Automatic reconcile shouldn't "mark transactions reviewed"

Chris_QPW

Note that the original title of this suggestion was:

Automatic reconcile shouldn't be allowed when the user is using "Automatically add" mode

But after going through the whole suggestion, I think if possible it is better to allow this, but have Quicken Windows' automatic reconcile NOT mark transactions "reviewed" (clear the New or New Match status). So, I changed the title in hopes that is possible. But if not possible, then Quicken Windows should block this combination of options.

The proper process for the "Automatically add to banking registers" mode is to review the transactions that are marked New or New Match to make sure they are correct, for the payee, category, and such, and then mark them reviewed.

These transactions can be "marked reviewed" is a couple of different ways. The first is there is a menu item that can be selected in the Status column. The other is that if you edit one of these transactions, like for instance add/change the category, after you save it, it will be "marked reviewed". This is the second case, applies to Quicken Reconcile too, when it marks a transaction reviewed the New or New Match status goes away (it is "marked reviewed).

The problem here is that the use actually never had a chance to review that transaction.

When the user is using "Automatically add to banking registers" mode and automatic reconcile mode the automatic reconcile mode kicks in right after the transactions are downloaded.

Note that reconcile checks "amounts" not payees, categories, and such, but when this reconcile is done, the New or New Match statuses will be gone and the user will have no idea of which transactions are actually new and need to be reviewed for the payee, category, …

I will note that Quicken Mac has a similar process and automatic reconcile, but there is a major difference that allows them to have both modes on and still have a valid review/reconcile process.

Their reconcile doesn't mark the transactions reviewed. That always has to be done in a separate step by the user.

I'm not the fence of which process is better since my own workflow is (no automatic reconcile), download, review, run reconcile. Which does save me the step of actually selecting to mark the transactions reviewed. And the process of doing an edit and have it mark it reviewed is also nice (and something that the Quicken Mac users have sometimes requested).

Maybe instead of blocking the use of both of these together, Quicken Windows could just not mark transactions reviewed when automatic reconcile is being used. I don't know how hard that would be to implement in the Quicken Windows code, but that might be the best of both worlds.