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On MAC Quicken subscription - new user - trying to understand logic of payee field

SevenZeroOne

Just installed, setup, and downloaded transactions. Have around 3,000 transactions and per quicken - about 1,500 payees.

When quicken downloads transactions from a site like B of A, it takes the description field (as it is named on the BofA web site) and lays it in the Quicken payee field. Problem with that is - many transactions come from the same place - but contain different descriptions (such as different dates for mobile deposits). Each of these become new payees. Their download renaming rules do not appear to allow for moving anything from the incoming transactions from the description as part of the process to properly assign a payee. I am used to accounting systems where payees can have many different transactions, each with a different description. Having 1,500 payees when we only really have maybe 100 sue seems like bad design.

If the Payee is meaningless and really only a description field which can be ignored as a payee and just treated like the memo field - then I get it.

Is it possible - when downloading transactions, to rename payees into meaningful names (based on the renaming rules) but then and at the same time - move the entire field Quicken is using as Payee - before the rename - to the memo area?

This would totally solve the problem of too many payees as well as preserve needed information about the transaction.

If I am ever to use the payments feature having thousands of payees in the list makes the tool unusable for this.

Your thoughts and comments are appreciated.

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Comments

Jon

Is it possible - when downloading transactions, to rename payees into meaningful names (based on the renaming rules)

Yes, renaming rules will do that.

and at the same time - move the entire field Quicken is using as Payee - before the rename - to the memo area?

No (at least I can't think of a way). However, the original payee name is preserved even after the renaming rule is applied. There's a separate column you can display in the register (Statement Payee) that will show that.

SevenZeroOne

Thank you for trying to help. I used Quicken desktop a long time ago, and liked it. Ok - I understand the information is stored somewhere (nice it's not lost but already knew it was stored) and I know it can be see if we select that field to display on a custom report. There is no function (which I could swear was there in the old desktop version of Quicken I used) to manage the payee and description of a transaction. Instead Quicken loaded each transaction with a unique payee and leaves it for the user to filter. Yes I understand they have a token search capability to rename all those transactions to one payee - then every one of them loses the payload data (such as invoice number or other identifying info that says what the transaction was for. To me this subscription version has severe limitations with importing electronic transactions, it lacks of flexibility, and it cannot be adjusted to get needed description information to be properly loaded into the appropriate named fields. This method of transaction processing makes the reports useless for say an IRS audit or providing to an accountant for taxes at year end - because the descriptions are gone. No rhyme or reason defined for this handling of e-transactions. I probably have a little too much irritation because Quicken forced a year purchase in advance, and they never had anything open and honest about these limitations. To the contrary - their marketing material makes this look like a great tool. I started this subscription because I thought it would be better than the older desktop version I used a few years ago - which properly handled all the above. I will use the subscription because I needed something fast and it's paid in full up front for a year - I will migrate to a more effective tool for the age we live in at some point prior to end of subscription. Effective Digital transaction handling is what we need in our financial tools today and into the future. Quicken does not have effective and correct handling of digital transactions. Creating a new payee for each change in description - bogus.

jacobs

First, if you purchased Quicken within the past 30 days, you can get a full refund if you've decided the program doesn't meet your needs.

Second, it's not clear to me whether the culprit in your downloads is Quicken or Bank of America. B of A labels the fields in their downloads, so if they transmit a field called Payee and fill it with the description field on their website, that's a B of A issue. There are well-defined standards for transmitting electronic transactions. If I download a Quicken/QFX file from my bank and open it in a text editor, I can see NAME and MEMO fields. The question is whether they are putting the information in those fields the way you'd want or not. If not, it's a B of A issue you might want to pursue with them; if they do, but upon import into Quicken the fields get mapped incorrectly, then it's a Quicken problem you can pursue with them.

(For what it's worth, my primary checking account downloads into Quicken with nothing in the Memo field, but a plausible Payee name, concatenating the Payee and transaction type, like "Lowes CC EPAY Debit" or "Venmo Cashout Direct Deposit" ± things I could fix with renaming rules. But if I download a QFX file from the bank, the transactions are missing the Payee names. All I get is "check" or "Preauthorized Debit" or "ATM Cash" in the Name field, and the FITID field, which should contain a unique number for every transaction to allow Quicken to prevent duplicates in future downloads, is "unknown" for every transaction. So my bank has clearly messed up their export to a QFX file. If I export a CSV file, the Payee names are included as a Description field. I haven't yet pursued this with my bank.)