Check "Payee" entries automatically updated from what I entered to "Check ###"

Question

I am soooooo frustrated with Quicken. I was updating the Payee information in Quicken (windows, basic) to the actual payee name. I also updated or added the Category (another topic of frustration for another post). Quicken prompted me to ask if I really wanted to change a reconciled item. Yes, I did..since I wanted the payee and categories I entered to be what I entered. Lo and behold. Quicken update all of the payees I entered and more (others updated months ago) to "Check ###" ### being the number of the check.

First of all, Quicken's prompts or warnings are so vague in that they don't let you know what will happen if you say yes or no and there seems to be no way to revert (my ending balance has been wrong for over a year due to another vague warning that messed it up, so I ignore it). I could pull the last saved file but that would set me back even further.

Second, why isn't there an undo? If there is, it is well hidden.

Any words of wisdom welcome.

Chris_QPW · Answer

There isn't a "link" between the payee and a category.  You can't assume that because you changed a payee that the category will be changed in all other transactions.  If it worked that way it would mess up a lot of people.  Even this "change category" and asking for the other transactions with this payee to be changed is "borderline" and that is why it is an option, with a confirm.

For instance, I have a payee Safeway, mostly I use Groceries as the category, but if I have a big purchase at Safeway that fits into another category I will set that one transaction to another category, and I certainly don't want all the others changed.

There is a "sort of link" when the transaction is first downloaded in the sense that first the renaming rules are applied and then if the resulting payee matches memorized payee that payee entry's category will be used.

For changing existing transactions Find and Replace (Ctrl+H) is the old standby for doing that. You can also filter the register by typing in something in the text box at the top left and then use standard Windows select methods to select transactions.  And then right click to get the context menu and select Edit Transactions to change all the transactions payees, categories, …

dlvc · Answer

Thanks for the quick response and reference to the category info. I realized after I submitted my post (been a long day :-)) that some of the check payee mistakes were my fault (I missed a few when I was updating and thought the prompt had done the changes).

However, the category mistakes are Quickens. If I change Check ### to a payee the Category should update to whatever that payee is tied to in earlier entries, but it stays on whatever Quicken thinks it should be. Also, I noticed if the payee entry is Check ###, which makes sense when first pulled down, Quicken is guessing at a category, which then doesn't change once I update the Payee to the correct entry.

Thank you,

Chris_QPW · Answer

Unfortunately, everything you said is true, and there isn't much I can suggest other than point you at the preference that kicked that off:

Edit → Preferences → Data entry and QuickFill → Offer to update past transactions when category is changed

There isn't any undo for when multiple transactions are changed.  There is only an undo for delete if you do it right after the delete.

I'm also worried that there might be more problems than that setting above.  They started doing this:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7945741/curious-decision-to-enable-memorized-payee-and-announce-it

The reason I think more is going on, is that the preference above should have only affected the categories, it shouldn't have affected the payees.