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Best approach to specify what a transaction is for

Flotzam

For example, I have many Amazon transactions each month. I want to put a Memo or Note into each one with a summary of what I bought. I don't really care that its from Amazon when I'm looking at a transaction list to assess where my money went, I care about what I bought. Does it matter if I use the Memo field for this vs the Notes field? Are either of these fields intended to support some other function that I should reserve them for?

I see that when I categorize a transaction, I can update all transactions with the same payee to that category. Is there a way to update all transactions with a specific memo or note? Can I make rules that will update transactions matching Payee but within a specific date and/or amount range?

Thanks in advance for any advice / help!

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Accepted answers

Boatnmaniac

I think I would use the Memo field, not the Note field, for entering the purchase information. The Memo field is a default field that can be used with most reports. The Notes field is much less versatile and less functional as it does not show up as an option in many tools and reports. The Memo field, however, can be used to customize and sort in many reports and functions.

One important thing that the Memo can be used in is as a sorting criteria in Account Registers and many reports. Click on the Memo column header to sort it by Memo.

Another important thing the Memo can be used in is the Find/Replace tool (Edit > Find/Replace). I think you will find it can be used to pull up all transactions with a specific Memo and then you can do a mass revision/update to some or all of the transactions it pulls up. (FYI: This tool does not have an option to pull up transactions based upon what is in the Note field. Again, another reason to enter the purchase information into the Memo field.)

Let me know if you have any questions.

Chris_QPW

Can I make rules that will update transactions matching Payee but within a specific date and/or amount range?

No.

The rules (payee renaming rules and memorized payees) are based on the payee (which actually includes the downloaded memo for the renaming rule).

When dealing with Amazon purchases it gets really complicated because for any given purchase Amazon might break it up into multiple transactions.

I think trying to use the memo field "a little too late".

As I pointed out the automatic rules aren't going to work for you because you have one payee (Amazon) and multiple categories to deal with. I will quickly mention what I do, but it probably isn't for you. I categorize Amazon with the most common category that I use and change it, if need be, when I review the transactions.

Another approach would be not to categorize any of these transactions and the fix them up when reviewing them. If you pick this, we can give you the settings for that.

Another approach that will sort of work but will get messed up when Amazon splits the transactions is to enter the transactions manually with the correct categories as you make the purchases, and then the downloaded transactions should match to the manually entered transactions.

Note that it would also be helpful to know if you are using automatic transaction entry mode where the transactions go directly into the register or if you have turned that option off and they are going through the Downloaded Transactions tab.

All comments

Boatnmaniac

One important thing that the Memo can be used in is as a sorting criteria in Account Registers and many reports. Click on the Memo column header to sort it by Memo.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Chris_QPW

Can I make rules that will update transactions matching Payee but within a specific date and/or amount range?

No.

The rules (payee renaming rules and memorized payees) are based on the payee (which actually includes the downloaded memo for the renaming rule).

When dealing with Amazon purchases it gets really complicated because for any given purchase Amazon might break it up into multiple transactions.

I think trying to use the memo field "a little too late".

Another approach would be not to categorize any of these transactions and the fix them up when reviewing them. If you pick this, we can give you the settings for that.

Flotzam

@Chris_QPW Thanks for the response.

I categorize Amazon with the most common category that I use and change it, if need be, when I review the transactions.

In my prior tool (an in-house tool provided by my bank), I would basically do what you do. Their schema has a "Description" field that I used.

Based on the feedback from @Boatnmaniac , I will do the same using the Memo field.

Note that it would also be helpful to know if you are using automatic
transaction entry mode where the transactions go directly into the
register

Yes, I am.

Another approach would be not to categorize any of these transactions and the fix them up when reviewing them.

This might be convenient as it provides a current "to do" list of un-categorized transactions - is that what you have in mind here?

(which actually includes the downloaded memo for the renaming rule)

Is this the string of digits in the memo field that I see on downloaded transactions? If I over-write this, are there things I can no longer do after? I would have thought Payee re-naming works directly off the text in the Payee field, is this not the case, then?

Chris_QPW

In my prior tool (an in-house tool provided by my bank), I would basically do what you do. Their schema has a "Description" field that I used.
Based on the feedback from @Boatnmaniac, I will do the same using the Memo field.

I must be missing something here because I don't see why you would be changing the memo when you can just change the category. Adding a memo and then going back and doing search and replace to fix the category seems like a lot more work to me. And if the category is already set to the right thing, I don't see what setting the memo also adds unless it is something like why you purchased this or something.

This might be convenient as it provides a current "to do" list of un-categorized transactions - is that what you have in mind here?

Yes exactly. For instance, I purposely make sure that "Check" doesn't get a category so that it will stand out as something I need to fix. You if you go into Memorized Payee List (on the Tools menu) there is a checkbox for "Never Auto-categorize". Not only can you see this in the register it shows up nicely on the Home tab in a couple of places.

If using the older (more complete "Classic View") the See Where Your Money Goes has this:

Clicking on it takes you to the Spending tab filtered to only the transactions that are uncategorized.

Or with the "New Dashboard"

Is this the string of digits in the memo field that I see on downloaded transactions? If I over-write this, are there things I can no longer do after? I would have thought Payee re-naming works directly off the text in the Payee field, is this not the case, then?

My setup for Amazon is that I pay with a Chase Freedom Anywhere card, and looking at my downloaded memo it is blank so I don't know exactly what you are seeing, but I can guess, and it isn't useful. Example:

I think you must be getting the same as I'm seeing in the downloaded payee above. It doesn't even seem to be something I can see in the order, let alone something that could be used automatically. You will notice that I used a renaming rule to remove it so that it will match to my memorized payee for AMZN Mktp. The only way the downloaded memo (or payee) would be useful for automatic categorization is if it somehow gave you a different thing for different purchases like if it said "Clothing". Then you could have the renaming rule change the payee to something special for it, and then categorize it automatically. As it sits it is just something you need to "normalize out", no different than changing "Safeway #$3434" to "Safeway" and have one memorized payee of "Safeway".

But back to the rules on the renaming of the payee for the cases where it might be useful.

If you select: Tools → Renaming Rules and then the ? to bring up the help it will give a much more detail explanation, but basically I change all of my renaming rules to "Payee contains" (which isn't the default). And as it states in the help that will look into both the payee and the memo fields for the text that you give it.

This can be very useful for financial institution that tend to put so much in front of a payee name it gets cutoff, but also put something useful in the memo field.

Since you are using automatic transaction entry mode, I will point out a few things that might be useful.

The first is if you expand the "Status/blue dot" column it will show the text like New or New Match, which makes it clearer than just the icons.

The second is make sure you don't use "Automatic Reconcile". This kicks off the reconcile automatically right after you download. The problem with this is that it will clear all the status information of the transactions that reconcile before you get a chance to review them. And reconcile is only concerned about the amounts, not that the categories are set correctly. I download, check/correct any transaction for the category or such, and then select Ctrl+R to do the reconcile, which then clears the status. You can also click on the status icon to bring up a menu to mark that transaction reviewed (or all reviewed).

If you need to turn off automatic reconcile then select the gear icon in the register, then Edit account details → Online Services tab → deselect Reconcile using online balance.

Then when you go to reconcile again it will give you the choices again any you can select to reconcile to the online balance if you like, but don't select the one for automatic reconcile.

Just so you know, automatic reconcile does work fine when automatic transaction entry mode is off because what happens there is that the downloaded transactions first show up in a tab at the bottom of the register and the user has to accept each one into the register (making sure the category is right). And it isn't until that is done that the automatic reconcile will kick in.

Flotzam

I don't see why you would be changing the memo when you can just change the category.

The short answer is I don't need or want that many categories, I want more granularity in examining actuals than I want in advance budgeting. The longer answer follows.

I don't want budget categories for every type of thing I buy (for instance from Amazon), but I do want to quickly know what I spent my money on in a given month within a single budget category. For instance, I have a monthly budget category for "Discretionary spending", a sub-category of "shopping" in the Quicken schema where I collect things like a hobby tool purchase or eating breakfast out with friends or a pair of running shoes. I find this approach to be a good compromise between tracking / planning overhead and visibility into my spending. Trying to budget for and track "Tools", "Eating Out", and "Fitness stuff" would also work but I have found that such an additional level of planning detail is more trouble than its worth since these discretionary spends tend to be on pretty different stuff every month and I can only effectively plan / budget at a more aggregate level in any case. So my budget / expense category is "Discretionary spending" and in the Memo field I will write "Miter Saw", or "Running shoes" or "Saturday Breakfast". When I look at my monthly discretionary expenses, I immediately see what I spent the money on. Just tracking the overall total of "Discretionary Spending" from a budget perspective is plenty of visibility for me to control my spending, I don't find value in trying to plan within that category, but I do find value in being able to get quick visibility into actuals within that category.

Some things are fully defined by the Payee and the mapping is one Payee to one category, for example, a monthly Water bill. For such an expense, I don't use the Memo field, just the category, auto-assigned based on Payee, is all the information that is useful.

going back and doing search and replace to fix the category

I mis-spoke in my response to you. In my prior tool, I leave the category at whatever has been auto-assigned (in my Amazon example, "Discretionary spending", a sub-category of shopping that is always assigned to transactions from Amazon). I add the short text to the "Description" field, not the category. I agree changing the category multiple times would not be helpful.

I don't know exactly what you are seeing

Here's an example -

These are only showing up in one particular credit card so far, none of my other accounts, so I guess its something to do with how that institution provides the data to Quicken and not something I need to preserve for any reason.

But back to the rules on the renaming of the payee for the cases where it might be useful.

Thanks for the tips - very helpful!

Chris_QPW

OK, makes more sense now. I personally don't like a lot of categories for the same reason you noted. And using memos to show what a given purchase is for is a good idea.

What threw me was basically this. How would the memo be there when the category wasn't?

There isn't any way to automate the entering of the memos. And if one is entering the memo, I would think it be less trouble to enter the correct category at that time then to not enter it and then come back later and change based on a given memo.

Chris_QPW

P.S. I don't know either what those numbers are in the downloaded memos, but they are definitely useless for any kind of automation. And it seems to me you might be interested in this setting in this case:

In other words, don't transfer that useless downloaded memo to the memo field in the register.