USAA never reconciles with no category assigned

BejayG

USAA never reconciles with no category assigned

BejayG

My USAA account never reconciles if a category is not assigned (in USAA), but, the payment credit shows up in the account that is paid. This started happening after the "new" connection. As I pay everything through USAA, it hardly ever reconciles!!! I have to go back in forth between USAA , payee account, & Quicken to verify. This annoying enough to stop using QUICKEN. PLEASE FIX!!!!!

Jon

You say "payment credit shows up in the account that is paid". This sounds like you're paying credit cards or maybe loans accounts (car loan, mortgage, installment plans, etc). I wouldn't expect those transactions to have a category but they should have a Transfer entry in the category field indicating which account the money is transferred to. I don't ever leave transactions with Unassigned in the category.

Also, how are you reconciling your account? Are you reconciling to your account statement or to the online balance? Or do you have the account set to auto-reconcile?

BejayG

Clarification- my credit cards, mortgage, utilities, etc. are defined in Quicken, as well as, my checking, savings, retirement, etc. My bills are paid through USAA "Pay Bills". When a payment is sent from USAA on the requested date, it will appear (on USAA's website) under the title "transaction" with the category pending under the "category title". At some point, USAA will assign a category based on their calculations.; ie. Mortgage, credit card, etc. Note that the category can not be assigned by the user at this point, but can be changed later.

I am reconciling my USAA checking through my Quicken account online. All USAA payments that have "category pending" status are listed but not cleared in Quicken. So the account is off by those amounts - although it is more often off by a random amount. Thus I have to double-check my USAA checking account transactions and my other accounts to verify a payment.

See the sample from USAAbelow.:

Chris_QPW

If I may I think I might be able to shed some light on this but being a Quicken Windows users not all the details in Quicken Mac, so @Jon will hopefully fill in/correct anything I get wrong.

USAA switched from Direct Connect to Quicken Connect, and they aren't handling the online balance correctly in the case of pending transactions. There are very long Quicken Windows threads on that fact. As in they are including the pending transactions in the online balance, but those transactions aren't being downloaded (and they shouldn't be downloaded). Direct Connect had the same policy not to include pending transactions in either the downloaded transactions or the online balance, but the difference is that while they were using Direct Connect, they were doing both correctly.

You're talking about the "pending categories" sort throws off the conversation because in both cases the whatever category is displayed on the USAA website isn't included in the information that either Direct Connect or Quicken Connect downloads. The category is assigned in Quicken Mac using features like QuickFill.

I will mention one more thing, but I'm close to 100% that USAA didn't provide this so this part you most likely can ignore.

In some cases, financial institutions will support using Bill pay from Quicken if they are using Direct Connect. In that case the scheduled bill payments would show up in the Quicken register even before they are posted, and when they would finally download the posted transaction be update for their status. Quicken Connect can't do this where it is directly tied into the financial institution's bill payment system. There is Quicken Bill Manager, but that is a third-party bill payment system, not tied to the financial institution's one.

jacobs

@BejayG I didn't understand your initial question because I didn't understand why uncategorized transactions would have anythign to do with reconciling your account, but reading the whole thread again now, I grasp what's going on.

As @Chris_QPW said, the first misconception here is that the category you see on the USAA website has any connection to Quicken. It doesn't. Whether it is "Category Pending" or an assigned category, that category information is not passed to Quicken. Quicken does its own auto-categorization (unless turned off). So categories is irrelevant to the issue here.

The issue, as Chris correctly identified, is that USAA is sending Quicken an online balance which includes pending transactions which haven't posted yet, and which aren't in Quicken. One of two things is happening: (1) USAA is sending the pending transactions and Quicken is properly discarding them from appearing in your register, but is not simultaneously adjusting the downloaded balance by the same amount. If that's what's happening, it's a Quicken problem. (2) USAA is sending the balance which includes the pending transactions, but is not sending the actual pending transactions to Quicken. If that's what is happening, it's USAA problem. For what it's worth, this issue has been reported and complained about by many USAA users here on this forum.

One way around this issue is to not reconcile to the downloaded balance. Instead, reconcile Quicken once a month to the monthly USAA statement; both Quicken and USAA will show only posted transactions, so your reconciliations will work.

If you're not satisfied reconciling once a month like this, then you're stuck waiting for Quicken and USAA to fix whatever one or both of them are doing wrong.

BejayG

Thank you for all of your input - I do realize the "categories" have nothing to do with each other. I only included that info because that seems to be the sticking point in the transactions. I guess it is what it is ……. I am still not sure who is the culprit - maybe both I am hoping it will be addressed in the future.

Thank you again….

Chris_QPW

I'm 100% sure the problem is with USAA.

If you want to see my logic on why this is true, you can see this comment in this Windows thread on the very same subject:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20394764#Comment_20394764

Please note that Quicken Mac generally combines the what Quicken Windows considers two different connection types into "Quicken Connect". In Quicken Windows there is "Express Web Connect", which I explain in the thread, and only differs with "Express Web Connect +" in the protocol used between Intuit and the financial institution. But that is a big change to "know" what is possible because it changes that part from an "agreement" to a set protocol.

The history is that USAA allowed for both Direct Connect and Express Web Connect, but on that last change over went to Express Web Connect +. So, there is basically generic/common code all the way from the financial institution all the way into Quicken. I gave an example of what has happened on Chase which also uses Express Web Connect + these days, as proof that it can't be anything other than the financial institution. Well, the very fact that the very same thing happens in Quicken Mac and Quicken Windows at least rules out Quicken (the program).