURY STORAGE-RID 863-420-1811 FL" is automatically changed to "CENTURY THEATERS".

No renaming rules exist. The only transactions that I don't want changed to the downloaded name are when I write a check. Because "John Smith" should not be changed to the downloaded payee named: "Check 34534".

Mark_Orlando

Also, this function has never improved a name once, it only makes the Payee worse.

RickO

Are you manually entering the transaction and then matching to the downloaded transaction?

If not, then you are getting whatever the bank is sending. If you select the transaction and then menu View > Transaction Inspector, you can see under "Statement Payee" exactly what the bank is sending. Normally, banks don't send the name of a payee from a handwritten check (IOW, it does not appear on your statement) because they don't process checks that way.

If you are manually entering the payee first and you don't have a renaming rule, I really don't know why the payee would change when the transaction is matched.

Mark_Orlando

When I select revert to downloaded payee name it always works, I just don't want to do that. These are always transactions I I havent already entered, I avoid wasiting time by doing any double entry….

RickO

You said you don't have any renaming rules and you don't have the "improve the quality" option enabled, so I'm at a loss as to how the payee name gets changed to other than what shows as the Statement Payee.

That said, I use a different workflow where I enter almost all transactions ahead of the download. I don't find this to be extra work since most things prefill with only entering a couple characters and I almost need to enter something in the memo. When something downloads without matching, it immediately draws my attention to something wrong. All that is to say I don't have experience with relying on the downloaded payee names, so I'm afraid I'm not going to be of any more help. Sorry.

UKR

To avoid the Payee Name of a paper check you wrote from getting changed by downloaded data, please ensure that you manually record your check transaction to "John Smith" with the correct check number indicated BEFORE you download transactions from the bank containing the cashed check.

jacobs

For recurring transacitons where renaming is a problem, I suggest you create some Renaming Rules to insure you get the Payee names entered as you want them. For instance, for your "CENTURY STORAGE-RID 863-420-1811 FL", you could create a Renaming Rule to rename the Payee to "Century Storage"…

or you could create the Renaming Rule to not rename what the bank is sending:

In many cases, the first option is better, because with the latter, if there are variances in the characters sent by the financial institution, you'll end up with multiple similar Payees in Quicken unless you use a rule to make the Payees always use a common name.

Mark_Orlando

This is just one example. So for every single transaction before it even downloads for the first time, I've got to enter a naming rule for something that doesn't even exist yet. If I have to enter a naming rule before I do a download for a transaction that hasn't been downloaded yet isn't that a lot harder than just saying revert to download payee name? Why can't it just use the downloaded payee name by default?

Mark_Orlando

I would never enter a transaction before downloading; the idea is making less work for myself, not more. I don't double enter anything. I am actually switching banks to avoid double entry of online payments. I just wanted to download the payee information as is. I am forced to select "revert to downloaded payee name" for every transaction downloaded. Also, when looking at the payee name on the banks website, I want it to match my register. Changing "Chase payment." To just "payment" makes no sense. It never ever improves anything. It only makes it unidentifiable. I wonder what "Automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names and categories" actually does. Maybe when it's not checked off, it automatically makes things nonsensical. That is, do you have a choice? Quicken can change your downloaded payee to something nonsensical or something that makes sense, but leaving the downloaded payee as is, is not an option. This problem has been occurring for many years. I have been using Quicken since before Microsoft Windows even existed. I can't tell you when this issue started, probably sometime after the current Quicken for Mac was introduced. I switched to Quicken for Mac once "direct connect" became an option.

jacobs

The ideas here are to get you past a problem. That requires a little time upfront for ongoing time savings in the future. My guess is you have a dozen to two dozen frequently recurring payees, and creating Renaming rules for them would save you time/annoyance in the future. Of course, if you don't want to create any rules, this is optional. To me, spending 15 minutes upfront to avoid dealing with the transactions on an ongoing basis seems desirable, but you're free to disagree. 😀

Mark_Orlando

It is every transaction downloaded, also the downloaded payee names are constantly changing. Spending 5 hours entering every merchant I have ever been to around the world just doesn't seem to make sense, especially when the text for that Payee changes. I just noticed some that were blank and I had to open up the inspector and cut and paste the payee from there. That was strange. Anytime I buy anything from anywhere the problem is there. Every Credit card every checking account. The credit cards are easier to fix because I can just select the entire register and select "revert to Downloaded Payee name". I can't do that in a checking account, because it wipes out every check payee and replaces with "check 123456". Why can't they just make it provide accurate information? Instead of automatically changing a Payee Name to something that means nothing to anyone. My hope was that there was something I was doing wrong that I could change so it would just use the downloaded payee name. Quicken has mandated for some reason that downloaded payee names must be changed to something that means nothing. I don't understand the motivation for this...

Mark_Orlando

In addition, to test this behavior, I have created a new file. I actually did this twice. The first file I unchecked "Automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names and categories" the second file I checked "Automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names and categories". In both cases, when transactions were downloaded, it changed the Payee in the same way. I have the latest version of MacOS and Quicken for Mac, as of the date of this post. Not every transaction was unidentifiable, but every single one was changed in some way. This makes sure that every transaction will not match the statement or the transactions on the banks website. Granted these payee fields from the bank are cryptic, but stripping off things like the Location or the phone number of the merchant is counterproductive and this is the best case scenario. The worse case is when the Name of the Merchant is stripped off or changed in some way that makes it completely unidentifiable.

Version 7.0.0 (Build 700.48698.100)
macOS 13.3

jacobs

stripping off things like the Location or the phone number of the merchant is counterproductive

This is what the server-based name substitutions are designed to do. If someone visits different McDonald's, most would not want to have 5 or 10 different Payees with phone numbers, locations, dates, or transaction ID numbers in the name; most people would want Quicken to combine them all into one "McDonald's" payee. You prefer otherwise. That's what unchecking that check box is supposed to do. I think a bug may have been intorduced a couple updates ago where for some people, that preference is being ignored.

With your test files, did you enable mobile Sync? It's possible that also has something to do with the problem. But if you did not enable Sync in these new test files, we can rules that out as a culprit.

You have two paths forward that I can think of. One is contacting Quicken phone support after the weekend, and hoping that you get a good support representative who will walk through it with you, sharing your screen, so they see and can document and escalate the problem — if it is not an already-identified problem. The other is as I described above, to take a few minutes to create some basic Renaming Rules for your most-frequently used payees, setting each one to "Do not rename". I understand this seems like more work, but it's a set-once-benefit-forever type of thing. You've undoubtedly spent more time posting here about this issue than it would have taken to set up 20 or 30 or more rules for recurring payees. 😉 I am not suggesting this is the intended or proper fix for the problem; I'm only saying this is a way to make the annoyance mostly drop out of sight for you.

Mark_Orlando

I have already talked with Quicken support. The easiest fix is to simply select all the new downloaded transactions and select revert to Downloaded payee.

It is possible the problem does not exist with the Intel Binary. However, since I created a brand new file and the problem still existed, everyone should have the same situation. If there was a way to force the system to use the Intel binary with Rosetta 2 instead of the native Apple Silicon binary I would try that. (For those that don't know, a universal binary is actually two binaries, the Intel and the Apple Silicon.) Theoretically, both binaries should work exactly the same. That doesn't mean there aren't bugs in the compiler.

jacobs

I don't think this issue has anything to do with Intel versus M1/M2 processors.

Jon

@Mark_Orlando You can force the app to run in Rosetta. Right click on the app, select "Get Info", and check the box for "Open in Rosetta". But I agree with @jacobs that it isn't going to make a difference

Mark_Orlando

I may try to do this later. Regardless, my point is that this situation exists for all users not just some. Can anyone tell me that they have transactions that have not been changed from what was downloaded, aside from Transactions that were simply matched and already were entered in the register before the download. That is, when a downloaded transaction is selected and "Revert to Downloaded Payee Name" is selected, the payee's name does not change.

Jon

Most of my names change but I have dozens of renaming rules and I manually enter most of my transactions. The names provided by the bank are rarely what I want.

jacobs

@Mark_Orlando said: Can anyone tell me that they have transactions that have not been changed from what was downloaded

Yes, absolutely. I actually enter most of my transactions manually for a variety of reasons, but I regularly download my checking account in my test file. Most of the payees are unchanged or minimally changed from what the bank provides. Here are two recent transactions showing the Statement Payee (from the bank) and Quicken Payee (after whatever processing Quicken does) are virtually the same:

There are no local Renaming or QuickFill rules for these transactions.