Political contributions always categorized as "charity"

DC Contrarian

Hi folks. Longtime (25+ years) Quicken user, first time poster.

Posting more out of frustration than anything today. When I download transactions, if I made a political contribution through XYZ it always gets categorized as "charity," which is a problem because these contributions are not deductible. Over the years, Quicken has varied the end user's ability to override the automatic categories assigned to downloaded transactions. I thought I had this particular issue fixed during one of the windows where I could change the settings, but with a recent upgrade it seems to be back to the way it was.

Does anyone know: is there a way to contact Quicken and tell them this is something they just need to fix, they've got it wrong? I realize I could probably figure out a way to override what they automatically do, but I'm tired of doing that and then having it overwritten by a later "upgrade."

Thanks.

Jim_Harman

Forum Moderators sometimes review issues discussed here and refer them to Development, but if you want Quicken to work on a problem, I recommend you contact Support via phone.  Be sure the support agent understands the problem and gives you a ticket number for future reference.

You should also use the Help > Report a Problem menu in Quicken to submit the issue online. In your submission, be as clear and thorough as possible. Reference the ticket number and provide a link to this discussion. Provide step by step instructions to reproduce the problem. You will not get a response to an electronic submission, but they say they review and prioritize the submissions. 

Updates on problems that Quicken has acknowledged are posted here

https://community.quicken.com/categories/alerts

Quicken recently changed some of the default settings for downloaded transactions, over-riding preferences users had previously set up.

Quicken does a pretty good job of automatic categorization, but if you want to disable it, you can go to Edit > Preferences >Downloaded transactions and un-check the Automatically categorize transactions box.

If you want to leave the auto categorization enabled but correct the category for a particular Payee, XYZ for example, you should create a Renaming rule for it and a Memorized Payee that assigns it to a Category other than your Charity category, that has a blank Tax line item

DC Contrarian

Thanks for the response. I will do the "Report a problem" route. I tried calling Support via phone but it's Saturday and they're closed. To be clear, what I am trying to do is report a bug, I understand how Quicken works. There is no case in which a payment to XYZ is properly categorized as Charity. It's just a mistake.

"Quicken does a pretty good job of automatic categorization, but if you want to disable it, you can go to Edit > Preferences >Downloaded transactions and un-check the Automatically categorize transactions box." This is not helpful advice, I find the auto-categorize generally helpful and don't want to disable it.

"If you want to leave the auto categorization enabled but correct the category for a particular Payee, XYZ for example, you should create a Renaming rule for it and a Memorized Payee that assigns it to a Category other than your Charity category, that has a blank Tax line item." This really isn't helpful advice either. First, the payee is different with every transaction because XYZ contains the name of the party. Second, I've done this, and then Quicken overwrote it, I'm not interested in having that happen again. I'd rather Quicken just fixed their bug, I can't be the only one having this problem.

As I said, I've been a loyal Quicken user for decades, but sometimes it feels like an abusive relationship. Quicken has always had a laissez-faire attitude toward downloading and auto-categorization, if it works at all that's a miracle. When I as a user expect it to work properly, that's somehow a problem with me.

Thanks for your help.

Chris_QPW

Over the years, Quicken has varied the end user's ability to override the automatic categories assigned to downloaded transactions.

I all the years I have used Quicken and tested such things; I have never discovered a time where I can't override the automatic categorization.

As long as the payee's name is in the memorized payee list it is category is used (unless it is marked as never categorize, and then it will be blank).

Note I believe in the past people have wrongly stated that these preferences control this:

They do not (EDIT: to clarify, the above preferences are for when you manually enter a transaction).

It does the payee match a payee entry in the memorized payee list yes or no, if yes do what it says:

If there isn't a match it moves on to:

If selected, then Quicken will guess at it, simple as that.

Does anyone know: is there a way to contact Quicken and tell them this is something they just need to fix, they've got it wrong?

Contact Quicken Support:

https://www.quicken.com/support#contact-support

DC Contrarian

>I all the years I have used Quicken and tested such things; I have never discovered a time where I can't override the automatic categorization.

How many years? I definitely remember at one point complaining to Quicken support about improper automatic categorization and being told it couldn't be overridden. Maybe 15 years ago? For a while you could override it, then you couldn't, then you could again. It was probably either XYZ or my electric company, which for some reason showed up every month under clothing.

I'm just venting, I'm just annoyed that a) they have these vendors wrongly entered in their database, and they've been that way for decades, and they don't seem at all interested in fixing it — and these aren't obscure vendors, both XYZ and my electric company have millions of customers. And b) that they've wiped out the work that I did to fix that problem — their problem, not mine, although they made it mine — through an upgrade.

Chris_QPW

I have been using Quicken since 1992, but I will be the first to admit that I haven't "constantly checked this", so I could certainly be wrong about it (for some period of time). I do know that I can override it right now though. But then again, have not found automatic categorization to be useful to me. To me it is more of "getting started" option like a lot of the automatic "guessing" that is available on Quicken. I seldom have new payees, and when I do, I want to make the decision of what that payee's category should be.

Ps56k2

 if I made a political contribution through XYZ it always gets categorized as "charity,"

[EDIT] - wanted to be helpful and changed the actual political group name in the forum - to a sanitized - XYZ -

DC Contrarian

Sorry, it's not a helpful change to change the name of the group to XYZ. I don't know if all political groups are miscategorized, just the one I use. Since it's just a data entry error there's no reason to believe that all groups are affected.