How to get to Make Credit Card Payment dialog when there are no uncleared transactions?

LexLuther

Quicken assumes that if you have no unreconciled transactions, then you have no need to go to the Reconcile dialog. It presents this dialog box:

However, my goal is to get to the Make Credit Card Payment dialog box whether I have unreconciled transactions or not:

My methodology that I have used for decades is that I download and automatically reconcile transactions just about daily, so my registers being already reconciled at statement time is typical. But if a new statement has cut, I want to visit the Make Credit Card Payment dialog and enter that payment. Even though I don't actually write a hand written check, this dialog box takes me to my checking account with the full balance already entered. I just adjust the date to the due date (when the automatic draft will occur) and hit enter .. done.

Here's what I have to do now to get there: Ctrl-R to reconcile, get the "No uncleared" dialog, OK that, modify an existing transaction in the register to be uncleared, dismiss the dialog box that asks if I want to change a reconciled transaction, save the transaction, ctrl-R again to get to reconcile, mark the transaction I changed to cleared, finish the reconcile and then I get the desired "Make Credit Card Payment" dialog. Whew! Sure that's just a few seconds, but it sure would be nice if the "No uncleared" box had a "Reconcile Anyway" button in addition to "OK".

One workaround I've used is to create a dummy transaction of $0 with a date years into the future. Thus, that register will never have no uncleared items. That works, but is a little clumsy. Anyone know of a better way to proceed to the "Make Credit Card Payment" dialog?

Boatnmaniac

Since you are not actually writing or printing out a check for the payment, maybe you will find what I do to be a simpler way to record the payment transactions:

1. Create a recurring manual Bill Reminder.
2. Credit card payment due dates are in almost all cases on the same date each month so enter that due date (or whichever date you want the payment to be made).
3. You can set up the payment amount as a fixed dollar amount or a variable amount based upon prior payments. (The prior payments is the average for a specified number of months, such as the last 3 months or 6 months, so you will need to wait to set up the variable amount until you have enough months of payement history established.)
4. You can opt to have Quicken automatically enter the payments into the checking account and credit card registers a specified number of days prior to the due date (great for payments that are fixed from month-to-month) or you can request Quicken to remind you a set number of days prior to the due date so you know it needs to be reviewed and acted upon.
5. Each month you can adjust the dollar amount and/or the payment date as appropriate.

This process does not involve the payment popup you have been using. Also the transactions will categorized in both accounts as transfers between and not as "Credit Card Payment" so the transactions are linked. And when the payment transactions get downloaded from the bank and the credit card company Quicken will usually match those downloaded transactions to the Bill Reminders that were entered earlier.

A couple of things that I really like about this process (requires a 1X set up for each of these in each affected account register):

• What I find really nice about this process is that you can set up the account registers to show the Bill Reminder in the registers a set number of days prior to the due date which is very helpful to proactively see what the impact to the account balance will be. To do this, go to Account Register > upper right Gear icon > Reminders to show in register > select the number of days that you want shown. They will also show up on the Bill & Income Reminders tab below the register.
• If you go the route of having Reminders shown in the register I would also suggest that you make sure the Status column is also shown in the register: Account Register > upper right Gear icon > Register columns > check the box for Status > Done. This column will then identify the status of the Reminders that show up in the register: Upcoming, Due, Overdue and Uncleared. Once the payment has been cleared the Status field will go blank.