Bank imported transactions with wrong Payee

millem1309

I've seen several closed discussions on this matter and I've already looked at my renaming rules.

For my situation, it always happens with memorized transactions. And it's not that the name is altered in some way. It seems clear to me that Quicken looks at the amount and makes a guess that matches some other transaction of the same amount. For example, I have several monthly transactions that are $50 payments or donations, etc. If I don't recall which one happens on the 15th, for example, I have to double check because it will assign some other payee with a memorized transaction of the same amount.

To get around this for 2 separate monthly payments to an HSA, I make I make payments $1 different from each other so that Quicken doesn't get confused. But as for the $50 ones, I don't understand why Quicken isn't simply READING THE ACTUAL PAYEE that comes via the bank import! Case in point: yesterday I made a one-off Zelle payment to my son for $50 and the payment came in via Quicken with one of the memorized transaction payees of that same amount that is not due for another 7 days! The name on the bank transaction is my son's first & last names, the Quicken payee was "converted" to a long charity name.

This has been going on for several years and the bank is Capital One.

Quicken Classic Deluxe for MAC

Version 7.10.1 (Build 710.55389.100)

macOS 12.7.6

Chris_QPW

You have posted this in a Quicken Windows category, but indicated that this is for Quicken Mac. I have flagged this question to be moved to a Quicken Mac category where the right people will see it.

But as a Quicken Windows user I assume that Quicken Mac is doing something similar to Quicken Windows and as such the matching of transactions is almost entirely done by the amount, and from what I know it doesn't look at the payee at all. Matching is tricky because in fact the date and payee aren't guaranteed to be what is in Quicken. You can use any payee you like, which may or may not be what is downloaded. From what I see Quicken doesn't use the renaming rules as some kind of cross reference to decide that there is a match, it is only using them to change the name to what will then match to the payee in the memorized transactions.

millem1309

Thanks, Chris_QPW, for moving my post and for your insight. This is good to know. Some other thoughts about this:

1. Matching the transaction by the amount makes sense since most transaction amounts tend to be different from each other. However, to match singularly on the amount seems to be wildly casual. It's like matching a person based completely on the street address or an IP address.
2. I hope that Quicken is aware of this issue and can take steps to streamline this. As I'm sure you're aware, this type of coding is elementary and definitely not even at the level of requiring AI.
3. I contacted Quicken support a couple of years ago and talked or chatted with an agent whose fix was to delete the renaming rules. I knew that wasn't the issue and didn't bother.
4. It's interesting that I don't see this issue posted. Perhaps no one else has such a situation.

Cheers,

Chris_QPW

Quicken Mac code is newer and as such might get different/better attention to this situation, but here is the history as it has unfolded in Quicken Windows.

1. This isn't new, it is VERY old, and basically, I believe that the reason you don't see any threads on it is because old threads get archived, and people also just learn to live with it. Or maybe they are more like me where they have very few "pre-entered" transactions to match to in the first place.
2. At the most I have seen them really do in this area is limit how far back they were looking for a match. It has been quite a long time since they have limited the matching to about 30 days back, but in the past, they would match any transaction with that amount no matter how far in the past it was, and they matched oldest to newest. Note that they don't do a "closest date match" from what I can see.
3. I should point out that one thing that was a sure match in the past was if the check number was entered and downloaded, but they days most people aren't writing checks. And even when they are, a lot of financial institutions aren't sending that information in the right way, so it isn't "downloaded" in the right field.
4. I haven't tested this in years, and I'm not a good candidate for testing it (since I seldom pre-enter transactions), so maybe they have made changes that improved this, but I do still see complaints like yours from time to time, so whatever they are doing hasn't totally solved the problem.