How do I delete memorized payees from Mobile Quicken for iOS?

Steve McKeever

I asked this same question back in 2021, and see that Quicken still has not come up with a way to delete memorized payees from the iOS Quicken Classic mobile app. Why do I have a huge long list of memorized payees on my iPhone but a different, much shorter list on my desktop app? Is there some way I can stop the mobile app from memorizing payees? When I sync from my desktop app, is Quicken supposed to sync the two lists of payees making them the same? If so, this is does not happen. In fact, what happens is that when I create a new payee on the mobile app, then sync, that payee shows up on the memorized payee list on the desktop app, even though I have unchecked "Automatically memorize new payees" in data entry preferences on the desktop app. And that new payee is added to the huge list of memorized payees in the mobile app. To try and get rid of the list of payees on my mobile app I have reset my cloud account, I have deleted my cloud account and re-synced with no luck. I have even deleted the mobile app from my phone and reinstalled it, thinking that would wipe out the payee list. But no luck again. The huge long payee list continues to exist and take up real estate on my phone. Can someone please tell me why this is, how Quicken syncing is supposed to work with the memorized list of payees, and how I can get delete some or all of the payees on my Quicken mobile app?

Steve McKeever

And now I see that the list of memorized payees on the mobile app (Settings>Rules>Memorized Payees) is not the list I am frustrated with. It is the huge long list of payees that shows up on the mobile app when entering a transaction and then "clicking" (touching) the Payee field. A "Search Payee" window shows up and below it is a list of literally thousands of payees to select from. How can I delete / edit this list?

Quicken Anja

Hello @Steve McKeever,

If you don't mind, could you please provide a screenshot of the issue you described? If needed, please refer to this Community FAQ for instructions on how to attach a screenshot. Alternatively, you can also drag and drop screenshots to your response if you are not given the option to add attachments.

Thank you!

Steve McKeever

here’s a screenshot of the list of Payees I want to delete. This window with the list pops up when I touch “Payee” when entering a transaction. I am using an iPhone with the latest iOS installed & the most up to date version of the Quicken Classic mobile app.

home389

same here. Just can’t get rid of the the list of payees

widomj

Same here.

UKR

In Quicken for Windows, this "list of Payees" is based on the transactions in your data file. For each unique Payee Name there is one entry in the list. I assume, that's where your Quicken companion smartphone app downloads its information from.

For as long as there is a transaction in your Quicken desktop/laptop (Windows or Mac) data file using that Payee Name, you can't get rid of the Payee Name.

If, however, you have multiple variations of the same Payee, e.g., instead of "Starbucks" you have "POS TRANS 070119 STARBU", "POS TRANS 070219 STARBU", "POS TRANS 070319 STARBU", etc., a different name for each time you visited Starbucks over the years … you can trim the list of Payees by renaming these transactions to all use the same name, Starbucks.
For newly arriving downloaded transactions you can and should use Renaming Rules to help make the translation for you.

It's also important to note that the Preference settings applying to Data Entry, Quickfill and Downloaded Transactions need to be set properly.
Automatically accepting downloaded transactions sight unseen into your desktop/laptop file's registers using the messy payee names provided by the banks, without review, is what helped create this situation in the first place.

If you do start on a cleanup project, work on the desktop/laptop. Create a backup of your data file before you start. Create additional backups as you go along. Should you make a mistake that proves impossible to undo, restoring from a recent backup is your only way out.
When done with cleanup perform a Reset Sync to make Quicken create a new Sync file on the server and download same into your smartphone app.

Steve McKeever

This being the case, this is a very poor software design. I should have the option to decide whether or not the payee of every transaction is going to be "saved" in a list that shows up on my Mobile Quicken. The whole idea of "memorized" payees is to save the often used payees to save entry time. I do not want to save every payee I've ever used (over 20 years of transactions). And your solution (i.e. go back and modify every different "Starbucks" entry to make them all Starbucks does not solve the problem. I want to get rid of all the payees used only once or twice, or will never be used again. But that appears to be impossible, and this list of payees in my iPhone will continue to grow, sucking up memory space in my iPhone. Come on, Quicken, fix this. I do not want every payee I've ever used in a list in my phone.

ivbec

Same here.