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For credit card accounts with multiple cards/users, show card/user on each transaction

jacobs

Many credit card companies issue cards with different numbers when there are multiple users on a single account, such as cards for a spouse or kids. When downloading transactions, Quicken Mac doesn't capture which card was used, even if the credit card company includes this data. This is a request for Quicken Mac to include the card identifying information, when provided by the financial institution. This could be done by appending it to the Memo field, or by putting it in the Tag field. Vote for this functionality in the yellow box below, and see read the next post for more details.

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jacobs

For a more detailed explanation, I'll use a CapitalOne credit card as an example. I have an account, and my wife has a card with a different number. Both cards post to the same one account. Quicken Mac doesn't display anything to show which card was used in a transaction, so there's no way to know which transaction was made by whom, information which is easily visible if I log onto the CapitalOne website.

The OFX standard (including Quicken's slightly modified QFX variant) has been used since the late 1990s as the data exchange format between financial institutions and software programs like Quicken. Until the most recent update to the standard, there was no term in the standard's language for identifying different cards on a single account. That capability was added in version 2.3 of the OFX standard in October 2020. It's up to each financial institution to adopt updated standards, and many have. It also requires updates from both Quicken and its connectivity provider, Intuit, and this has apparently not been implemented.

I just downloaded a QFX file of my CapitalOne account and opened it in a text editor. I can see that CapitalOne includes an optional "ACCTID" data field which identifies the last four digits of the card used for each transaction. It looks like this as part of each transaction:

However, when I import the QFX file into Quicken, it appears that data is not processed in Quicken. If you click on one of the credit card transactions which has downloaded, and select Show Inspector from the View menu, the bottom portion of the Inspector window, under the "From your financial institution" heading, is showing exactly what was received from CapitalOne, untouched by Quicken. When I look, I see the same payee name in both the Statement Payee and Statement Memo field, because that's the way CapitalOne is sending the data. (That is, when I open the QFX file in a text editor, I see the same Payee name in the NAME and MEMO field.) It appears Quicken doesn't know what to do with the ACCTID filed and just ignores it.

The feature request here is to capture the ACCTID data and make it part of the transaction in Quicken. I see two possible ways to to that. One would be to append the ACCTID data to the Memo field. (Ideally, the logic could check if the Payee=Memo, as is the case with this financial institution, and if so, replace the Payee name in the Memo field with the ACCTID data; if there isotherm data in the Memo field from the financial institution, then append the ACCTID data at the end of the Memo field.)

The other option would be to put the ACCTID data in the Tag field. This would likely be helpful to some Quicken users, but might annoy others who use their Tags for other purposes and don't want the clutter.

However implemented, the goal is to have the ACCTID provided by the financial institution included in a field in Quicken Mac's database that users can see and act on.

JQuick1

As far as I know, Quicken Windows behaves the same way with the same limitation.

For implementation fix, I would like to be able to create 'mapping rules' that map the "ACCTID"(one specific credit card # for a multiple card # joint account) that the credit card company is sending to Quicken to a specific Quicken "Tag" label that I am already using. As it has historically been, I have to do this mapping manually and for each downloaded credit card transaction, setting this "Tag" value for each transaction. If this new Quicken functionality were made available, this would be done automatically according to these 'mapping rules' for ALL transactions with such an appropriately defined 'mapping rule'.

jacobs

@jprokott I think the problem here is that different financial institutions transmit data about cards differently. A few days ago, I was helping a user with a related issue on an Amex account, so I looked at the OFX Code for a transaction from Amex. Unlike the one I described above, there is no ACCTID field at all coming from Amex. But they do show which user/card was used in the Memo field.

Here's a transaction from my Amex account:

<STMTTRN>
<TRNTYPE>DEBIT</TRNTYPE>
<DTPOSTED>20231209000000.000[-7:MST]</DTPOSTED>
<TRNAMT>-38.96</TRNAMT>
<FITID>320233440012253069</FITID>
<REFNUM>320233440012253069</REFNUM>
<NAME>MERCHANT NAME WAS HERE</NAME>
<MEMO>MY NAME ON THE CARD-12345-9876543 MERCHANT PHONE NUMBER AND ADDRESS</MEMO>
</STMTTRN>

Note: The "12345" in the Memo line was the last 5 digits of my credit card number.

So for Amex, Quicken would need to parse out the card holder name or partial credit card number from the Memo field. For the CapitalOne Visa card described above, it's encoded in the ACCTID field. I imagine other credit card companies might follow different approaches, or if the use the Memo field, might construct what they put in there differently. So therein lies the problem: because of lack of standards, and lack of adherence to those standards which exist, in the financial services industry, I think Quicken would have a nearly-impossible task trying writing scripts for each financial institution which does this differently.

Randy 415

This would be a useful feature, but FI's and Quicken would both have to conform to the standards to make it work well.

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20409710#Comment_20409710

And that in a nutshell is one of the biggest roadblocks in a program like Quicken, the US (and Canadian) financial institution have never adhered to any standard for this.

Direct Connect/OFX was an attempt at that, and even there you can see that with that spec, there is variance, but it gets worse. At the most only about 4,200 financial institutions adhered to this standard, and these days it is probably about 2,000 out of more than 32,000 financial institutions in the US alone.

That is why "aggregation" got a foothold in this and has become the "standard". Which is to say, "no standard". All these aggregators came up with different ways to get at the data. In the case of some like Quicken Window's Express Web Connect and Quicken Connect that "transfer" might even change from financial institution to financial institution. One might provide a QFX file then next might provide a CSV file, and on and on.

And now there is a push for FDX between the aggregator and financial institution. Quicken Connect pretty much hides this extra connection method, but on the Windows side it is called Express Web Connect +. In a way it is good, it changing "log in as the user, and get data in 'method that was agreed upon'" to an actual secure protocol that uses rotating security tokens instead usernames, and defined fields like the OFX standard. But here is the kicker, there isn't any way that ALL financial institutions will adopt this. So, you end up with yet another "connection method" with different data flowing to Quicken.

rogersda

I agree that having a standard would be beneficial. Perhaps as an alternative couldn't there be an Quicken process to allow users to set strings in order to auto-assign a tag? It could function similar to what is implemented to automatically change payee names. The idea being if Statement Payee contains string1 then update the transaction's tag to Tag1. If Statement Payee contains string2 then update the transaction's to Tag2. The string could have a minimum length such as 4 alpha-numeric characters. If a transaction matches multiple strings then either update to include all tags and/or prompt the user for action.

jacobs

@rogersda Well, you can automatically apply a Tag for a given Payee with a QuickFill rule. They're most frequently used for applying Categories, but you can apply a Tag in addition to or instead of a Category. But QuickFill rules are attached to specific Payees; it is Renaming Rules which allow users to standardize Payee names.

If there is something in a Statement Payee name which allows you to separate transactions for one person/card user, then you could simply create two Renaming Rules tonormalize to similar but not Identical Payees (e.g. "Amazon (Bob)" and "Amazon (Sharon)" — or "Amazon" and "Amazon.") Then you could have a different QuickFill rule for each Payee to apply the desired Tag.

However, the problem being discussed above is that credit card companies can and do report transactions for two cards/cardholders on one account in different and non-standard ways. If they use the ACCTID field or Memo field, there is no way for a user to create any form of if/then rules in Quicken to Tag or Categorize those transactions.

Chris_QPW

The basic problem is that there isn't anything different.

The whole point of what is stored in the ACCTID (and other fields like the financial institution Id and account type) will identify the online account uniquely. If the financial institution has chosen to treat the given transactions as if they are all in one account, there isn't going to be any information that is provided to Quicken to separate transactions out.

jacobs

The basic problem is that there isn't anything different.

No, I've noted that with several of my financial institutions like Amex and CapitalOne, there are differences which identify the transactions belonging to different cardholders. But these differences are encoded differently from one financial institution to another because there is no standard. And they are included in fields which can not be used in Quicken Mac for building rules to differentiate the transactions.

Chris_QPW

What I meant was that the account level. So that Quicken can actually put the different transactions in different accounts. I think it is a very big ask to have quicken look at individual transactions for anything and then try to sort them in different accounts.

II agree totally with the fact that if there is something unique in the transactions themselves and they go is just to separate them out in a report then using quick fill and maybe tags or categories for that matter would be the way to go.

But The very fact that we are having this discussion implies that there is no such thing.

Quicken isn't magic if the financial institution isn't going to give the information in a format that allows it to be separated it's a big uphill battle one that Quicken Inc isn't going to take on.

jacobs

What I meant was that the account level. So that Quicken can actually put the different transactions in different accounts. I think it is a very big ask to have quicken look at individual transactions for anything and then try to sort them in different accounts.

Sorry, Chris, but you've lost me with talking about moving transactions into different Quicken accounts. 😉 The original goal or wish here was a way to identify — mostly likely with a Tag, or with a Memo — transactions belonging to different user within one account. That is, I have an Amex account, and my wife and I each have credit cards with different numbers. I don't want those transactions separated into different Quicken accounts because in the real world, there is only one account, and I need to reconcile what I have in my one Quicken account with this one real-world Amex account. But I want to be able to identify and potentially separate in a Search or a Report the transactions which are mine and those which are my wife's. Currently, if the financial institution happens to put the identifying information in the Memo field (as Amex does), a user can parse them out in a Search or Report as needed. But if the financial institution puts the identifying information in an ACCTID field for each transaction (as CapitalOne does), that information isn't processed by Quicken's import to map that ACCTID data into a field users can access for Search or Reports. That was the original request: take the identifier which the FI puts in the ACCTID field for each transaction, and add it to the Memo field or to a Tag field.

Chris_QPW

I'm sorry, you are right, I got off track on what the original request was. All this talking about the ACCTID lead me astray. The ACCTID is for identifying "the account" it has nothing to do with the "notion" that these transactions for from "different accounts" in the mind of the Quicken user opposed to what the financial institution is telling Quicken through the use of the ACCTID. By definition the ACCTID is only one account.