Renaming Rules

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Renaming Rules Frustration [edited].

PetrS

Let me clarify a few things here and share my own problem, which is related to this.

As far as I can tell, Quicken has 2 types of renaming rules - automatic/hidden ones and user-created ones. One can easily manage/create/delete user-created rules but as far as I know, there is no good way to manage the renaming rules that Quicken "smartly" created for me.

In my case, anytime a downloaded payee contains "Kirkland", Quicken renames this to "Kirkland" and categorizes it as a Furniture Store. I have about 6 user-created rules and none of them does this. And it is really annoying, since I live in Kirkland and quite a few different payees contain "Kirkland" in their name.

If there is a way to manage the hidden renaming rules, please someone let me know! And if not, Quicken people, please do something about it!!!

Chris_QPW

@PetrS In a way Quicken actually has three sources of renaming rules.

The first is this one:

Select the ? to get help on it you get this:

I will let you read all about that for yourself.

The other two are just two selections in the renaming rules.

Again, there is a ? to look at the help on this, but Quicken name is again some "guessing". Whereas If payee contains is using directly what is in payee and the memo to match and rename. Personally, I always set this to If payee contains, even though Quicken name is the default. There have been reports for instance that Quicken name doesn't look in the memo for matches to determine to rename or not. Payee contains looks for the match in both.

The first thing will point out is you notice that I have "Automatically apply Quicken's suggested name to payee".

This isn't really a bad option if you are just starting out and you have no renaming rules. You got to start somewhere, I guess. But no matter how you cut it this is always a guess. I don't like guesses for mine, especially since I have been doing this for years and I rarely have a new payee.

And then there is this:

What all that means is that as I'm reviewing the downloaded transaction, if I change the payee's name Quicken will prompt me to create a renaming rule for it.

My end goal is always to remove Quicken's "guessing". (Note that I have Quicken's Automatic categorization off too for the very same reason).

If there is a way to manage the hidden renaming rules, please someone let me know! And if not, Quicken people, please do something about it!!!

This isn't really in their power to change. From what I understand "ACE" as described in the help is implemented on the server, not in Quicken itself, and it isn't really a set of rules that a user and change.

But because your renaming rules always win (when they match) this shouldn't be needed. Let me state that again so it is clear. Say I have a renaming rule, and I have Automatically apply Quicken's suggest name to payee option on. Your renaming rules are checked first, and only if they fail to match doesn't it go on to this automatic/guess.

So, there isn't a log of "danger" of having it on, but I just like taking that out of the picture.

If you are having problems with your renaming rules matching that is a different subject, and the main guesses I would suggest is first make sure that the option to use your renaming rules is on, like I have above, and second go into the renaming rule and change "Quicken name" to "payee contains".