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What causes Quicken to recognize leading zeros on down loaded check numbers? (Q Mac)

Richard@

I have been a quicken user for years and have never had this problem before. It seems that since I up graded to version 7.4.2 in early December, all my check numbers that are downloaded from my Bank (Citizens BanK) have either 5 or 6 leading zeros. This causing problems when Quicken try to match transactions. I talked to my Bank and they confirmed that they have always transmitted check number with leading zeros. If that is correct, then Quicken must have had some setting or software algorithm that ignored leading zeros. It is very frustrating trying to manually match transactions. See Image below

Can anyone shed some light on what is going on here? I appreciate all the help I can get.

Richard

iMac with OS 14.2.1

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Quicken Kristina

Hello @Richard@,

To assist with this issue, could you please provide additional information? How many accounts is this affecting? Is this happening only with one financial institution, or are you seeing it happen with multiple financial institutions? Have you restarted your computer since this issue started?

I look forward to your reply!

Richard@

Thank you for the response. This is an issue with one bank ( Citizens Bank) and only affects one account - my checking account - which is the only account that I download posted checks via one-step update. This has never happened before in all the years I have been downloading posted checks to this same account. As I mentioned in my question, it started when I up graded to version 7.4.2 in mid December. And, yes my computer has been shut-down and re-started multiple times since this problem started.

Thanks for your help and a very Happy New Year!

jacobs

@Richard@ I'm curious which Citizens Bank your account is with? I'm in Pennsylvania and bank with Citizens Bank - Mid Atlantic. I just verified that checks are downloading normally, with no leading zeros, in my account.

Richard@

Jacobs, thanks for the response. My bank is the same as yours - Citizens Bank - Mid Atlantic. Since we turned a new year, I will have to monitor my account this week to see if the problem persists. Haven't had any new checks posted sine last week. I did notice something strange when I logged in to the bank's web site today - the last update to the account was Dec 27th. I know that there were transactions after that date but they didn't show up in the account. I would think that the account would have been updated at least thru the 30th. I'll have to check tomorrow to see if the account has been update. Maybe they were doing year end maintenance. If not, a call to the bank.

Thanks, Richard

jacobs

Try downloading a check transaction for which you do NOT have a manually-entered transaction for Quicken to match it with. I don't think the matching causes the issue you're experiencing with the check number, but it can't hurt to eliminate this variable.

Richard@

Going to have to wait until some checks are generated this month to see what happens. Checking accounted updated today but nothing was downloaded. Thanks for your suggestions Jacobs. I'll post a response after I see what happens when some checks are downloaded.

Richard@

Problem persists - downloaded a check today that was not yet entered into the checking account and it downloaded with leading zeros. I guess I will have to contact support again.

UKR

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20407804#Comment_20407804

Contact Quicken Support and have this issue escalated to the next level. They will most likely ask to review a download log file on your computer (and tell you how to send it in). This should help get the ball rolling towards a solution.

As the image you provided shows, the change to leading zeros is a recent change. I would suspect it's the bank who made that change and it's up to them to fix it.
Leading zeros are not supposed to be sent in on downloaded check numbers. Neither Q Windows nor Q Mac support leading zeros. The data field is formatted as text, not numeric decimal. Therefore a comparison of 1234 to 0000001234 does not match.

Richard@

Contacted support and was escalated to a higher level. All I got was that it is a problem for the bank to fix. Quicken must use what the bank sends.

My issue is "why am I the only one with this problem?" Super user Jacobs has the same bank that I do and he states that his checks download with no leading zeros.

I am totally frustrated!!

jacobs

I'm puzzled, too, why you and I are seeing different results downloading from the same bank. Here's what I see for a recently-downloaded check:

Note that the Check # column shows a four-digit check number, and the Payee name shows the Payee as "Check" plus the check number. When I look at this transaction with View > Show Inspector, I see this:

This shows that what was transmitted from Citizens — at the bottom under "From your financial institution" — had both a Payee and Memo of "Check". Quicken (or Intuit) made the Payee into a concatenation of the original Payee of "Check" and the check number, and blanked the Memo field.

In your example posted above, the check number has all the leading zeros, and Quicken didn't add that value to the Payee name of "Check". Why?

I checked one other thing. I logged onto the Citizens Bank website and did and Export of my recent transactions, selecting the format "Quicken using WebConnect". This results in "file.qfx" downloading to my Mac. I opened that file in TextEdit and did a find for "1481" to see what exactly Citizens is downloading. Here's the OFX/QFX for this check transaction :

<STMTTRN>
<TRNTYPE>CHECK
<DTPOSTED>20231229120000
<TRNAMT>-129.90
<FITID>61055763271202312290000001
<CHECKNUM>1481
<NAME>Check
<MEMO>Check
</STMTTRN>

As you can see, this exactly matches what's in the Quicken Transactions Inspector window from when I downloaded the transaction via Quicken Connect.

Perhaps you can download the QFX file and see if the transactions show the leading zeros. I suspect that they do, meaning the issue is Citizens downloading the leading zeros. Now, why you and I could download from the same bank and get transactions output differently is beyond me. Perhaps we have different types of checking accounts with Citizens, and different account types export differently?

Richard@

Jacobs, spent hours on the phone with Citizens today. Finally spoke to a technical supervisor who was puzzled by the problem. he opened a ticket on the problem and said someone will be in contact with me. I tried downloading from the bank's website with the same results - leading zeros. I will look at some of the transactions with transaction inspector to see what the bank sent. Will let you know what I see.