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Double entry accounting

Badger51

I recall that Quicken Classic is not a true double entry accounting system. But my recollection was that with prior transactions, a payment from my checking account to my credit card, for example, would be recorded as follows:

In the credit card account, a payment would be recorded with the category of my checking account.

In my checking account, the payment would be recorded with a category of my credit card.

Lately, without any user intervention, it appears as follows;

Payment to my credit card shows as a payment, with the category listed as my credit card.

There is no deduction from my checking account for the transaction.

I can edit the transactions to appear as I wish, but has something changed in the download process.

thanks

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Comments

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Badger51,

Based on what you're describing, it sounds like previously, Quicken was recognizing the transaction as a transfer between the Checking account and Credit Card, and now it's seeing the payment on the Credit Card side, but is not recognizing it as a transfer. There could be a couple different things causing this. It could be a change in how the financial institution sends the information. It could also be that Quicken learned an incorrect rule, and is changing the transaction when it downloads. You can check to see if the transaction has been changed after it downloaded by right clicking on the transaction. If you see a Revert to option, then it was changed and you can click that option to see how it originally downloaded.

You also mentioned that this charge never shows up in the Checking account. To clarify, is the account connected to the financial institution for automatic downloads? Is the transaction completely missing, or is it just not recognizing that it's a transfer? If the transaction is missing, are there any other missing transactions in that account?

I look forward to your response!

Badger51

Thanks for the response…

I did a bit more investigation and found that entries in my Checking account were a bit mixed.

I did try the revert to option in a number of transactions but it didn't appear to change the account the transaction was posted to.

I've manually updated recent transactions and "memorized" them. Will that create a new rule?

thanks again

UKR

IMHO, the problem stems from downloading and accepting transfer transactions where Quicken is not able to recognize that this is a transfer between accounts A and B (for example). As a result, when one side of the downloaded transfer arrives in account A, Quicken does not know where to put the money and just puts it into account A. Ditto when the other half of the transfer arrives in a download for account B, perhaps days later.

In my experience, it's best if you record a correct transfer transaction when you make your credit card payment and BEFORE any downloads arrive. This way you have a correctly recorded transfer in both account registers: in account A the category points to account B, as it should. And vice versa, in account B the category correctly points back to account A.
When the downloads confirm the transfer, even days apart, in both accounts Quicken will (should) be able to simply match the downloaded transaction to the already existing register transaction and not cause any duplicates or other problems.

NotACPA

@Badger51

"I recall that Quicken Classic is not a true double entry accounting system."

Q isn't double-DATA ENTRY, but it is double-entry. When you input a transaction, an offsetting entry is created in the category you choose. OR, if you create a transfer, the offset is created in the other account.

It sounds like when you created that card payment, in the card account, you used the card account itself as the transfer category. Q allows this since you're not expected to go back to the dawn of time and input every transaction that ever happened in your accounts (a true "start from $0").

But the ability to use such self-referencing txn should be sparing and very infrequent.

Had you recorded the payment correctly, Q would have downloaded into your card and your checking as you expected. As @UKR noted, Q doesn't know about transfers because your bank doesn't know about transfers and doesn't/can't download them.

Badger51

Just for clarity, the credit card is a longstanding one and the import transactions worked flawlessly for years. Something changed a few months ago and to my knowledge, it wasn't anything I did.

More importantly, even after manually identifying my checking account as the source of the transfer and memorizing the account, the most recent downloaded transactions reverted to the earlier practice of labeling the credit card as the source of funds for the payment.

Please let me know how I can restore the correct source of funds for my credit card payments.

thanks in advance

Bob_L

Something you might try is Preferences>transfer detection, with the option to confirm it before it is entered. Doubtfull this will work but it shouldn't hurt either.