"Also rename existing & future transactions" doesn't apply to categories - why?

Just Lurking

This has annoyed me for years and I'm finally getting around to asking about it. Is it something I'm doing, or is this the way it's supposed to function? When I'm editing my register and updating Payees, such as this one:

I can then go over to the Category field and I have an option to save a Quickfill rule for this specific Payee/Category. Great!

Then the piece de resistance appears, where I get a popup asking me if I want to rename all the other transactions which match. I double-check that it all looks good and say yes!

Except…for some reason the categories don't update, so I'm left with a bunch of correct Payees but at least some of them may have the wrong category. Since I selected the option to save a Quickfill rule for this Payee, it seems logical that Quicken would offer to update all the categories at the same time.

I find it very tedious to go fix the categories in this situation as my newly renamed Payee may exist in other views of the register (e.g. it may span multiple accounts and be reflected in both reviewed and unreviewed transactions where I might only be looking at unreviewed transactions). If there's a workaround and / or a feature request to change this behavior, I would appreciate if someone could point me to them.

Thanks!

jacobs

I can think of a few possible reasons for not having an option to automatically change categories.

When you rename a Payee for past instances, you're just renaming that Payee in the database. Think of each Payee as having a unique number and a name associated with it. So if you have past transactions for Payee #1234 ("ABC") and you're now changing the name to "XYZ", all the existing transactions in the database for this Payee remain Payee #1234; the only change is that the name associated with Payee #1234 is now "XYZ".

Now let's consider what happens when you change a Category for a specific Payee. It's not the same thing. You're not renaming the category, you're actually switching to a different category. So Quicken would need to search the database for all transactions matching Payee XYZ, and change the Category in each transaction.

But it gets more complicated, because there is only one Payee for each transaction, but transactions can have more than one category because of splits. Quicken Mac currently does not have search-and-replace functionality which works for splits. (That's a major feature request which has not yet been implemented, but is marked as "Planned" by the developers.) It's reasonable to guess that once they write the code to search-and-replace categories within splits, they could use the same code to do it for auto-changing past transactions.

But it gets still more complicated. Let's say I have Payee ABC with a past transaction with two splits for Clothing and Groceries. Now I'm entering a new transaction, changing the name of Payee ABC to XYZ, and this time I enter just Category=Dining. What would you expect Quicken to do if it offered the capability of changing existing transactions here? Should it remove the splits on the existing transactions and replace them with a single category=Dining? Should it only change the category if it's a one-for-one replacement? Should it be allowed to materially change prior year spending reports by replacing categories and replacing splits with single categories or visa versa? I wouldn't think so.

Chris_QPW

For what it is worth, Quicken Windows does have this feature:

It doesn't change categories in splits. And this for in one account, not for all the accounts, unless you are in the "All Transactions" register/view.

This kind of search and replace if done properly at the database level is actually very fast. Yes, even in Quicken Windows "tired old database".

Example, in the "All Transactions register", changed the category for a given payee there are 41,304 transactions "in the register", it changed 310 transactions. It was basically instant, a busy cursor for maybe a second while it refreshed the register view.

Interesting enough Quicken Windows doesn't have the same for the payee, most likely just because it hasn't been requested that much. But it probably should be.

jacobs

This kind of search and replace if done properly at the database level is actually very fast.

Yes, I agree, but it's dangerous when splits are excluded, as is currently the case in Quicken Mac. If/when the developers add that functionality, it would be easier and safer to add the checkbox for re-categorizing past transactions.

It's interesting that Quicken will do this, but not for splits, and only for the current account. Both of those seem like half-baked solutions to me. Is it even apparent to a user that if they select "update past transactions when category is changed" that it will onl;y affect transactions in that one account? Especially for credit cards, people switch them often enough that if past history is going to be changed, I'd want/expect to have the option to do it everywhere.

Chris_QPW

I don't think it is half-backed. Splits shouldn't be done for all the reasons you mentioned.

As for whether it should be done for all accounts or not that I think is more of a personal requirement and I can see it going either way. Like I said in Quicken Windows it depends on if you do the change in a given account or in the All Transactions view.

I will say one thing, and this is also a reason most likely why the payee hasn't been done this way too, this is a recent addition to Quicken Windows, because in truth Quicken Windows doesn't "need it". Unlike Quicken Mac, it has find and replace of basically every field (but note it also doesn't do replaces in splits, probably for similar reasons), and with it you have a choice if it searches the one account or all accounts. This is purely a "convenance feature".

For me, this is a non-issue because at this point, I never have Quicken do any "automatic/guessing" at categories. They are filled in my rules or not filled in at all if it is a new payee, and it isn't really likely that I would have two from the same new payee. But I guess if I did this would kick in with the "only uncategorized" option selected. Once I have categorized the new payee it would I would memorize (add the rule for it).

So, really the only reason I would be changing past payee's categories is maybe if I decided to change how I categorize the payee and then I would just user find and replace.

Chris_QPW

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think these are two different use cases.

In Quicken Windows it is "you just got a download with several transactions from the same uncategorized payee and want to categorize them all at the same time". (I sort of forgot about the person that doesn't download very often which might get the new payee several times). And in this case most likely they would be all in the same account.

And in the Quicken Mac it is "how can we do find and replace on common fields when there isn't any find and replace feature?"

If this is to be the "find and replace substitute" then yes this would be very much half-baked.