Add Account without historical data

badhutx

All the downloaded payees start to drive me crazy after a while. I'm organizational neat freak I guess. There are tons of payees now in my Quicken file with all kinds of names. If I were to start a new file, is there anyway I can add an account and have it connect to my bank and only get the current balance without downloading 3 months worth of random payee names?

jacobs

If I were to start a new file, is there anyway I can add an account and have it connect to my bank and only get the current balance without downloading 3 months worth of random payee names?

I don't think so — but there's an easy solution if that's what you want. Start the new file, connect your account, and let it download the three months of transactions. then select all the transactions and delete them! Quicken won't re-download deleted transactions; it will just create an adjust meant to get your account balance correct. The key to this is that if you delete all the transactions used by a particular Payee, that Payee will automatically be removed from the database. So if you delete all the transactions, there won't be any Payees in your Payee window.

The long-term way to keep your neat freak happy is to do some work too organize/clean-up your Payees — whether you do this with your existing data file or do it moving forward with a new data file. First, for future transactions, create Renaming Rules to standardize any Payee names Quicken doesn't do automatically. If you have transactions like "Exxon #1234 Anytown" and "Exxon #2345 Anothertown", a Renaming rule can make all your Exxon transactions simply have "Exxon" as the Payee. For existing transactions, it's easy to accomplish a lot of organization in the Window > Payees & Rules window. You can select two or more Payees and merge them into one. And for old Payees you don't want to see anymore when entering transactions — such as Payees that were a one-time purchase while on a vacation, or a place that's gone out of business — you can click the "Hidden" checkbox for that Payee; the Payee name will remain on any existing transactions so your history is untouched, but it won't show up in the suggested Payee list an more.

It can seem like a daunting job to clean up your Payee list, especially if you've been using Quicken for many years. Just don't try to do it all at once and get overwhelmed. Maybe this weekend review your "A" to "C" Payees, and next week tackle "D to G" and so on.

QuickUserPSP

[Deleted by QuickUserPSP - wrong version noted]

jacobs

If I were to start a new file, is there anyway I can add an account and have it connect to my bank and only get the current balance without downloading 3 months worth of random payee names?

I don't think so — but there's an easy solution if that's what you want. Start the new file, connect your account, and let it download the three months of transactions. then select all the transactions and delete them! Quicken won't re-download deleted transactions; it will just create an adjust meant to get your account balance correct. The key to this is that if you delete all the transactions used by a particular Payee, that Payee will automatically be removed from the database. So if you delete all the transactions, there won't be any Payees in your Payee window.

The long-term way to keep your neat freak happy is to do some work too organize/clean-up your Payees — whether you do this with your existing data file or do it moving forward with a new data file. First, for future transactions, create Renaming Rules to standardize any Payee names Quicken doesn't do automatically. If you have transactions like "Exxon #1234 Anytown" and "Exxon #2345 Anothertown", a Renaming rule can make all your Exxon transactions simply have "Exxon" as the Payee. For existing transactions, it's easy to accomplish a lot of organization in the Window > Payees & Rules window. You can select two or more Payees and merge them into one. And for old Payees you don't want to see anymore when entering transactions — such as Payees that were a one-time purchase while on a vacation, or a place that's gone out of business — you can click the "Hidden" checkbox for that Payee; the Payee name will remain on any existing transactions so your history is untouched, but it won't show up in the suggested Payee list an more.

It can seem like a daunting job to clean up your Payee list, especially if you've been using Quicken for many years. Just don't try to do it all at once and get overwhelmed. Maybe this weekend review your "A" to "C" Payees, and next week tackle "D to G" and so on.

Jon

I don't know of a way to avoid having that initial download of recent transactions when adding a new account that's connected. But you can delete those transactions after they download & they won't come back. Then you can go to the Payees & Rules window & delete any Payees that are not being used - that should get rid of the names that came along with those transactions.

jacobs

@Jon said: But you can delete those transactions after they download & they won't come back. Then you can go to the Payees & Rules window & delete any Payees that are not being used - that should get rid of the names that came along with those transactions.

You actually don't need to do that cleanup step. A Payee name exists in the database only if it is used for one or more transactions (unless you manually create a Payee in the Payee window, which would be unusual). If you create a transaction with a new Payee name, and then delete that transaction, the Payee name disappears from the Payees window.

badhutx

Thank you @jacobs . I appreciate your help.