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Transfer detection is causing register balances

idkidk

I'm not sure if I'm doing this right, but I have hundreds of recently downloaded transactions (I was hospitalized and catching up on months of transactions). I have transfer detections for dozens of transactions that are incorrectly detected. If the category states another account, if I remove the category, the tx is removed from the referenced account as well. All my statement balances from the paper statements are off now. I am going back to recreate every missing line item but there must be a better way. I don't recall Quicken doing this in past versions. Did the default change? I'm really not finding value in the subscription nor any of the "automated" features, its just cauisng me to spend more time and troubleshooting. I'm going to have to keep it raw data and not let Quicken do anything "smart". It just causes me register errors.

I question the value of the Transfer Detection feature if the consequence of it getting it wrong is catastrophic.

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idkidk

If you don't have transfer detection, what's the worst that happens? The accounts stand on their own and you don't know that a payment that left one account is for another. But the ledger for each account is updated anyway, so your balance is correct. I would think most of us are downloading QFX files from the banks so all of this is taken care of by them. If you're having to do it manually, hopefully you're not doing daily transfer and its maybe once or twice a month. Either way, its not a lot of time to do those manually if you don't download txes automatically. But if you have transfer detection errors, you have to go back to your paper statements and match the stated balance then track down where the transfer detection errored out, maybe add a new entry… which do you think will take more of your time in the long-run?

UKR

Especially when you're trying to play catch up and start downloading QFX files from various banks, getting transfer transactions to appear correctly in your registers is a PITA, doesn't matter if Transfer Detection is On or Off.

Please bear in mind that properly recorded transfers always are a pair of linked transactions, one in Account A, the other one in Account B. Change or delete one, the other one gets changed or deleted, too.

If you have improperly recorded transfers in an account, e.g., in Account A the category points to itself, [Account A], then you probably also have the other half of the transfer in Account B, pointing to [Account B]. Those two transactions are not linked together.
You can change the one in A to point to [B] and, in B, delete the now duplicate unlinked transaction pointing to [B].

When it comes to transfers, checking to savings or paying my credit card bills, I always record manual transactions or scheduled reminders before I download transactions from the banks (using One Step Update). Then, when I download and the transfer confirmation arrives from one of the banks, all Quicken needs to do is to match the download to the already existing, correctly categorized transfer transaction.

idkidk

I don't see manual entry a good use of time IMO nor dealing with transfer detection. Quicken can't assume duplicate transaction value is correctly linked. I will sometimes transfer same amounts to another account because I paid a bill out of the wrong account, or maybe I just transfer a random amount that happens to match another on the same day.

I bought and use Quicken for auto download and import feature, but I made it a point to remove all memorized categories, payee lists, and renaming rules just to clean data. Even then, its still Proper casing downloads even though the QFX file doesn't have the data like that. I just think it is safer for everyone if transfer detection was never offered and let each account stand on their own.

After I re-categorized all the wrong transfers to blank, I had to go back to every paper statement from three different bank accounts and backtrack the last 12 months to add missing transactions line-by-line from PDF statements to have the balance reconcile for each account. I like the auto import feature, but maybe I value the data being messed with and have to consider other software.

I've been using Quicken since 2008, but it never ceases to frustrate me and at some point, you need call it quits and find some other software to frustrate you. :)

Chris_QPW

I do believe that this is the default these days, if not overridden by the user:

With this setting it will at least ask you if the matching is correct.

And I do tend to agree with you that it seems that the value of a feature like this goes way down when it isn't 100%, but it is clear that Quicken Inc and Intuit before them disagree. And I also agree that this feature in particular is quite bad especially since there isn't an "undo". There are several features in Quicken that aren't 100% and Quicken Inc seems to be perfectly OK with that fact.

My much longer opinion on automatic transfer detection is here:

FAQ Automatic Transfer Detection Usage — Quicken