Categories and Memorized Payees/Transactions - sort of (Q Mac)

Brian (San Diego)

This isn't truly an error, but when transactions come in with their own individual identifier numbers, Quicken for Mac isn't smart enough to figure out the transaction's category, and I'm not smart enough to figure out how to fix it 😂.

Think buying an airline ticket and the transaction comes in with the ticket number. Like "United Airlines XXXXXXX3104" or "YourHOA Assn Dues XXXX7095". While the front end is always the same, Quicken tries to exactly match the entry, and since the last 4 digits are always different (1 in 10,000 chances of getting the same, anyway), Quicken brain-farts and doesn't even categorize the transaction.

I would think that Quicken would be able to figure this one out on its own. Until then, is there a work-around? Can we program Quicken to, say, "if the Payee starts with 'United Airlines' then categorize as 'Travel'"?

Jon

You can but it's in two parts. First set up a Renaming rule that sets the Payee to United Airlines if the payee contains the words "United Airlines". Then create a Quickfill rule that categorizes the United Airlines payee to "Travel". The Renaming rule happens first, then that will trigger the Quickfill rule.

This does mean that all your United Airlines transactions will wind up having the exact same payee. If you wanted to keep the ticket number as part of the payee then I don't know how to make that work.