Automatic Categorization is OFF but Quicken still adds categories

feldsewemb

I'm using Quicken for Windows for a small business. We frequently order a lot of our supplies from Amazon. I've UNCHECKED the option for Quicken to automatically categorize transactions, but it still does so. Even to the point that it splits an amount for our phone/internet bill that was from the first bill we received from that company that had extra charges, so for the last year, each month I have to remove extra split lines in the category line.

I've had to resort to using PO numbers that include a shorthand version of that item's category on my orders so that when the categories are auto-applied, I don't get confused when doing my bookkeeping.

It's ridiculous that this setting doesn't work. My work-around for now is that every time I open Quicken, the first thing I do is remove all the categories that Quicken has assigned to new transactions. The only ones that would actually be correct are our electric and gas bills. All of our other transactions, I have to manually change.

Is there another setting somewhere that would actually turn this off?

Chris_QPW

The preference does work for what it was intended.

This preference is at the tail end of other processing:

It is basically saying that if it gets to the end of the processing and the category isn't yet filled in, then make a guess at it. As far as I'm concerned, I consider it the "new user to get started" option.

There is also confusion on these preferences:

It is often stated that they control if the downloaded transactions get categorized based on the memorized payees. They don't control that. They control this for manual entry only.

So, what really controls if a downloaded transaction is going to be automatically categorized (and not guessed at)?

The memorized payees list. If the payee matches a payee entry on the memorized payee list and the "Never Auto-categorize" box for it isn't selected, it will use that category.

And note that this setting being on might be creating memorized payees and therefore categories might be creating entries you don't want.