How to Categorize Checking Account Payee of CHK-###### by Payment Amount?

Question

My bank sets the payee and statement payee fields for bank-sent checks as "CHK- ######".  We have several re-occurring auto-payment checks sent directly from the bank and I'm struggling to keep them all categorized manually.

Example:

CHK- 01655 for $XXX.00 should be categorized as "School Tuition"

CHK- 01351 for $YYY.00 should be categorized as "Utilities:Electric"

The QuickFill Rules can set a catagory and amount for a matching Payee, but want the amount to be part of the match filter instead of the values to quick-fill.

Ideally should  be able to assign any of these fields to either the match criteria or the values to be set.

Thoughts?

jacobs · Answer

You can set up categorization rules for specific Payees, and you can set up renaming rules to standardize payee names, But if the Payee is a check number, Quicken will never be able to figure out the difference among different transactions labeled as "Check - #####". As Chris said, if these are recurring transactions for a set amount, the best way to handle this is to create a scheduled transaction; when the Check transaction downloads, if Quicken doesn't auto-match it to the manual transaction, you can just drag and drop on ever the other to make them match; the match will apply the category you specify in the scheduled transaction.

Chris_QPW · Answer

if you have fixed amount like these coming in you should setup a reminder for the payee, category, and amount to be entered into the register just before the transaction will be downloaded.  That way Quicken will match the downloaded one to entered into the register.