My "auto category" isn't doing what I want. Help?

Don Freedman

Hi. Is there a good way to make sure, say, every TRADER JOES transaction goes into the category I want, which is GROCERIES? What's not working: when I manually "accept" the transaction, switch it into GROCERIES, and go to MEMORIZE PAYEE.

splasher

I see this as a two step process:

1- Have a Renaming Rule (Tools menu) that looks for "Trader Joes" in the payee field (or something that identifies those transactions) that then renames it to a consistent payee of your choice (probably TRADER JOES based on your post). Quicken uses a combination of the D/L'd payee and memo to look for that comparison.

2- Have a Memorized Payee (MP) (Tools menu) that has that EXACT payee (due to renaming) and have that MP have GROCERIES as the category and an amount of $0. Lock the MP so that it doesn't get changed in the future.

Doing it this way, the downloaded transaction gets renamed as desired and the MP applies the desired category. The download supplies the amount.