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Curious decision to enable memorized payee, and announce it.

Chris_QPW

The moment I saw this in the release notes, I said I sure hope they didn't put in some other "guessing system":

Quicken now automatically remembers new payees and any changes in categories and amounts when entering transactions, simplifying the categorization process.

Then after the install, I ran One Step Update and got this:

Quicken now automatically remembers new payees and any changes in categories and amounts when entering transactions, simplifying the categorization process.

And sure, enough this turned this setting back on:

Can one of the moderators (or anyone else) explain this change?

On the surface, it just looks like it is turning this decades old setting on (one time), but with all the big deal they are making about it "something must have been changed".

From the description I can' imaging what that would be. When that option is on it created memorized payee entries as you enter/change transaction payee, so what is different now?

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Quicken Kristina

Hello @Chris_QPW,

When I check the release notes, I can see for Version 54.9 it shows "Quicken now automatically remembers new payees and any changes in categories and amounts when entering transactions, simplifying the categorization process." under the What's improved section. That pop up is to call attention to the fact the process has been improved (and that it was turned on, so that those who don't want to use it know to turn it off again).

I hope this helps!

Chris_QPW

Okay I'll bite what's improved?

Jim_Harman

Some time ago, Quicken changed the automatic categorization, which is apparently is now crowdsourced to some extent. The Help on automatic payee renaming and categorization is here

https://help.quicken.com/display/WIN/About%2Bthe%2Bway%2BQuicken%2Bsuggests%2Bcategories%2Band%2Bpayees

Originally there was a fixed list of Payees that mapped to standard Categories, but near the bottom of the Help it says

About ACE

Quicken has implemented Automatic Categorization Engine (ACE) functionality in an effort to make entering downloaded transactions easier and more uniform across multiple users. ACE learns and evolves based on user-modified data and, as such, may display different names than you would expect. For more information see this support article about ACE.

https://www.quicken.com/support/how-handle-unrecognized-payee-names-quicken

I think they have checked the Automatic categorization checkbox in Preferences to get more people to use it.

I also noticed that the checkbox at Edit > Preferences > Data entry and QuickFill > Automatically memorize new Payees is now checked in my working data file as well.

Chris_QPW

Automatic memorize new payees didn't change from off to on for me, only change was turning on Automatic categorize transactions, like they said in their message above.

One of my biggest complaints about renaming rules is defaulting to "Quicken name" instead of "Payee contains", but that isn't anything new, and neither is ACE.

If they didn't actually change anything and are just turning on the Automatic categorization setting to get people to use it about as good of an idea as turning on Automatic transaction entry mode to try to get all the old-time user to switch over. But of these settings are on by default for new users.

To me there has to be a compelling change that makes it worth pushing the long-time users that have had this setting off to now turn it on.

Telling me that it is "new and improved" doesn't tell me anything, and as a result, the first thing I did is turn it off.

I guess it doesn't really matter, there probably is no compelling reason why I would want that setting on.

splasher

I get the impression from personal experience that the Preference is only turned on if you use EWC/EWC+. My lone OSU download is a Direct Connect download from Edward Jones. I have upgraded to R54.9 and done OSU twice (no new transactions either time) since and the Preference has NOT been changed. I also have Web Connect accounts (7 total) that I have had downloads in that did not cause the change in Preferences.

So, it could be that because I haven't had anything downloaded in DC or it being DC or it being investment accounts that it hasn't been changed but I did get the pop-up message that QPW showed when I moved from the Portfolio (my startup view) to my checking account register.

Quicken did turn on Automatically memorize new Payees as noted by Jim Harman which I normally have turned off (deselected). This one might not be recent, but it is something I would never have turned on.

Chris_QPW

@splasher I think you are right about ACE not being used for Direct Connect.

The truth is when I started this thread, I didn't expect an answer, and so far, I haven't got one.

This is typical of Quicken Inc and Intuit before them. They seem to have the attitude that "The user is too stupid for the full information on how things work, so let's just throw out marketing tag lines.".

Turning an option (or two) back on that have been there for years isn't "new and improved". And the statement "new and improved" doesn't tell the person anything.

But the above message and behavior does sound like ""The user is too stupid to know that they should use this option that they purposely turned off, so we will turn it back on again, and they will be too stupid to turn it right back off.".

I would like to believe that there is more to this, but we have only what they have put out to go by.

I guess we should be grateful that they still let us turn the option off.

splasher

And the statement "new and improved" doesn't tell the person anything.

Sure it does, it indicates a price increase is coming, oh wait, we already knew that.

imdcareys

This part might imply an improvement: " simplifying the categorization process."

It doesn't do that for us.

Go to Home Depot and buy a plant. Categorize that to "Lawn & Garden".

Go back to Home Depot and buy a Kitchen Faucet…

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20412679#Comment_20412679

I believe that your example is impossible to "simplify". Quicken (the program) simply doesn't have that kind of information. And I don't believe even ACE has it.

And short of doing that magic, what could they really "simplify"?

Whatever it is they aren't explaining what it is.

And that is the whole point. Here they are claiming to have done something and they can't even bother to tell the user what they did and how it will improve their use of Quicken.

But this is so typical of Quicken Windows development. They didn't even mention that R54.9 now has a feature to import Mint data!

Chris_QPW

Well, I just found one of the improvements. Not that I would have really associated it with this if hadn't been for the notices and this discussion. The automatic creating of renaming rules confirmation prompt has changed:

This might be tied into this…

But this of course isn't "categorization" so maybe this is just another change they failed to document.

splasher

@Chris_QPW How did you get this to pop-up? I've tried a bunch of things that I could think of, but no luck.

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20412830#Comment_20412830

I renamed a payee of recently downloaded transaction.

splasher

Bingo. I didn't have the "automatically create rule" in Preferences→Downloaded Transactions turned on.

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20412863#Comment_20412863

I used to have this turned off before, but then realized that it really doesn't cause me any problems as long as the confirm is on. And it can be helpful.

imdcareys

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20412764#Comment_20412764

Exactly. Seems they would classify the faucet as Lawn & Garden just because it was Home Depot again. That would require effort to correct.

Chris_QPW

Just wait, soon AI will fix it. 🤣

There was a post on Bored Panda where they talked about someone with a picture that basically so far away the pixels are larger than the license plate, and they push the "enhance button" and all of a sudden, they have a clear picture of the license plate. And then people post something like, "Yeah back then they couldn't do that, but now AI can do it."

There was a similar post on here asking for AI to be used to solve problems like this.

I think one of the biggest dangers of AI is the fact that people think it has magic qualities.

If the data isn't there, then it is a guess at best.

Jim_Harman

For the record, I installed R54.9 today and the "Automatically memorize new payees" setting was checked when it had not been before.

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20413034#Comment_20413034

I actually, saw this too one time (I have been switching versions testing things a lot lately).

So, for sure people should check both the memorizing of categories and payees settings after installing R54.9 to make sure they are what they want.

Biker6238

Thank you Chris_QPW. This was crazy. I appreciated the posting so I knew what had happened. I guess I need to read and interpret release notes carefully. This one in my opinion deserved a separate individual e-mail from Quicken specific to this change so people knew to preemptively fix the setting once the release downloaded.

I've been a Quicken user for over 30 years and of course use its efficiencies for programming the Memorized Payee List (and Bill and Income Reminders) for various payees and the Category/Splits they belong to. I program amounts only for ones that are the same each time. Those are few. I have about 385 entries on my Memorized Payee list, and only 29 of them (7.5%) are the same amount each time. Having Quicken suddenly remember the payee AND the amount each time was confounding and time-consuming to go back and fix. I knew where to go to fix the setting but had to play with that a bit to be sure it was still doing what I wanted it to. Fortunately I realized what was happening when I was logging a credit card payment and suddenly it populated with the amount from the previous credit card payment. But it had already done enough damage to my list to take a while to go back and clean it up. It had already added several entries as well as filled in amounts on ones I didn't want it to. This was annoying. Thank you again for the post.

Chris_QPW

@Biker6238 Wow!

It sounds like you have solved the mystery of what they what they were talking about but wouldn't just say it!

Having Quicken suddenly remember the payee AND the amount each time was confounding and time-consuming to go back and fix.

So, that is what they changed!

That is a terrible idea!

Whoever came up with this as "make it easier" has never used Quicken!

Hopefully locking your memorized payees can help, but my main suggestion would be to make sure memorizing of the payees and Automatically categorize transactions are off for anyone other than someone just starting out. And now this is change, it is going to be even less helpful.

I can't think of anything worse than memorizing a payee for even single time the amount changes. Since when has anyone bought the exact same amount at the grocery store?

The biggest problem with multiple entries for a given payee is "which do you pick". There isn't a "right answer" when downloading transactions and one has to be picked.

Allowing multiple payee entries makes sense for manual entry use, but not for downloading transactions. This is a case where they combined two different functions, and they get in a way of each other.

I always lock all of my payees and only have one entry per payee. I don't do much manual entry, so I don't worry about being able to up and down arrow to get a category or such.

Chris_QPW

The more I think of this, people should be up and arms about this change.

Anyone that has the memorized payee preference on is going to quickly get their memorized payee list filled with garage. And since in some cases having a very large number of memorized payees has caused performance problems, this be avoided just for that reason alone!

NOTE That this is going to affect the newest users the most. Ones that have no idea about how this all works. And might not speak up.

Jim_Harman

I have occasionally found it useful to have multiple entries in the MPL for one Payee, when there are several Categories that I use regularly with that Payee. Amazon and Home Depot are examples.

If there are multiple entries, they are shown in the Recently Used section at the top of the Category dropdown. That makes it easy to select the category without typing it in, but unfortunately that section is organized alphabetically by Category rather than showing the most recent or most often used Category at the top.

Chris_QPW

@Jim_Harman I should have made it clearer, that there is definitely a use case for multiple entries in the memorized payee list for a payee, certainly for the person that does a lot of manual entry (not for me, but for others). But the point is that I can't think of anyone that wants a new entry every time the amount changes.

Tominator

Agree with all the comments here. This is a stupid idea. I only noticed it because I was accepting downloaded transactions from my Amazon Credit Card. The next transaction to be accepted was prefilled with a weird category and tag. I realized it had to be coming from the memorized payee list and found that it had been turned back on and there were now 20 garbage transactions there. If you use an Amazon card for all your Amazon purchases, 90% the transaction payees will be either Amazon Marketplace or Amazon. That alone renders auto-categorize useless.

LEAVE US ALONE QUICKEN!!!

Tominator

Well I just found a related issue, I'd actually call it a bug. Quicken created a whole bunch of new entries in the Memorized Payee list after I did a find and replace to update some categories. OMG. I now have 240+ new repetitive entries all for the same PAYEE after doing running find & replace 3x on 84 transactons. !!! My domain provider, NAME-CHEAP.COM appends a transaction ID to its name on credit card charges. So NAME-CHEAP 8YXL56 might be the payee on one charge while different IDs show up on all others. Apparently renaming everything to just NAME-CHEAP (without a rule) and recategorizing from Web Hosting to Domain Service caused Quicken to create 40 new memorized payees ALL WITH THE SAME NAME, just different amounts for each two categories. Here's just one part of this behavior. You'll note that the date created is today's date (2/9/24). This is with auto-memorize and auto-categorize TURNED OFF!!

Chris_QPW

I don't have any of these, but I also have all my Memorized Payees locked.

Tominator

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20416700#Comment_20416700

I don't think the lock status matters. These are completely new unlocked entries.

Chris_QPW

Hmm, then I wonder why I'm so lucky.

For what it is worth here are my preference if you want to check yours against them.

Chris_QPW

Do you have Sync to Mobile/Web on? It has been known to muck with the Memorized Payee list.

Chris_QPW

I just tried a find and replace on a payee, it didn't create a whole bunch of new payees, but it did change the payee in the Memorized Payee list too, not just in the register!

That is definitely new, and not wanted!