Match function - We need a way to turn it off!!!

davecreasy

I've been a Quicken user for 25+ years. I've had issues with the Auto-Match function for years. After reading items on this website, I see others have had the same issue. I want to manually clear my financial transactions. I don't need nor do I want "help". The Auto-match in Quicken "never" correctly clears a transaction for me. This just leads to an imbalance in my banking and credit card accounts which I then need to sort out. This just wastes my time.

Quicken software team!!!! Give users the ability to turn Auto-match off!!!

UKR

Transaction download problems with matching and adding new transactions correctly

First please ensure that all optional settings in Quicken pertaining to recall, memorization, automatic categorization and renaming of payee names are enabled. You find those settings in Edit / Preferences / Data Entry & Quickfill and Downloaded Transactions. Additional settings for the detection and processing of transfer transactions can be found in Edit / Preferences / Transfer detection.

Are you automatically accepting downloaded transactions into your registers?

If you are relying on Quicken to "automagically" fill your account registers from downloaded transactions, you may run into problems. Despite all efforts by the Quicken programmers, the "Autopilot" (that's my name for the part of the Quicken program which processes downloaded transactions and converts them into new register transactions) is not infallible. For that process to work 100% of the time one would need a crystal ball because the information downloaded from the banks often is just too terse and cryptic.

You should, at least for a while, turn off the "automatically accept downloaded transactions into registers" setting to gain better control over what is downloaded and what to do with it. Click on and review each downloaded transaction, make changes if necessary (e.g., to get a payee name = "Starbucks" instead of "POS TRANS 070119 STARBU", "POS TRANS 070219 STARBU", "POS TRANS 070319 STARBU" or to assign a category) before you click to accept each transaction.

Any changes you make to downloaded Payee Names are remembered in Renaming Rules.

Any other changes you make (add/change Category or Memo text) are remembered in the Memorized Payee List.

Next time the same transaction for this Payee comes along, Quicken should remember and give you a better new register transaction.
Paper checks you write should be recorded in Quicken as you write the check (and BEFORE you download transactions which might contain the cleared check). That gives you a register transaction with correct check number, payee name and category. No matter what information is downloaded from the bank, you already have a correct register transaction which the downloaded data cannot mess up.

In case you have issues with transfer transactions not being generated correctly:

For best results manually enter transfer transactions into your register BEFORE you download transactions from the bank which contain the transfer confirmations. For recurring transfers use scheduled reminders and enter them a day or two before the due date.

Be sure to use distinct Payee Names for each transfer / credit card payment to avoid confusing Quicken - memorized payee entries.

That takes the guesswork out of the Autopilot's process. Because a correctly entered transfer transaction already exists in your account registers, the Autopilot should just match the downloaded transfer transaction to the existing one in both accounts.

Where are the "Auto-accept downloaded transaction" settings?

There are two places where this is controlled in Quicken for Windows:
- Globally, for all accounts, in Edit / Preferences / Downloaded Transactions
- For each account individually, the global setting can be overridden from the Edit Account Details screen, Online Services Tab. Look for blue text "Automatic Entry is: ON / OFF". Click the text to change the setting.

Quicken Anja

Hello @davecreasy,

For clarification; you posted this in the Quicken on the Web Ideas category, is this meant as a request for the Web app, or are you trying to make a suggestion for either of the Mac or Windows desktop program?

Check back and let us know! Thank you.

davecreasy

My mistake. I use the Windows desktop version of Quicken. So, this suggestion is for the desktop version of quicken.

Thanks for clarifying.

Chris_QPW

What you are describing isn't Auto-match.

I want to manually clear my financial transactions

This has nothing to do with "matching".

Matching is the process of combining an existing transaction with a downloaded one. It will get "cleared" as part of that process, but it isn't really why it is "cleared".

If you have a downloaded transaction, it will be marked cleared no matter if it matches to an existing transaction or not.

That is because Quicken Windows only downloads posted transactions, and therefore all downloaded transactions are marked clear by Quicken because by definition they have cleared your financial institution. The CLR field has this meaning, uncleared, a transaction manually entered in the register that has yet to clear the financial institution. Cleared, the financial institution has posted that transaction to your account. Reconciled, this is you making sure that your records match the financial institutions.

Given that you are a 25+ user I can almost 100% guarantee that you aren't using automatic transaction entry mode, so your transactions are going to the Downloaded Transactions tab, and if "matching" was the problem you could have unmatched there. But you didn't mention that at all, because I suspect that you aren't really talking about matching. Even in automatic transaction entry mode there is a way to unmatch if the match is matching the wrong existing transaction with the downloaded one.

From what I understand of this request the use case is to mimic a paper check book. In that case one looks at their financial institution's statement and checks off the given check in the check book. This of course was needed at the time because your financial institution's statement and check book can't talk to each other like Quicken and the financial institution can.

davecreasy

Sorry, I'll be more specific. I am not a Quicken power user. I use Quicken for one purpose, download and budget cash transactions from my checking, credit card and investment accounts, and then place those transactions in budget categories that I created. I don't let Quicken "help" me with the transactions other than to suggest a budget category. Example - CVS goes in my medical budget account. So when a charge from CVS is downloaded, Quicken Auto-fills the budget catigory with "medical". But I still manually approve the selection and change it if necessary.

On occasion, when the dollar amount of the new downloaded transaction "matches" a recent, previously downloaded & cleared transaction, Quicken tries to "Match" the transaction to the budget category from the previously cleared transaction. The only thing that is the same between the two transactions is the dollar amount. One transaction could be from CVS and the other from Home Depot. If I'm not paying attention, and accept the transaction, as suggested by Quicken, the new transaction amount goes into the wrong budget category.

So, that is the "Match" function that I'd like to turn off. I like the fact that Quicken suggests a budget category for a new downloaded transaction. Again, using CVS as an example. 90% of my CVS charges go in my medical budget category, but not 100%. So, I like that Quicken auto-fills the budget catigory box, but I still manually approve it. What I don't like is when it tries to "Match" the transaction to a previously downloaded / cleared transaction

I hope this clearers up my question,

Thanks

Chris_QPW

This doesn't make sense to me. Quicken doesn't match downloaded transactions to downloaded transactions, only to manually entered transactions (which include entered with reminders). And if it matches, you end up with one transaction (the manually entered transaction and the downloaded one are merged together), you don't get a new transaction. And the downloaded transaction doesn't have any category information in it, that would come from the manually entered transaction (one of the main reasons that the two transactions are merged, the user pre-sets the category to what they want by it being in the manually entered transaction).

Here is what matching to a manually entered transaction looks like in comparison to a new transaction when in automatic transaction entry mode:

Where is the same when not in automatic transaction mode:

The different selections in the Edit menu: Make New, makes it new and doesn't try to match anything other manually entered transaction. Make all new, do the same for all matches. Unmatch, this one but if another manually entered transaction matches match it.

What's more the selection of a category doesn't work that way. It is never based on the amount. What happens is first if there is a payee renaming rule that matches the payee's name is changed, then that payee is looked up in the memorized payee list. If a payee matches, it is at that point that it takes the category out of that entry and uses it for the downloaded transaction. Note that there could be multiple payee entries, and Quicken wouldn't know which one to select, so it is best make sure there is only one entry per payee in the Memorized Payee List (this is on the Tools menu) and to lock the payee entry so that it doesn't change.

There is one more "matching" that works by amount, that is automatic transfer matching. But that would be if two amounts are the same, but with opposite signs, and in two different accounts.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7944737/faq-automatic-transfer-detection-usage

davecreasy

The transactions that I'm referring to are all downloaded from my financial institutions. None are manually entered.

I made the change in Transfer detection that you show above. I had "automatically create transfers" checked.

Lets see if that makes a difference.

Thanks