Pending Transactions ‘feature’ causes duplicate transactions
[Removed - Disruptive/Rant] they decided to introduce ‘Pending Transactions’ when downloading transactions from your accounts using Express Web Connect (EWC).
Some people may like this but to me it is an utter waste of time and it is broken.
I noticed this behavior when I returned from a vacation and was updating my accounts. Suddenly, I had a huge negative balance in my BMO Mastercard and had to look closely to see what that was about. I found numerous duplicate transactions because of this new feature.
I then spied this banner:
I clicked the Learn More link and I got a blank window.
I clicked the Settings link and got this:
Notice how the Pending Transactions feature is set to OFF. One would think that if a feature was turned off, it would not do what the feature is intended to do.
Also notice the two links under the ‘Learn more about’ that provide you with no information at all as they yield blank windows when clicked.
[Removed - Rant/Speculation]
Quicken needs to fix this immediately as it impacts all accounts where you download transactions using EWC, and for me that is every account I have with every financial institution I deal with.
When is Quicken going to fix this massive bug in their software?
I am running the desktop version of Quicken Classic Deluxe, Version R55.15, Build 27.1.55.15 Canadian edition.
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[Removed - Disruptive/Speculation]
Aside from duplicate transactions fiasco, which I am now finding is not consistent across all accounts, this feature [Removed - Language] Reconciliation.
I tried to download and Reconcile one of my checking accounts and here is what happened.
This shot is of my checking account register.
You can see that the balance resulting from all cleared items is 10,554.38 with two not cleared items totaling 305.00. The ending balance in Quicken is 10,249.38 and Quicken also reports that the Online balance is also 10,249.38 Now that’s ok I guess but in the past, the Online balance would only reflect the account balance less the pending transactions.
In other words, before Quicken [Removed - Language] with this pending transaction feature, the Online balance would have been reported as 10,554.38
So when I then go to reconcile that account I get this:
This shows that my Quicken account does not balance to my online account at the bank. In fact it tells me that my accounts don’t balance by the exact total amount of the not cleared (pending) transactions.
[Removed - Disruptive] If this keeps up then every time you go to balance your accounts you will have a difference equal to the pending transactions and we all know that pending transactions can be reversed at the bank. We know that because we see it all the time with a credit card when we go to make a purchase. The merchant will put through a transaction amount that is not the actual amount of the transaction and later will correct that.
I had several thousands of dollars in pending transactions on one of my credit cards while on vacation. Pending transactions are not real transactions until they are accepted by the bank and Quicken should know this. Now I am stuck with over 50 transactions in my credit card account that I need to manually go through and delete.
The worst of it is that nothing balances anymore and will never balance until they fix this problem.
What is Quicken going to do about this [Removed - Language]?
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I may be a voice in the desert, but pending transactions works just as designed for me….the bug is not universal
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I also have pending transactions turned off for my BMO Mastercard yet they continue to download which is causing no end of problems with balances and reconciliation. Please fix this!
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Hello All,
Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to report this issue, though we apologize that you are experiencing this.
We have forwarded this issue to the proper channels to have this further investigated. In the meantime, we request that you please navigate to Help > Report a problem and submit a problem report with log files attached and (if you are willing) a sanitized copy of your data file in order to contribute to the investigation.
While you will not receive a response through this submission, these reports will help our teams in further investigating the issue. The more problem reports we receive, the better.
We apologize for any inconvenience!
Thank you.
(CTP-9701)
Quicken Kristina
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A few points here.
- Original poster is using the Canadian version. The official announcement of this was in the R55.26 release notes. A version that the Canadian version has yet to get. Others have noted that this feature has been activated in older versions (even in the US version), but one has to wonder if that was "planned" or the fact that the old code had "some support" for this that got triggered by this being enabled on the server, and really shouldn't have.
- "true" Pending transactions NEVER appear as "cleared" and they are never included in a reconcile. In fact, this sounds more like the old behavior of pending transactions and one of the reasons they quickly turned it off for the older attempts.
This is what pending transactions in the register should look like if you have "Automatically add to banking registers" on:
If you have it off, they should be in the Pending Transactions tab, and not show in the register, not affect any balance, and certainly not be clear or included in the reconcile.
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Hi All, can you confirm if this issue is still occurring? Thanks!
Quicken Janean
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Yes, still occuring
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Hello All,
So that our teams can investigate this issue further, please provide the following:
- A screenshot showing balance in register when sees the issue the next time.
- A screenshot showing balance at primary page listing accounts.
- A screenshot showing last posted transaction and all pending. Please include running balance on web site.
If you post the screenshots to this thread, please make sure to redact personal information.
If you are not comfortable posting the screenshots to this thread, please send them by going to Help>Report a Problem (in your Quicken program), and attaching those screenshots to the problem report (there is a maximum of 10 attachments allowed, so you may need to unselect some of the pre-selected items to make room).
Thank you!
Quicken Kristina
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This issue is with the Bank of Montreal Mastercard only. I don't have this issue with other institutions.
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I am still having this problem and have phoned in to Quicken support but to no avail. They will not acknowledge this as an issue that they would address. They gave me Ticket # 11030127
This issue is with the Bank of Montreal Mastercard
Here are a few screen shots of the issue:
First of all I have Pending transactions turned off in Quicken:
From Quicken, the items circled in blue are pending transactions, the "Online Balance" agrees with the bank, but the bank does not include pending transitions in their balance and Quicken does.
Ending balance of $2419.22 is not correct as it includes many pending transactions and duplicate transactions that I have yet to delete from the register.
Balance at the bank Matches Quicken's online balance:
It seems that Quicken is downloading the pending transactions even though I have turned off the feature. This is a problem because it will later on also download the cleared transactions and then I have duplicate transactions. Also, because pending transactions are downloaded, the "Ending Balance" will never ever equal the "Online Balance" in Quicken.
Pending transactions include items that may or may not actually move to cleared transactions. On a recent trip I booked a rental car. They put through 3 pending transactions for various amounts. The total of those pending transactions was over $5000. When I turned in the car they put through the final bill for $1600. So Quicken showed 5 transactions for this alone totaling close to $8000. This also happened with hotels and meals, leaving me to hunt through all transactions to find and delete duplicates. I think we have all seen those 'Temporary Hold' items on your card where they were testing to see if the card was real before actually allowing the purchase? Well those are pending transactions that are downloaded and do not go away unless you manually delete them in your quicken register.
Pesky Temporary Hold:
Pesky duplicate Temporary Hold:
At this point in time I am forced to manually go through every one of my transactions to see what is actually on my statements and what are duplicates because of this issue. I have spent over 8 hours trying to get my BMO Mastercard Quicken register Ending Balance to balance to the Online Balance, or my balance at my bank or my statements and I can not do it, it will not balance. The last time I had a correct balance was back in January 2024, before they implemented this Pending Transactions download feature.
Aside from posting here, I have used the "Report a Problem" in the software several times and no one got back to me about this issue. I have also called support, and their first response was that I had to contact the Bank Of Montreal to get this fixed. I finally convinced them that it is an issue between them and the bank and that I can do nothing to impact that with the bank. They finally gave me the Ticket #11030127 but told me that they have no plans in place to address this issue.
What is Quicken going to do about this issue? When will this get fixed because it makes Quicken useless.
I am using Quicken Classic Deluxe for Windows Canada Edition Build R55.15
[Edit - Edited a screenshot to remove personal information]
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Yes this is still happening. See my note above.
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Thanks @Chris_QPW Yes you are right. I am running the latest Canadian Quicken Classic Deluxe for Windows version Build R55.15 I just checked and it states that I am up to date.
Now I don't know if the issue is that the Canadian version is a few builds back from the US version but it would be nice if Quicken would at least look at this issue. Also, I have the US version of Quicken that I run on a different computer, but that computer is in storage and I will not have access to that one for a few more months so I don't know how that version will work with my US BMO Harris accounts.
You stated: "If you have it off, they should be in the Pending Transactions tab, and not show in the register, not affect any balance, and certainly not be clear or included in the reconcile."
As you can see, even though I have the Pending Transactions feature turned off, my pending transactions appear in the register and don't look at all like yours, they appear as cleared transactions and affect the "Ending Balance". Also there is no "Pending Transactions Tab" in my version of Quicken
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@TJTex The Canadian version is ALWAYS a few versions behind the US version. In some ways the US customers are the beta testers for the Canadian users.
As you can see, even though I have the Pending Transactions feature turned off, my pending transactions appear in the register and don't look at all like yours, they appear as cleared transactions and affect the "Ending Balance". Also there is no "Pending Transactions Tab" in my version of Quicken
In reality yours do not look like mine.
Do you notice that all my pending transactions have Pending for in the blue dot/status field?
You don't have that. Note that there are two modes possible for downloading transactions. If you have it so they go directly into your register then you will have a status column (first column) for reviewing new transactions, and that is where the "pending" is shown. If you have that option off you get your transactions into a Downloaded Transactions tab at the bottom of the register, and that is where another "Pending Transactions" tab would appear.
The fact that pending transactions are going into your register with the mode off and without any pending status and only for one financial institution, sort of suggest both a bug in Quicken and maybe in what that one financial institution is sending.
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Even if you have transactions download directly into your register, you can still suppress the Status column in your register. I think that is a mistake that a lot of users are making. They don't realize that if you have transactions downloaded directly to Quicken, you need that Status column to identify pending transactions, along with other download statuses.
@TJTex if you are able to add that column to your register, it might help your situation, even though you did not turn on the Pending Feature.
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@QuickUserPSP @TJTex has the status column on.
The only possible column before the date is the Status column.
And there is this one:
And this screenshot says a lot. That is "uncleared" in the first column, and the Clr status is blank. That is a "manually entered transaction" as far as Quicken is concerned, not a downloaded one. It would be interesting to see what the Downloaded Id field and other Downloaded columns show.
Note this is what I would expect if one edits a pending transaction, they don't become "Downloaded" they become "manually entered" (and will match to a future downloaded transaction.
Frankly I think the cornerstone of the problem is that the pending transactions feature shouldn't be shown in @TJTex version of Quicken at all.
Notice that the pending feature was announce in Quicken Windows US in April/R55.26, and that the last version of Quicken Windows Canada is R55.15 March 2024.
This has popup up in the older US versions too. As in people with quite old versions are now seeing the pending transactions feature. Clearly this is something that has been in Quicken for a long time, but the first two attempts at this were turned off. It is also clear that they can turn it back on from the server. But what isn't clear is how much of this is really in Quicken (the program) itself and server driven. I can tell you that there are differences between what controls were in Quicken from the time of the other attempts. How long has the "new code" been in there? Hard to say.
But it bothers me that the announcement is in one release and versions where it hasn't been announced are now seeing the feature, this isn't the proper way to roll out software.
At any rate to top all of this off this is only with one financial institution. That really suggests something wrong with that "data flow" and not really in Quicken (the program). I said "data flow" because there isn't any way for us to know if the problem is in the Quicken server, the Intuit server or what the financial institution is sending.
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I just received an update to Version R56.9 build 27.1.56.9 (Quicken Classic Deluxe - Canada) and it is still downloading pending transactions for my Mastercard even though I have that option turned off in my preferences. There is still no additional screens or tabs to manage pending transaction as displayed in the US versions
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@Chris_QPW - thank you for the explanation and clarification. Wow, what a mess. You are right, sometimes it is difficult to determine where the issue lies and the responsible party. But at least it's only one FI (so far). My guess is that this particular issue is with the FI, but if that is the case then how many other FIs have or will have the same issue? I see that there is at least one other user in this thread that has an issue with BMO and pending transactions. As users start looking at their accounts, we might be getting more reports of issues with pending transactions. Hopefully Quicken and BMO are addressing this issue, and then Quicken can determine the scope of this issue.
@TJTex - I can see that this is an incredibly frustrating issue but hopefully your post incites a quick resolution, or at the very least, an acknowledgement that there is an issue.
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@D Morley - what happens if you turn on the Pending Transactions feature? Does it then show the full features for pending transactions?
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I have no pending transactions to download at the moment, however, after turning it on and enabling it for my MC account, I do see a tab along the bottom for "Pending Transactions" so that is encouraging. I will check it again after I use my CC.
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@D Morley what that says to me is that they have officially added the pending transactions feature to Quicken Canada. Which would also lead me to believe that if you were to shut off the pending transaction feature, that would stop pending transactions from being downloaded from BMO. If after you shut off the pending transactions feature, but still get pending transactions, then that would mean that the issue is most likely on the BMO side.
@TJTex - please confirm that you are able to see the same pending transaction features as well.
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EDIT Sorry, typo of a very important word.
Well, at least it is now "official" (or at least until I checked the release notes. They don't mention it). But given the release version number and the new "Pending Transactions tab" (which wasn't in the previous attempts) I would say that sort of means that the older version wasn't causing this exact problem. I do wish they were better about putting what changed in the release notes.
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I think they had no choice but to install full functionality, but, I agree, they should have at least mentioned it in the release notes. The important thing now is to confirm that the issues have been resolved.
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Problem is still there with R56.9 Canadian. (Corrected typo in last comment).
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The issue might not still be there. Take a look at @D Morley 's next comment after he turned on the Pending Transaction feature. We will need to see what he experiences when the next transactions are downloaded.
I am also thinking that after a user turns on Pending Transactions, if they then turn it off, it should completely stop the unwanted pending transactions. If not, the issue most likely is with the FI.
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Yeah maybe you are right.
As far as turning it on and off what I've seen is that they just vanish when it's off from the register and if you're using it the pending transactions tab.
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The problem still exists in R56.9. I have 1 new transaction that is pending. It sill shows up in Downloaded Transactions and there is nothing in pending transactions. Additionally, it is still duplicating transactions as 2 of the transactions shown below are already cleared in Quicken, but on the MC web site they show up in both pending and posted, hence causing Quicken to want to import them again. ARG!
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@D Morley If I am understanding what you are describing, it sounds like the issue might be on the BMO side if they show the same transactions as both pending and posted on their website. Have you tried contacting them and alerting them to this issue?
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Mastercard has always been like that, sometimes there is transactions show up in both pending and posted, but only for a short period of time. In the past, this never caused any problems. It was only when Quicken started downloading pending transactions that this became a problem.
Quicken needs to fix this in a couple of ways: 1) when pending transactions is turned off in preferences, then it needs to adhere to that. 2) When it's turned on, it needs to provide pending transaction management as we have seen in screenshots from the US version.
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@D Morley - The duplicate transactions could be a result of the way that BMO both pending and posted transactions at the same time, but I agree that there is an issue with the pending transaction feature in the Canadian version of Quicken. As far as I can see, the pending transactions feature was never really officially rolled out in the Canadian version. It looks like when they turned on pending transactions for the US version (R55.26), it not only retroactively affected other US versions, but the Canadian versions as well.
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Hello All,
We are finding through our aggregation partner that the pending transactions are showing as posted. Our aggregation partner will be working to resolve. For the temporary holds, if the funds are no longer being held, we recommend deleting them.
Thank you!
Quicken Kristina
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