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Duplicate transaction downloads, wrong categories

Seth300

For the past several weeks, Quicken keeps continually re-downloading the same transactions from PayPal and wrongly categorizing them as transfers from another bank account. Over and over again. When I look at the details, the descriptions are the same. It's not every transaction and I can't see any reason why these particular ones are having this problem. I cannot match these newly downloaded and reconciled transactions with the old downloaded and reconciled transactions. So the only thing I can do is delete them, which causes them to be re-downloaded again.

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Quicken Kristina

Hello @Seth300,

To help troubleshoot this issue, please provide more information. Was there anything that happened around the same time as this unwanted behavior started (unexpected program or computer shut down, program or system update, etc.)? In your Quicken program, have you gone to Window>Payees & Rules to check for any Renaming Rules or Quickfill rules that may be causing some of these transactions to morph into transfers? When the duplicates download, have you checked the FITID column to see if the value there matches the value for the original transaction or if it is different for the duplicate? To view the FITID column, click the columns button at the bottom of the register and select FITID.

I look forward to your response!

Seth300

I don't really remember if anything happened, nothing unusual, although there could have been a Quicken update. No changes have been made to Payees & Rules or QuickFile. I've now checked the FITID numbers and they are the same for all duplicated transactions. See the highlighted transactions in the screenshot below. The ones with the category "Satya Chas" are the ones that just came in and got wrongly attributed. The ones with category "PayPal" are the existing transactions. I cannot match the items. If I deleted one set, they will just continually get re-downloaded. This is putting all those accounts out of balance.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

Based on the screenshot, it looks like the FITID for the originals and the duplicates match. To narrow down if this is something happening on the financial institution's end or in your Quicken file, please backup your Quicken file and follow these steps:

Deactivate the problem account.
Add the account as a new account by going to Accounts>Add Account and following the prompts.
Do not link to the existing account; make sure to add it as a new account.
Once you have added it as a new account, test to see if the duplicate transactions are still downloading in the new account.

Please let me know how it goes!

Seth300

I finally had time to follow your directions here. In the new, unlinked account, all the PayPal transactions came down ONCE. No duplicates.

Two more things to add:

This is happening with both PayPal accounts in my Quicken (mine & my partner's).
The new/duplicate PayPal transactions will not match with the already existing transactions in the transfer account. This seems to be where the major problem is.

Seth300

Oh, also, Quicken now is consistently categorizing the Transfers incorrectly (to my partner's Personal bank account) which it never did before and it is VERY annoying. Most of these are monthly payments that have been the same for years.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your replies,

Based on the fact that the transactions downloaded into the new account correctly, this may be a file-specific issue affecting those two PayPal accounts. Did you test creating a new account for your partner's PayPal account also? If so, did it download correctly and not incorrectly categorize the transactions?

If everything is working correctly in the new accounts, then I would recommend that you backup your file, keep the new PayPal accounts connected, drag/drop any historic transactions you need to keep from the old accounts to the new ones, then delete the old accounts.

Thank you!

Seth300

yikes. That would mean categorizing hundreds of transactions. And deleting/recategorizing all their corresponding transfers to and from 5 or 6 different accounts!

Surely there is another solution.

Seth300

This is a problem that only started a couple of weeks ago and only affects transfers. And if I categorize a transfer from the new account, it still will not match to an existing transaction in the bank account. So that doesn’t solve that problem.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

Since you mentioned the issue started a couple weeks ago, have you tried restoring a backup from before the issue started, and tested to see if the issue is resolved in that newly restored file?

Thank you!

Seth300

okay, I think perhaps I have not stated clearly what the issue is. There are no duplicates in the PayPal account. What is happening is that some (most but not all) of the PayPal transactions that are transfers to another account are categorized as transfers — for some reason in the last couple of weeks consistently categorized wrongly by Quicken, then needing to be corrected by me — and downloaded and matched by those banks (multiple banks) and then Redownloaded hy the bank, creating a duplicate with the same ID number which cannot be matched to the existing already downloaded and matched transaction. And if I delete one of those duplicates, the bank will again Redownload the transaction. The only way I can get it to stop is to leave the duplicate in there and then create an adjustment to just cancel out that additional amount. This is happening with PayPal transactions from 2 different PayPal accounts and with 3 different banks.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for the clarification,

If you're seeing this happen in multiple accounts and the issue started recently, there are a couple of possible causes. It could be that Quicken learned an incorrect rule (which is causing it to fill in that incorrect transfer info on download and may also cause the program to not realize the transaction was already downloaded). To check for that issue, please go to Window>Payees & Rules and check to see if there are any Renaming Rules (Rules tab of the window) changing your transactions to these incorrect transfers.

If there are no rules causing the problem, there is a chance that it's a file-specific issue. To troubleshoot that, try restoring a backup from before the issue started and test to see if that resolves the issue.

I hope this helps!