Why are my paychecks entering automatically?

Allison

The past several months, my paychecks have been entering automatically. I do not have them set up this way. They have been set ups for "Remind me" for several years, I and I have not changed anything. It is very frustrating, as my paychecks vary each time, and if I need to edit them after they are entered, they are entered as splits, rather than paychecks, which is significantly more time consuming to edit. I have found several prior similar questions, that are all closed, without resolution (see links). I have even deleted and reloaded the paychecks, and this still occurs. It is happening to both mine and my spouses paychecks, without any changes on our end. They only solution I have found, is to post date the paychecks a week later than they occur, so I have time to catch them before they enter, which disrupts the accuracy of the cash flow features.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7928008/paychecks-are-entering-automatically-with-wrong-amounts

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7950433/why-are-my-paychecks-entered-automatically

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7945598/paychecks-are-entering-automatically-with-wrong-amounts

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Allison,

To assist with this issue, please provide additional information. Is the paycheck reminder being pulled into your register because it's matching to a transaction that downloaded? Is this behavior happening only with your paycheck reminders, or are you seeing other reminders doing this also?

Do you keep your Quicken file directly on your local hard drive? Did this issue start immediately after a computer/program update or computer/program crash? Is your Quicken file synced to any cloud service, such as OneDrive, iCloud, or Dropbox?

I look forward to your reply!

Allison

Answers:

-It auto-enters before I even have the chance to download transactions

-I have only noticed it with 2 separate paychecks on repeated occasions (mine and spouses), but I can keep an eye out for other reminders.

-File is on local hard drive, and is not synced to any cloud service

-I did not notice this issue starting immediately after a computer/program update or computer/program crash?

Thank you

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

I'm not able to replicate the issue you're seeing, so this may be a file specific issue. To start troubleshooting that, I suggest that you try validating and/or super validating your data file.  Please save a backup file prior to performing these steps. 

Validate: 

1. File
2. Validate and Repair File...
3. Validate File
4. Click OK
5. Close the Data Log
6. Close Quicken (leave it closed for at least 5 secs)
7. Reopen Quicken and see if the issue persists.

If the issue persists, proceed to Super Validate. If the issue is resolved after performing validation, then please disregard the instructions to Super Validate. 

Super Validate:

1. File
2. Hold CTRL + Shift and click Validate and Repair File...
3. Super Validate File
4. Click OK
5. Close the Data Log
6. Close Quicken (leave it closed for at least 5 secs)
7. Reopen Quicken and see if the issue persists.  

Please let me know how it goes!

Allison

I will try these options shortly, but can you explain why this would be happening to at least 3 other people (links posted above) if it is an issue unique to my file? It is very tough to know if these resolutions will work, because this issue only arises bi-weekly, so even performing the validations above, I will not be able to monitor for resolution until the next pay-cycle.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

Considering that the instances you linked affected very few people and are spaced several months apart, it is quite likely the issue they were encountering was file specific. Beyond that, I can't speculate, since I did not troubleshoot the issue with them.

Thank you!

Allison

Unfortunately, this is continuing to occur. I even have my paychecks set up for anticipated dates a week following their actual dates (in hopes I could catch them before they auto-enter), and they still auto-enter into the ledger. After doing the above fixes, I recently had one set up for the 10/25 (actual post date of 10/18) and it entered automatically over a week in advance of the set up date. It seems to be timed with "pending transactions" (ie if there is a pending transaction similar, then it pulls they paycheck in), but I dislike this as my splits change every paycheck and it is much harder to adjust them from the ledger vs entering them from the Bill/payments screen. I am wondering if this bug started when pending transactions started to show up in the online updates?

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for the additional information,

It is possible that pending transactions are the underlying cause of the issue, if Quicken is matching the reminder to the pending transaction. To test this, please try turning off pending transactions for that specific account, and test to see if the issue persists. To turn off pending transactions in one specific account register, click the hourglass icon near the bottom of the register (just to the left of the Ending Balance). Then remove the checkmark next to Show Pending transactions.

Thank you!

Boatnmaniac

Do you have your account set up to show Reminders in the Account Register? You can check this by going to Account Register > upper right Gear icon > Reminders to show in register or click on the clock icon just to the left of the Gear icon. If so, you can change that so that they are not shown in the register.

Also, if your Account Register does not have the Status column on the far left (the column header will be a blue dot), I would suggest that you add that column. It will list the status of any manual transactions and Reminder transactions that have not yet been matched to downloaded transactions. Go to Account Register > upper right Gear icon > check the box for Status. or click on the Table icon just above the scroll bar.

Without the Status column shown in the register it can be difficult to know if the Paycheck Reminders (actually any Reminder) has actually been entered into the register or if it is simply showing up there. Here is an example of what an account register looks like with the Status column added.:

Allison

Thank you for this very in-depth, thoughtful explanation. Unfortunately, my setup was already in place with all of your current recommendations, so there weren't any changes to be made. I appreciate the explanation though, as it allowed me to double check that these settings were as desired.

Allison

Quicken Kristina Thank you. I will toggle off the Pending transactions, and see what happens at the next pay cycle (1.5 weeks from now). I do like the Pending transaction feature, so would prefer to have it on, but if I had to choose between it and having paychecks work correctly, I will go without it.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for the follow-up,

I was able to confirm this issue on my end by setting up a paycheck income reminder (set for manual entry) and turning on pending transactions for the account the paycheck gets deposited to. As soon as the pending transaction downloaded, Quicken matched it to the reminder (the clock icon changed to a blue pencil labeled "new match"). In the Bills & Income section, the reminder shows as Paid, even though I never entered it into the register.

I forwarded this issue to the proper channels to be further investigated. In the meantime, if you wish to contribute to the investigation, please navigate to Help > Report a problem and submit a problem report with log files attached.

While you will not receive a response through this submission, these reports will help our teams in further investigating the issue. The more problem reports we receive, the better.

We apologize for any inconvenience!

Thank you.    

(CTP-11311)

Allison

Thank you very much! I appreciate this information and look forward to additional investigation!

Allison

@Quicken Kristina I was able to confirm that turning off the pending transactions download seems to be the issue. I turned it off for this paycheck, and my paychecks waited for manual entry at the date of deposit. As much as I am glad it worked this week, this is disappointing, because I like the pending transactions feature, but it is far more inconvenient to have to reenter all of the line items on my paycheck than to have the insight of the pending transactions. I hope this can be further resolved an investigated.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for the follow-up,

That does further confirm this seems to be an issue with reminders matching to pending transactions.

The ticket is still open and in work. I haven't seen any updates yet.

I haven't found any better work arounds yet. My register was set to automatic entry and I found that, while I could unmatch the transaction once it posted, that just created an uncleared transaction in the register. It didn't turn it back into a reminder. I've turned off automatic entry in my account register and am waiting for the next suitable transaction to be visible as pending in Quicken to test if I get any better results that way.

Thank you!

Allison

@Quicken Kristina Although the pending downloads seem to be part of the issue, it still doesn't seem to be the entire issue. This paycheck, I waited until a day after the paycheck passed to "test" the system with pending transaction downloads turned off, and "remind me" turned on (instead of auto-enter). When the transaction downloads came in the morning it still pulled they bill reminder into the register without allowing me time to enter it through the paycheck setting (I would have had to edit it through splits, which is a lot more complicated after the fact). Hopefully there is some investigation into this ongoing issue.

Boatnmaniac

Sometimes Reminder issues can only be fixed by deleting the Reminder and then setting it up, again. Have you tried doing that?

Allison

@Boatnmaniac Yes, I have done that several times unfortunately. For the most part, I am now using a workaround of setting the paycheck up a week later than anticipated, but I am continuing the conversation here to try to see if there can be any other resolution, as this seems to be related to when the pending transaction download option was released. Thank you for your help.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

Is this happening only with paycheck reminders, or are you seeing other reminders also being pulled into the register as soon as the associated transaction downloads?

Thank you!

Allison

@Quicken Kristina I believe it is just paychecks, but I will pay better attention in the next week be sure. Thank you!