What happened to my split transactions?

Jerry Montgomery

I have used a copy of someone else's previous post in October to explain my problem:

"I manually enter split transactions for my credit card each month by category. I have just discovered that for 13 months over the past 2.5 years, the split transactions have been eliminated. I can prove this because I print a report for my charity donations for my taxes in March. There are line items on the previously printed report for months that now have no split transactions. It will take a lot of work to reenter all of those splits. Also wondered what else in Quicken could be wrong that I haven't discovered yet. Thanks for input on how to get Quicken's attention."

Despite what the above person noticed, the first time I noticed this (it wasn't happening) was when I downloaded V. 7.6.1. It hadn't happened in previous years. I have been properly logging these transactions for years and correctly, paying them as Transfers from my checking account and using the credit card list of categories and payments to separate for taxes. Now all the splits are gone? Where are they, and can they be recovered?

How do I now account for my expensive for tax purposes?

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Jerry Montgomery

Thank you for responding. Yes, that’s what I’m doing. I have a separate account for each credit card. I enter all my receipts in that account. When I pay the cc bill, I enter “Payment” as the payee in my checking account when I write the check. Under Category, I enter “Transfer” and select the credit card name. It reproduces that in the “Transfer” column. This then duplicates the transaction to the credit card account, meaning I don’t have to enter the information twice. When I want to see what was in the receipt, I go to the checking account and look under splits. I just upgraded to Mac Version 11.6. So now when I go to my checking account and look at payments and at splits, the register has only the card name, the checking account and the amount. The split charges no longer show.

Maybe I’m just confused. Yes, I think I’m confused. Maybe it always did that, and the splits are in the checking account register. If that’s the case, I totally apologize for wasting your time and for your clarity. You’ve been very helpful. So sorry.

jacobs

It sounds like you are recording your credit card transactions and payments correctly, so I'm thinking perhaps you are just confused where you're looking for data in Quicken. If you are recording the credit card transactions in the credit card account, then the only transaction in your checking account is the payment transaction — which only has a transfer to the credit card account, no splits. All the credit card transaction details are in your credit card account, not the checking account.

If you want to know exactly what was paid on specific credit card bills, you can find that too assuming you are reconciling your credit card account each month to the credit card statement. Go to Accounts > Reconciliation History and you will see a line for each month's credit card reconciliation; click the Report option on the right, and it will show you the details of that month's credit card bill, with all the charges and credits included in that month's bill.

NotACPA

I've flagged a Moderator to move this to a QMac area. You posted in QWin

jacobs

A few quick comments:

1. This site isn't Quicken Support; it's a community forum. If you want to contact Quicken Support, use the Support link at the top of the page.
2. You can use Help > Report a problem to try to bring an issue to the attention of the developers. But that's a one-way flow of information; they don't respond. And because you're unable to tell them what happened to make the transactions change, I wouldn't hold out much hope of that being effective in this case.
3. You said: "I have been properly logging these transactions for years and correctly, paying them as Transfers from my checking account." Can we just get clarification about how you're entering these transactions since it sounds a little different than the quote you posted. The proper way to record credit card transactions is to have a separate credit card account, where each credit card purchase is a separate transaction (no split lines except in a transaction has a split of expense categories), and the payment of the credit card bill each month is a transfer transaction from the checking account to the credit card account. But it sounded like you were instead entering one transaction in your checking account for each credit card bill, with split lines for the individual transactions. Is that what you were doing?

Jon

@Jerry Montgomery The only way you're going to be able to recover your original transactions is to restore from a backup. Go to the File menu & select View/Restore backups. Look for files with names starting with "BACKUP (Pre-Update)" and select the most recent one. You'll have to re-enter or re-download all the transactions that have occurred since then.

However, before doing that I would encourage you to submit a bug report - from the Help menu select "Report a problem". You're not the first person to experience this so it seems like something the developers should look into & that's the best way to get their attention. If you're willing, submitting a sanitized copy of your files along with the report may help them figure out what's happening.

Jerry Montgomery

Thank you for responding. Yes, that’s what I’m doing. I have a separate account for each credit card. I enter all my receipts in that account. When I pay the cc bill, I enter “Payment” as the payee in my checking account when I write the check. Under Category, I enter “Transfer” and select the credit card name. It reproduces that in the “Transfer” column. This then duplicates the transaction to the credit card account, meaning I don’t have to enter the information twice. When I want to see what was in the receipt, I go to the checking account and look under splits. I just upgraded to Mac Version 11.6. So now when I go to my checking account and look at payments and at splits, the register has only the card name, the checking account and the amount. The split charges no longer show.

Maybe I’m just confused. Yes, I think I’m confused. Maybe it always did that, and the splits are in the checking account register. If that’s the case, I totally apologize for wasting your time and for your clarity. You’ve been very helpful. So sorry.

jacobs

It sounds like you are recording your credit card transactions and payments correctly, so I'm thinking perhaps you are just confused where you're looking for data in Quicken. If you are recording the credit card transactions in the credit card account, then the only transaction in your checking account is the payment transaction — which only has a transfer to the credit card account, no splits. All the credit card transaction details are in your credit card account, not the checking account.

If you want to know exactly what was paid on specific credit card bills, you can find that too assuming you are reconciling your credit card account each month to the credit card statement. Go to Accounts > Reconciliation History and you will see a line for each month's credit card reconciliation; click the Report option on the right, and it will show you the details of that month's credit card bill, with all the charges and credits included in that month's bill.

volvogirl

I was following along ok. But now I'm confused. You said….When I want to see what was in the receipt, I go to the checking account and look under splits. That should be wrong. You should not have any splits in the checking account. And probably not in the credit card account either, unless you really split one receipt into different categories.

You really need to step back and figure out/understand how you have been entering them.

Jerry Montgomery

I do split out each category on each receipt and enter all that into my checking and credit card accounts. When I started using Quicken years ago, that’s the way we were instructed to do it. Thanks. I notice you are very experienced at this. I used to think it odd that I would go to my cc register to see items (I bought)—not the check register—but it makes sense. But it seemed so different to me when I opened the V 11.6 version. It probably isn’t. Am I wrong? Thanks for your replies. I’m sorry I cannot explain this more clearly.

Jon

Some people don't track their credit card accounts in Quicken, instead they just create a split transaction when they make the credit card payment and enter each of their purchases in the split. Others do track their credit card accounts in Quicken and enter each purchase as it happens, then when it comes time to make the payments they can just enter those as simple transfers with no splits. But you don't need to take both of those approaches, one or the other should suffice.

Jerry Montgomery

Thank you, Jon. I do track my credit card accounts, but I do not reconcile them. I just check the statements against the receipts I entered for each so I’ll know if there is something I didn’t buy. Thank you so much for your clarifications.

volvogirl

sorry Jerry you still aren't making sense to me. Are you saying you enter each receipt into both the checking account AND the credit card account? And when you say Receipt do you also mean the credit card statement?

What is your work flow? You go to the store and get a receipt. Then what do you do? Like do you enter the receipt into the credit card account? What do you do when you get the credit card statement and pay the bill?

Jerry Montgomery

It’s okay. I don’t make much sense to myself much of the time either. Yes, I enter my store receipt into my credit card account (ledger) and file the paper copy. When I get the statement and write the check, I enter the payee as “payment” and in the category I put it as a transfer to connect the payment to the cc account. I open the credit card account and compare it to the statement to make sure everything is correct and agrees. But I don’t reconcile the credit card receipts. I think I confused myself yesterday when I accessed the payment (instead of the checking account) and didn’t see the transactions. What that means is nothing had changed from before (except my brain). Thank you for your comments and trying to help me.