Is downloaded transaction data lost when matching?

msoultan

Let's say I record a new customer payment for an invoice. Quicken will create a new transaction in my checking account that has the same dollar amount as a downloaded deposit transaction. I can click the red pencil to match this payment to an existing downloaded transaction, but then it overwrites the payee with the customer name, thus losing the downloaded transaction description. The reason that this information is handy is because that's the information that matches what's in my actual bank account register, so if I ever need to look that up, it makes it more difficult.

Is this information actually wiped out, or is it stored somewhere within the transaction when it's matched up with the invoice payment? Also, I do know that I can revert the change, but it seems like I need to do that right away otherwise that information is lost forever. Or is there a setting to stop it from removing the downloaded transaction's original description upon matching?

It seems like it would be better if it either combined the information, or at least stored the original data somewhere in the newly matched transaction for reference. Am I the only one that's annoyed by this?

msoultan

I also noticed that it changes the date to the date specified in the New Customer Payment dialog - that seems a bit backwards as wouldn't the date of the downloaded transaction be considered the correct date as that's when the payment was actually received?

msoultan

After some more toying around with this, I found that I can enable the column data that shows the downloaded transaction details which includes the posting date, original description, etc. I would think there would be an option in the menu to show this data, because it is obviously there, but I can't find any way to show this data other than enabling the respective columns. If anyone has any more info on this, I'd appreciate it.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @msoultan,

To answer your question about this behavior, when matching a downloaded transaction to one that's already in the register, Quicken keeps the information that was already in the register (the assumption being that's how you want it to display). I'm not aware of any options under Preferences to turn this behavior off. However, as you already discovered, you are able to customize which columns display in your register, so if you want the information, as it originally downloaded, to be visible, you can add those columns to your register.

If you would like to see an option to change this behavior added to Quicken, I would recommend that you create an Idea post requesting this. Ideas that get enough votes may be implemented in the future! For information about creating an Idea post, please click here.

I hope this helps!

msoultan

To answer your question about this behavior, when matching a downloaded transaction to one that's already in the register, Quicken keeps the information that was already in the register (the assumption being that's how you want it to display).

Unless I'm mistaken (or it's a bug), the above statement is not entirely true. If you match an invoice payment (in the checking account) to a downloaded transaction by clicking on the red pencil next to the payment transaction and then selecting the downloaded transaction, it will overwrite the downloaded transaction description with the payee name.

mshiggins

Manual data wins over downloaded data. The already entered invoice payment info will take precedence over the downloaded transaction info.

msoultan

Just for clarification, none of this data was entered manually - but it sounds like for a match done manually, the data in the destination transaction is overwritten.