Best Practice to Mark Transaction Categorization as Confirmed

efmaaz

Hi All - I am new to quicken and loving it so far. I realize that it'll take a little while for the system to learn all my vendors and what category they should be placed in so for now I'm manually reviewing every transaction. Is there a suggested best practice to mark the transactions that I've reviewed so I don't get confused where I've left off. I've been using the flag feature to mark ones that I've reviewed with a green flag but its a bit cumbersome as there is no bulk flag feature so I'm having to mark each transaction individually. Any other ideas?

Chris_QPW

Quicken has two systems for reviewing/accepting downloaded transactions. You should be using one of these instead of the flag feature.

Just so I don't have to repeat it, here is an explanation the two processes, let me know if you have any other questions after reading this.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20227795#Comment_20227795

In a nutshell for "Automatically add to bank registers" mode you use the Status column and selecting it to mark it "reviewed" (status cleared) once you have reviewed the transactions. For when this mode is off you select a transaction in the Downloaded Transactions tab and see that it is correct and then accept it into/record it in the register.

efmaaz

Thanks for the reply - this was very helpful. I tried both ways and had a few follow up questions.

1. For the automatically add to register I noticed that if you edit a transaction (change the category or edit the payee name for example) it changes the status so that is blank instead of new. Is there a way to change it back?
2. In the downloaded transactions tab I noticed that I could view the date, payee, and amount but there was not a category assigned. Also I was unable to edit the payee in that tab. Would I have to accept the transaction so that it moves up to the register and then make any necessary edits?

Chris_QPW

#1 no. Unfortunately, you can't make them "New" again. As for editing causing them to be marked reviewed, to me that seems reasonable, since you are actively working on it and should be making sure the category, and such are correct at that time.

#2, that is the tradeoff of using that system. The category is not assigned until the transaction is in the register, but you are missing a bit of information. When you select a transaction in the Downloaded Transactions tab it will show you that transaction in the register, and the category will be filled in, in that entry in the register. But note that this entry in the register is "before committed". In other words, the changes aren't actually done until you hit the Enter key or select the Accept button. You can edit the category in that transaction in the register before you commit it with the Enter/Accept.

To make this clearer. If I select the first transaction in the Downloaded Transactions tab, Quicken will show that transaction in the register. If next I select another transaction in the Downloaded Transactions tab, Quicken will remove that "pre committed" transaction in the register and show the one that was just selected.

A couple of other notes. If you see the status Match in the Downloaded Transactions tab it means the downloaded transaction was matched with one that was already in the register. If you select that transaction in the Downloaded Transactions tab it will take you to that transaction in the register showing how it would merge the two, instead of showing a new transaction at the bottom of the register.

Also, you shouldn't use the Accept All button. It will put all the transactions into the register selecting whatever automatic categories it did, but there will not be any way to see at that point which transactions were new.

Some people tend to think that using the automatic transaction entry mode is like using Accept All where you don't really properly review the transactions, but the automatic transaction entry mode has the New/New Match… review status/process and Accept All doesn't.

mshiggins

Maybe put a character in the transaction memo for the transactions you have reviewed? Like an R or an X?