Quicken Premiere for Windows - reconciling account with payment no longer matches to Bill reminder

Question

Quicken for Windows - reconciling account with payment no longer matches to Bill reminder

conwaynyc Member ✭✭July 6 edited August 7

Ever since I have been using quicken (long time) one feature I found useful: I have recurring bill reminders set up, which I review in the Bills and Income tab. When I reconcile an account (credit card) at the end of the process I select to write a check (manual) for the amount due. When the payment is posted (selecting enter) a box would open asking if this payment was the scheduled payment in reminders? I would confirm and the reminder is marked as paid.

Now, I pay a bill at the end of reconciling and the reminder sit in Bills and Income. So, I have to either ignore the reminder or (preferred) execute the payment and then delete the duplicate in the account register.

I would be very happy if Quicken could get this back on track. The cross-check is logical and efficient, a hallmark of the program. Unless I'm missing something and anyone can offer a fix…..

I have the same Issue. Programming /Technical/ Engineering background here and Quicken user for twenty years. I also have found the bill reminder entry no longer shows up under the “Monthly Bills & Deposits “ Tab; nor is it included in the Monthly Totals calculation at bottom of the monthly sheet if the entry is skipped.

{Why? the monthly totals never print out with  the monthly bill and income reminders sheet is still a mystery to me; a question for another discussion}.

I end up having to skip or delete the double entry: 1st entry created when prompted by quicken to go reconcile inside the credit card account (w/ interest charge) prior to direct entry from the listing in the Monthly Bill & Income Reminders. 2nd entry created {or not created} post reconciling when I select enter  {or not select enter and select skip instead to clear and dispose of it this ending tracking of it for the current month}.

As a result, I find you can’t go backwards under the “Monthly Bills & Deposits” tab to see an accurate accounting of the prior Monthly Bills and Deposits History to see what was actually was paid, reconciled, deposited, etc.. to the credit card or similar linked bank account.

This inability to cross-link defeats the whole purpose of having automated monthly bill and income reminders setup. As stated by others no way to cross-link the two records and have only the one entry connected positively to the Monthly Bill Reminder.

I end up exporting my Monthly Bill and Income Reminders data as a CSV file and then processing it in Excel prior to the start of each Month to tack and follow the actual totals as bills are paid and actual amounts are updated over the month.

Thanks for any consideration or comments.

Chris_QPW · Accepted Answer

I'm really trying to understand all that is being discussed here since it jumps around from different sections in Quicken.

First let me talk about the basic flow of reminders/check entry that has been in Quicken forever.

There is a mention or Quicken asking if a future reminder is the same as a transaction that is about to be entered.  This has never been reliable from what I have seen.  It is sort like Quicken's transfer matching, a guess, and one that doesn't even seem to trigger all the time depending on payee names and such.  And in fact, there is yet another thread where the complaint is that this prompt comes up when they don't want it, and they want an option to completely turn it off.

So, the best flow has always been to get the reminder into the register before downloading the actual transaction. And if one wants this to be a "written check" that should be done as part of the reminder, and not using the check writing form.

As for the Bills & Income tab.  I gave up on the Online Bill presentment (not even going near the "bill payment") years ago because all the problems with that system, but the idea is that you can link the Online Bill with a reminder.  The Online Bill should then maintain the date and amount in that reminder.   When I was trying to get this to work the problems were always with the Online Bill part not working for what it did the linking to the reminder did work for me (but also messed up the estimating future payments at times). I never really used the "Stack" or the calendar views.  I have definitely seen reports in this forum of Quicken not marking them paid at the right and such.  To me this view is "redundant" and not very useful since I just look at such in the register itself (cleared/reconciled).