Pending Transaction still present when transaction is cleared in register.

DoctorBrown

I have a transaction that appeared in the Pending Transactions. At a later time I ran OSU and the transaction was downloaded and I accepted it into the register. But the Pending Transaction is still in the Pending list. This is a screenshot of the relevant info:

Looking at Q Help I find this:

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What happens when a pending transaction clears?

When a pending transaction is no longer pending, it will either be listed as a regular transaction (if the transaction clears) or will disappear if the pending transaction is removed but no charge occurs. If the transaction clears for a different amount than the pending transaction, the pending transaction will still disappear in favor of the cleared transaction.

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This says the pending transaction should be removed from the list by itself. This looks like a bug to me. Is it a Quicken issue or the bank's?

After searching these forums I find there are tons of posts about this new feature.

Chris_QPW

This looks like a bug to me. Is it a Quicken issue or the bank's?

In my opinion this is a Quicken bug. Note that this isn't consistent in the sense that it always doesn't remove the pending transaction. There is a bug that causes it to "happen sometimes and not others".

Why am I 99% that this is a Quicken bug?

If you turn on the Downloaded Id and look at a pending transaction this is what you will see:

As you can see the Download Ids for the Pending transaction look nothing like the ones that the financial institution sent for the cleared ones, and even more telling is they start with QUICKEN.

To me this suggests that it is in fact Quicken (the program) that is trying to match this pending transaction to downloaded ones, it isn't happening at the financial institution or even the Quicken server level.

Boatnmaniac

This is one of the issues with Pending Transactions that has caused me to turn off Pending Transactions in my main data file. I still have it turned on in a couple of test files so I can track improvements and issues with it.

In my test files I've observed that this is an issue with 3 financial institutions (Elan, Chase, PNC Bank) but not with others. It is the same financial institutions across both data files that have this problem which at first made me think this was perhaps a financial institution issue, not a Quicken issue.

But upon closer review there were differences between the data files. For instance, the Pending Transactions for Elan in one data file that did not go away were not the same Pending Transactions in the other data file that did not go away. In addition, the number of Pending Transactions that did not go away for Elan in one file was a different from the number of Pending Transactions that did not go away in the other file.

There there are other financial institutions like US Bank and Austin Telco FCU that have not had a single Pending Transactions issue of any kind ever since the Pending Transactions feature became available.

What this all seems to indicate to me is that there might be some issues with both Quicken and some financial institutions that are causing these problems. Maybe there is something in the downloaded files from some financial institutions that is causing Quicken to act oddly and inconsistently?

Chris_QPW

@Boatnmaniac you may be right that there are multiple causes. Without seeing how they are actually doing the matching I guess we are all just guessing. Hopefully they will figure it all out.

Chris_QPW

After Saw something today I'm a lot less sure that this is a quicken as in the program kind of problem. Probably still multiple causes but what I saw today is that there was a pending transaction and then Amazon split the transaction to deliver only half of it. So the full amount pending transaction went away and two half pending transactions were put in place instead. The more I thought about that the more a simple matching cannot do this. They clearly have to have help from the financial institution of what is pending what is impending and when they go away they should just vanish.

So whenSo when you about that situation any kind of matching depending transactions is extremely dangerous and error prone.

If IIf I had happened to change that particular pending transaction into one uncleared transaction then I would have certainly got a problem when it was split by Amazon.

Boatnmaniac

…what I saw today is that there was a pending transaction and then Amazon split the transaction to deliver only half of it. So the full amount pending transaction went away and two half pending transactions were put in place instead. The more I thought about that the more a simple matching cannot do this. They clearly have to have help from the financial institution of what is pending what is impending and when they go away they should just vanish.

That happened to me, too….ordered two items from Amazon at the same time and the 1st pending transaction came in reflecting the total amount for both items. But then Amazon pulled those two items from different warehouses so Amazon split the billing into 2 different transactions. Quicken picked up the 2 new pending transactions but the original one was not removed.

This, I think, is a similar situation with restaurants where tips get added on to the charge after the meal itself is charge and where gas stations will sometimes run an initial $1 charge at the gas pump to make sure the card is valid but then later re-bill for the total amount of the gas purchase.

At least, I'm assuming that the 1st transaction and the 2nd transaction(s) are actually different transactions with different tracking numbers. If so, the FI should be able to download that the 1st pending transaction had been canceled so that Quicken will delete it.

But, it does get more blurry than this. Because, at least with the restaurant meal + tip situation, I have noticed that in one test file this issue will sometimes exist but in a different test file with that same credit card that 1st pending transaction does get deleted while at other times it does not.

UKR

All of my EWC or EWC+ - connected accounts are set to NOT automatically accept downloaded transactions into my account registers.
That means, all pending transactions only appear in (and disappear from) the "Pending Transactions" tab below the account register. Nothing ever happens directly in the account register itself. And I have not noticed any register problems due to pending transactions.

If you are set to automatically accept downloaded transactions into the register, try turning this option off for a while and see if that clears any problems with duplicated or left behind pending transactions.

DoctorBrown

I'm not sure this Pending Transactions download is such a good idea. There seems to be too many corner cases for Quicken to handle. I think if they are going to do this at all, it is the banking institutions responsibility to provide the transactions info and when it's resolved on their end, tell Quicken to remove it. So if there is a discrepancy, it's on the banks end and the data they send.

So unless the banks tell Quicken they are handling this and of course, not all are going to, then that option should not be available.

IMHO, I think this should be dropped. I've never needed that info. Maybe because I never run my accounts that close to the limits where this info would be needed.

At the risk of opening a can of worms, I'd much prefer they spend time on stuff that we've been dealing with for years. (See my other posts if you are interested.)

Chris_QPW

@DoctorBrown I tend to agree, and I think most, if not all of the SuperUsers agree that the feature is problematic. But here is the thing, user keep pushing for it, and maybe even more important Quicken Inc has expended a lot of effort on it. Quicken Inc like Intuit before them doesn't like dropping a feature that they have expended a lot of time on. They are very stubborn in that way.

This is like the third attempt at this feature, and I might add the least bug ridden of these attempts. The first two were pulled within days of release.

I definitely notice that their approach on this one changed quite a bit from the other two (more restrictive, and with the concept that the balance that was going to be downloaded would never have pending transactions in it).

I find it very ironic that people claim that Quicken Inc doesn't listen to their requests. In my opinion they sometimes "listen too much", as in they will try to bring features like this that aren't really 100% supportable.

Basically, the way I see it is that as long as it isn't critical like say a bill payment system, then it really comes done to what the individual can get out of such a system vs the problems. The fact that you can turn it off makes all the difference.

I do hope that they can work out more of the bugs, because I don't think this feature is going to be pulled at this point.

rpgarrett75703

I'm having the same problem where cleared transactions still appear in the pending transactions list. My bank is Chase. For me it's a minor nuisance but not a major problem in that it doesn't mess with my actual register. I just delete those pending transactions that have already cleared. I still find it useful since it reminds me to manually enter a transaction in my register before it is actually downloaded and cleared. If it still shows up as pending after it clears I just delete it from the list. However, Quicken should still look into this issue.

Boatnmaniac

I wonder if there is some pattern as to which banks have this issue with pending transactions not going away when the posted transactions for them get downloaded? Or is this an issue that affects just about any bank for which pending transactions are enabled?

For me, this issue entirely happens with just 3 financial institutions: Elan, Chase, PNC Bank. Elan is by far the worst with Chase not far behind. It happens rather infrequently with PNC Bank.

I do not recall seeing this issue occur with US Bank (checking, savings), Austin Telco FCU, Sears MasterCard, Macy's credit card, Macy's Amex card, Midland States Bank (savings), Bremer Bank (checking) or Cap One (credit card).