How to deal with Canadian Interac e-Transfers?

Jibby

Hi folks, I am just getting started and hit this anomoly.

When I Interac e-Transfer to someone I want it to be treated like and expense and categorize it accordingly, but it shows up like a transfer. When I try to categorize it, I get a message

"You are recording a transfer back into the same account - Save it anyway?"

I'm not sure what will happen if I say "yes" to that.

I also get the same behavior when I get an e-Transfer from someone. I generally want to record those as a type of income but it is the same deal as above.

However from time to time I e-Transfer money between 2 of my own accounts and in those cases I do want it to show up exactly like it currently does.

Tom Young

It seems like Interact e-Transfers is more or less a Venmo/Debit card/Credit card sort of situation so I'm not really following along with what you're telling us.

Do you have an "Interac e-Tranfers" Account in your Quicken file? Are you relying on downloads into that Account to make entries into your Quicken file? You say "but it shows up like a transfer" but you don't say where it "shows up" nor what Account in your Quicken file is the "other side" of the transfer. (Or, maybe, it's the same Interac e-Transfer Account?) Can you post some screen shots of what you're seeing and where?

IF Interac e-Transfers is nothing more than an mechanism for moving money, and not an "account" in the sense that you expect it to have a balance, then I don't know why you have (if you have) an Interac e-Transfer Account in your file in the first place. So, for example if you're sending money from your checking Account to an online store, say, and Interac e-Transfer is the "mechanism" for sending that money, then I'd simply enter the transaction in the checking Account using the appropriate Category.

If Interac e-Transfer IS really an account that can carry a balance then it would be appropriate to have an Account with that name in your file of course, but then a "send" of cash could show up as a "deposit" (transfer) into the Interac e-Transfer Account, maybe followed by a "payment" out of the Account to the ultimate recipient?

You can see that I just don't have a good mental image of what's going on here, and who's doing what to whom.

That message "You are recording a transfer back into the same account - Save it anyway?"is a Quicken warning that you're NOT using a Category, you're NOT using a different Account in your file as the "other side" of the balanced entry you're trying to make, you're making the "other side" of the entry the SAME Account in which you're making the entry. Quicken will accept this sort of entry, frequently called "one-sided" or "self-referential" entry and in fact uses this sort of entry to establish the Opening Balance in an Account when you set it up. These kind of entries adjust the balance of an Account without affecting any Category or other Account in your file.

What's really confusing is that attempting to change a self-referential entry by substituting a Category for the self-referential entry [Checking] should NOT result in that warning.

Chris_QPW

@Jibby is there anything in the Check Num/Reference Num field?

Jibby

I guess I should have given more context for those that are not Canadian. Interac e-Transfer is a way to email money to people. Canadians send and receive millions of them a year, collectively. I will try to get a meaningful screenshot for you but the part that confuses me is why is emailing money to a friend showing up any different in the ledger than spending money at the store. They are both just money out of my account. Or why is it when a friend emails me money does it show up differently from my payroll deposit. They are both money in. I will work up a screen shot and then follow up.

Jibby

OK here it is - you can see one Interac E-transfer out - and instead of allowing me to categorize it like other items going out, it just shows the bank account name that it was sent from [Simplii Chequing]

And then at the bottom I received $20 from someone but instead of showing up like my salary above which would allow me to categorize it, it shows up as the account it went into.

Jibby

"is there anything in the Check Num/Reference Num field?"

I will try to locate this and see

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20418106#Comment_20418106

You need to turn the column on in the register to see it.

Jibby

Thanks - nothing in that column for any of my entries

Chris_QPW

OK, then it wasn't what I thought might be wrong. If it has TXFR in that column it locks the possible categories to just the transfers.

Given that, I would check to make sure you don't have a memorized payee for that payee that has the "category" as the name of your account.

Tom Young

If "TXFR" is showing up under the Check # (Cheque #?) column that if you attempt to change that Account to a Category then sometimes Quicken objects, (in my US Quicken file) with that "same account" complaint and sometimes it doesn't. I couldn't discern any pattern to it, though not having "TXFR" under the Check # column did seem to allow for "Classification" of the transaction.

I assume that the original entry came from whatever financial institution is behind "Simplii Checking?" (Showing the name of the Account would help here.) The effect of the entry as you know is to change the balance in the Account without affecting anything else in your file. If "TXFR" is in the Check # column then changing that to a blank or "EFT" would probably allow you to enter a Category here.

A better approach would be to make an entry manually when you send money or expect money effected by Interact e-Transfers. That way the subsequent download from your bank would either find a "Match" which you could accept, a "Near Match" which might require some editing of your entry to achieve a Match", or a "New" entry that you could connect to your manual entry.

volvogirl

Could it be auto filling the category from a prior transaction? What are you doing to fix it? Can't you just change the category on them? And when you do transfer between 2 of your own accounts then the category would be the other account and not the same as the account you are in, right?

smayer97

It appears that this is an auto-categorization issue. It seems that Quicken does not recognize the transaction (makes sense since this transaction as a unique "payee", as all Interac® transaction entries are unique with the receiver's (or sender's) name). As such, it makes sense that Quicken does not know what to categorize it as. Not sure what is in the transmission file that causes it to categorize it back into the same account but there is no issue in overriding this and adding a category. I also do find it odd that if you try to change the category that you get the Quicken message.

Once you save the recategorized transaction, and if you have "memorize transaction" turned on (sorry, I am a QMac and not a QWin user, so not sure the labelling there), then the categorization should be re-applied the next time Quicken encounters the same "payee".

An aside: Not that it matters but Simplii is the branding name for an online only banking product from the CIBC in Canada (acting link an online only bank; in other words, not a subsidiary).

Chris_QPW

@smayer97 That is a good suggestion. I forgot about automatic categorization especially for the first time Quicken encounters a new payee, since I have long ago turned off of that off.

Here is the flow of how Quicken Windows applies these preferences/existing information.

When the transaction is downloaded the first thing Quicken checks is if you have the "Use my existing renaming rules" on, and if there is a renaming rule that matches. If this is true, then the downloaded payee gets renamed to what is in the payee renaming rule. Note that if this matches then "Automatically apply Quicken's suggested name to payee" will not be used even if it is turned on.

The next step is that no renaming rules where applied, and you "Automatically apply Quicken's suggested name to payee" on it "might" change the payee's name based on some "server information".

The next step is to see if the resulting payee matches an entry in the Memorized Payee List. If it finds a match it will use the category/tag/check number/memo (the memo is not used if the downloaded transaction has a memo, using the downloaded memo can be turned off with a different option in the Account Details). Note it is possible to have more than one entry for a given payee in the Memorized Payee List, in this case which one will be picked has changed from time to time. I suggest for any downloaded payee that you want to match, you only have one entry for each payee in the Memorized Payee List.

If no payee in the Memorized Payee List matched and "Automatically categorize transactions" is on, then Quicken will make a guess at the category. This might be what has happened here like @smayer97 suggested.

Note that if "Automatically memorize new payees" is on, then Quicken will put a new entry for that payee in the Memorized Payee List unless there is already a payee in that list, and it is locked. I might add that recently they changed the way these automatic settings work and will put in new entries even if the only thing that changes is the amount. Before they didn't is only the amount changed (see the thread I have referenced below).

All of this "guessing" might be good for the person just starting out and having to get all their payees categorized, but I believe that not to long afterwards they should turn of these and then when new transactions come in and don't have a category that you fill it in with what you want and then just do Ctrl+M to memorize that transaction (you can memorize it even before you save it).

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

Arctic Hare

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7947198/how-to-deal-with-interac-e-transfers

I'm the first Canadian SuperUser weighing in here. This discussion seems to have gone way off course…

I process similar Interac e-Transfers frequently and don't experience any problems with them.

There are two scenarios to consider:

1. The Interac e-Transfers is a transfer of funds between two accounts that are tracked in the Quicken file.
2. The Interac e-Transfer is a transfer to or from a party or account for which there is no account in the Quicken file.

For case #1, I recommend manually entering a Transfer transaction in Quicken and then matching (probably manually) the downloaded transactions to the Transfer. You may need to avoid using automatically enter downloaded transactions in the register for this to work properly.

For case #2, simply edit the Payee and the category to suit your preferences.

Case #1 and Case #2 are mutually exclusive. You can't have a transaction that is both an inter-account transfer and be categorized as income/expense. It is either one or the other. If you are trying to make it both then you are not understanding that a Quicken file can only represent one entity, with the exception of defining a business and segregating the business income. A transaction can't be a transfer between two accounts owned by a common entity AND income/expense at the same time. Put another way, for any transaction, you need to choose between it being a transfer between your own accounts, in which case it can't be income or expense; OR it is income or expense and it is not a transfer between your own accounts. If you are trying to differentiate between your personal finances and that of a business you own/run then that is another discussion.

JoelC

@Jibby I am another Canadian user chiming in here and note:

i) @Arctic Hare is completely corect. Moving funds between two accounts is either a) entered as a transfer between accounts (and thus not treated as income / expense) or b) entered separately in each account in which case it can be treated as an income / expense in the two different accounts.

ii) This was discussed a while back and note that I had this problem because of CAD accounting / tax rules. I have 1 Quicken file that tracks my personal accounts and my business accounts. Per Canadian accounting / tax rules a transfer of my salary from my business to me personally is an expense to my business and an income to me (not so in the US). To make this work I enter the transfer as two separate unlinked amounts.

I hope this helps.

Chris_QPW

Per Canadian accounting / tax rules a transfer of my salary from my business to me personally is an expense to my business and an income to me (not so in the US).

In the US it would depend on the "business type". What you see mentioned here the most is a "Schedule C". This is setup for the case where the personal and business is one tax entity. As such, moving from a business account to a personal account doesn't move from one tax entity to another. But for other business types where the business is a separate tax entity, it would be recorded just like in Canada.

JoelC

@Chris_QPW appreciate the added clarification.