Quickfill Rules depend on Payee Only - This is Not sufficient (Q Mac)

JayH

I am asking for a New Feature in Quicken for Mac that allows Quickfill Rules to depend on information from both Payee and Account. The existing Quickfill Rules depend in Payee only.

I have several saving accounts with different banks. When interest is payed out, my downloads will have as the Payee the word “Interest” or “Interest Paid” or "Interest Posted”. So I would like to Quickfill the Category as "Bank Name:Account:Interest”. To set this up as a Quickfill Rule I would put Payee = Interest, but with only Payee entered I am unable to specify which bank and which account!

The New Feature would allow me to specify information from both Payee and Account as the conditions for designating the Quickfill for Catagory.

This Suggested Feature can also be found on Quicken Ticket No. 10545644

Chris_QPW

Well, if you get any feedback from the actual Quicken manager/developers, hopefully they won't give the ridiculous statement that old Quicken Mac manager gave and state that this is impossible.

jacobs

@JayH Making QuickFill rules based on account is something which has been requested before; the developers have said previously that they do not plan to implement such a feature. But a fellow user has started a new request for this functionality, which you can view and add your vote for here:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7929114/quickfill-rule-by-account

@Chris_QPW I can't locate the old thread you referred to, but my recollection is that there was some significant obstacle to creating QuickFill rules by account. It may have had something to do with compatibility with the way Quicken Windows works because Quicken Windows defines the feature set for Quicken Cloud (e.g. they can't create a feature which operates differently in Quicken Mac desktop and the way it works for transactions in Quicken Cloud). I know that came up in a couple of feature requests; I'm not sure this is one of them. Or perhaps they just didn't want to make QuickFill rule more complicated than they already are, and they might take another look at it if the Idea thread linked above reaches enough votes.

UKR

If you were to create and use Scheduled Reminder Transactions for each of your savings accounts, each with distinct Payee Names and Categories then you would have a workaround for this situation.
Execute the reminder BEFORE you download transactions from the bank. This will allow Quicken to match the downloaded interest transaction with the one that's already in your register. If it doesn't, drag and drop the downloaded transaction over the already existing register transaction.

As far as choosing Categories for each transaction, I would suggest using the generic Interest Income category instead of separate categories for each account.
Due to the use of distinct Payee Names for each account, you will be able to generate reports by Payee Name if you want to see year-to-date "how much interest did I earn by account?"
The Tax Schedule etc. reports will be able to show and summarize by payee name for transfer to tax software.

volvogirl

When you download transactions doesn't it put it in the right account? Or am I missing something?

Jon

It does; I think the example here is that someone has categories broken down by account, which I've never done.

Having QuickFill rules that do different things to the transaction depending on which account it's in is not something I've ever needed personally but I can see how someone could find it useful.

Chris_QPW

@jacobs Using what is currently implemented in Quicken Windows as an excuse not to put it into Quicken Mac is lame.

First off, this feature has been requested many times for Quicken Windows also. So, ideally it would be put into both, and also included in Mobile/Web if they have scheduled reminders (I don't remember if they even have that feature).

Second off there are already many features that are in Quicken Mac that aren't in Quicken Windows, that just doesn't hold up as an excuse.

If the excuse that something isn't in Quicken Windows or isn't in Quicken Mac "possible" then no new features would ever be added! And want to empathize something here. Quicken Windows and Quicken Mac already do this function slightly differently. Quicken Windows uses "renaming rules" and then a "memorized payee list". In Quicken Mac both functions are integrated into QuickFill.

And for the record, I'm probably one of the first people that ever asked for this feature in Quicken Windows probably over 20 years ago, and my scenario is extremely close to what was described here, with a bit of an extra twist. I had that same situation with the interest being the same, but my reason for wanting it to be renamed was slightly different.

Back then I naively believed that it was a good idea to export my Quicken data to TurboTax (more trouble than it was worth, with the exception of exporting security trades or charity, but security trades are now better handled by direct export from the financial institution).

Well, if all your different interest from different financial institutions goes into the category Interest, how did the Quicken export separate it out into financial institutions? Yep, by the payee. So, I was trying to maintain the payees in the given accounts with interest as the financial institution name so that it would export/import correctly. It was a nightmare.

I would spend hours trying to get it to be right not to mention all the time I wasted on it during the year. BTW the approach of separating this out using the category seems much more logical to me, but of course that isn't how Intuit did it.

But this is just one example of why something like this would be useful. And as a software engineer, I don't buy that this is anything but a trivial feature to put in. In fact, I have implemented just such a feature in ImportQIF. Some of the suggestions here for Quicken that would make it even better make it slightly more complicated.

In its simplest forum it is nothing more than an entry in the list (in the case of Quicken renaming rules, in the case of Quicken Mac, QuickFill) where the user can enter the account name. When doing a quick fill (or renaming of payee in Quicken) it is impossible for them not to know what account it is going into, so they simply have look at that one entry and either do it or not based on that one entry compared to what account they are in. The "more complicated, but still simple" is that instead of a single entry the user can put in a list of accounts.

jacobs

Using what is currently implemented in Quicken Windows as an excuse not to put it into Quicken Mac is lame.

It's not an excuse, as I understand it. The Quicken Mac team is free to innovate on features in the desktop product — and they have — but they cannot implement features which need to work differently on the background servers, the mobile app, and the web interface depending on which desktop program they are associated with. They'd need to get the Quicien Windows team and the Quicken Cloud Services team make changes to support changes in function. Not impossible, but not something under the control of the Quicken Mac development team.