Pending transactions don't show

Marybeth1234

Switched from Mint. Testing Quicken Classic. I am puzzled. I am not seeing pending transactions. Is this feature not available in Quicken Classic. I am also testing Monarch and the pending transactions appear so I know it's not my bank issue. Is there a setting that can be activated to enable pending transactions to show? This is a major deal breaker and I will bail out if this feature is not available.

Chris_QPW

It has always been the "policy" of Quicken to have the downloads not include the pending transactions mostly for the very reason there isn't anything in the system to reverse such a transaction if it doesn't go through.

A couple of times they have tried to have pending transactions as an option, and both times they had quickly reverse that decision because of all the problems it caused.

Marybeth1234

Thank you for the quick response! Is there a reason Quicken Simplifi shows pending transactions but Quicken Classic doesn't? It seems that other platforms figured a way to show pending transactions except for Quick Classic?

Chris_QPW

I think the main reason the two different data sources are different in how reliable such information is.

One of the most common threads for Quicken Classic is "why is that XXX financial institution is including pending transactions in the online balance (when they know that they aren't sending the pending transactions)".

Clearly if the financial institutions can't keep the data, they send to Quicken Classic consistent, then Quicken is going to have problems with this. Part of this is history. Back when Quicken was created, "someone" (both the creators of Quicken and financial institutions and such) decided that pending transactions shouldn't be sent. And so, for the most part that has been "worked out", but when switching trying to get all those financial institutions send the right "different data" is really hard. And that goes for the internal code of Quicken. A lot of the failure to launch with pending transactions in Quicken Classic was definitely in Quicken. The developers didn't really understand all the places in Quicken Classic that this kind of change affected.

Maybe someday they will try again and get it "mostly working", but that day isn't today.

splasher

Why would you want the before TIP amount in a restaurant charge when it is going to go up when it posts as finalized? Even worse, how about the credit check pending charge at the gas pump for either $1 or $50 (depending on the merchant) for a $20 final charge? I've even seen where the final charge comes through and it takes a few days later for the pending charge to go away.

Marybeth1234

I'd like to view the current month's spending as close to real-time as possible. Currently, I have 20 pending credit card transactions and Quicken is not reflecting an accurate picture of my monthly spending. The system is supposed to be live, and I should be able to toggle between cleared and pending transactions. Similar to outstanding checks in the accounting system, which haven't cleared yet but are accounted for in the balance, I want to see an accurate representation of how much has been spent to date on a live basis. The variations in tips and gas station transactions are negligible, and the primary concern is having a real-time understanding of total spending without waiting days which I thought is the purpose of Quicken.

splasher

I have always thought of Quicken registers being about facts, not guesses which is what you get if you include pending transactions.

If you think $1 or $50 pending for a $20 gas purchase is negligible, then you must be dealing in thousands of dollars because to me, that difference is enough to spend some time trying to find the issue. I always reconcile to the penny, so having pending transactions that might change in the future is something I don't want to deal with.

Marybeth1234

That's why you should be able to toggle the pending transactions off and work off the cleared transactions if you wish or toggle the pending transactions on to see your estimated spend to date. For me, I have $2,000 of pending transactions that I committed to on my credit card, and just like with the outstanding checks, I need to know what my approximate live spend to date is. Otherwise, it becomes a once-a-month reconciliation after the month is closed, and I can then see everything cleared for the month, which doesn't make it a live system.

RichardCSchreyer

Anytime I want to see what I have committed on my credit card, I log into my CC account and it tells me what my current spend is including pending. Quicken then posts the transactions and classifies them for me so I know what I actually spent my money on an actual balance basis for each CC account.…[Removed- Beta]

Marybeth1234

Logging into the credit card accounts goes against Quicken's purpose of information aggregation. I am not sure what problems Quicken had with the ability to toggle the pending transactions on and off, but the competitors like Monarch and even Quicken's own sister product Quicken Simplifi have the ability to show pending transactions, but Quicken Classic lacks this option? It’s unfortunate as I liked Quicken but find it more suited for month-end reconciliation rather than a live system.

q_lurker

@Marybeth1234 wrote:

The system is supposed to be live,…

I would say that is a misperception. I’d go a step further and offer that because Quicken began as a desktop PC program well before online real-time financial institution access, the program’s roots are not well suited to it being a “live” system.

Those users trying to synchronize between a “live” mobile app and the desktop database have such frequent issues that I stay far away from it.

Chris_QPW

I would go even further than @q_lurker and say that it isn't even just the program, most of the longtime Quicken users don't want to see pending transactions.

And that reminded me of another problem that Quicken Classic has that the other programs you mentioned don't have to face. I'm pretty sure none of the ones you are talking about give you the option not to show pending transactions.

For longtime Quicken users, that would be a requirement. And that was part of the problem when they made the couple of attempts to put pending transactions in to Quicken Classic. They had to get it to work in both modes and couldn't "during the firestorm". From what I saw, they might have been able to get most of the complaints fixed. But when the forum lit up with hundreds of complaints, they took the fast route out of the problem.

But even if they had fixed those problems, what would have happened is a doubling of the complaints. As I mentioned before there are currently complaints about the Online Balance having pending transactions in it, but only for some financial institutions, and even only at certain times. So, the data that is being feed in isn't 100% reliable. Now add, in a new flow, with the opposite expectation and I'm sure you get at least double the complaints for certain financial institutions. And probably more.

They recently added a "Simple Investing mode" which only has the security positions and cash balance. Opposed to the old/standard "Complete investing mode" which goes off of the transactions. Both kinds of information were always downloaded, but it wasn't until they put in the Simple investing mode was the "summary information" made really visible. And sure enough, for some financial institutions/account types the summary information is wrong. And so, yet another source of complaints added at the same time a new feature is added.

Strike

I find it annoying that they cannot figure this out, but since quicken will reconcile with what I manually enter, I will stick with it. I have noticed that monarch shows transactions as pending days after my bank has posted them and does not reconcile with checks I manually enter. To me that is a bigger issue since I would have to either delete the new transaction coming from the bank or find the old one and delete it. I hear the concerns of the pending transactions not being real, but I am with others wanting to see pending transactions as it is a way to see if someone has stolen my card info and is charging illegitimate transactions to it. That along with the ability to see a close to accurate view of my month is why I would like to see my pending transactions.

splasher

I hear the concerns of the pending transactions not being real, but I am with others wanting to see pending transactions as it is a way to see if someone has stolen my card info and is charging illegitimate transactions to it. 

If you want to see that, setup an alert on your CC's website to send an email for any charge over a certain amount.