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Issues with automatic Payee renaming

Jim_Harman

In the past Quicken's automatic Payee renaming has worked quite well, but recent changes have made the option much less useful for me. Here are some examples:

Date —- Downloaded name — > Changed to

12/13/24 —-MO'S WINE & SPIRITS FAIRFIELD CT — > Wine & Spirits
12/7/24 —-Western Conn Medical Group —> Conn's
11/22/24 —- FAIRFIELD SOLID WASTE AN FAIRFIELD CT ——> Fairfield
11/22/24 —-LAKESHORE LEARNING MATER 310-537-8600 CA —- > Lakeshore

These transactions are all in EWC+ accounts. I do not see similar issues with a Direct Connect account.

The option is at Edit > Preferences > Downloaded transactions > Automatically apply Quicken's suggested name to Payee. I am reluctant to disable it because it usually improves the name, but in cases like these it makes it worse.

I hope the renaming can be changed to make it less aggressive.

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Comments

Jim_Harman

Thanks for the update, @Quicken Kristina.

It is certainly disappointing that this "data cleanup" limits the usefulness of "Quicken's suggested name" for Payees and that Quicken apparently cannot influence its service providers to improve this situation.

If this is really outside of Quicken's control, I think the Help for How Quicken suggests Payee names should be updated accordingly where it says

If the downloaded payee name does not match one of your renaming rules, Quicken then compares the downloaded payee name with its own database of standardized merchant names. If it finds a match, the payee name in the database is substituted for the payee name that was downloaded from your financial institution.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for the follow-up,

I can see the ticket was recently closed. The resolution on the ticket was that the issue is caused by data cleanup performed by service providers before it ever reaches Quicken. Our teams recommend using renaming rules to correct Payees that consistently download incorrectly.

Thank you!

Jim_Harman

@Quicken Kristina is CTP-11778 still open?

BROWN DOG COFFEE is STILL being auto renamed to Dog.com

Interestingly, this is occurring with a Barclay's credit card but not with a Bank of America card.

These accounts both use EWC+, but perhaps one is using Quicken's renaming and the other Inferred Payee comes from the FI.

Jim_Harman

I realize that I can manually rename these payees and create my own renaming rules so that if I ever use these Payees again they will be handled correctly.

The point of this issue is that Quicken's automatic renaming is being too aggressive or simplistic about renaming these and other payees.

For example, it appears that the rule that produces "Conn's" is something like "If the Payee contains CONN change the Payee to Conn's". This will work as intended for some cases of CONN in the Payee, but in this case, because CONN is a common abbreviation for Connecticut, it is changing the name of a doctor's office - Western Conn Medical Group - to Conn's, a bankrupt Texas-based furniture and appliance store.

If Quicken's automatic renaming rules are derived from customers' rules, as is implied by some Support articles, I can see how this sort of issue might arise. In reviewing my renaming rules, I see that many of them are simply in the form of "Rename the downloaded Payee to XXX if Payee contains XXX". This works for me because for example I only do business with one "Bob's", Harry's", and "Leslie's". But of course in other towns or parts of the country there are many unrelated businesses that contain those names. Someone needs to examine the automatic renaming rules to make sure they are not too generic.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

I'll forward that information to the team working on the issue!

Jim_Harman

Use my existing renaming rules is selected.

Automatically create rules is not selected.

I have a set of about 75 renaming rules and 125 Memorized Payees that work well for the payees that I use regularly. None of my rules apply to the Payees in the examples above.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Jim_Harman,

The team that's looking into the issue wants to confirm your preferences for renaming rules. Do you have the preferences circled in green in the screenshot below selected in your Quicken?

I look forward to your response!

Jim_Harman

Thanks for the additional information. I see that the un-useful renaming is included as the "inferredPayee" entries in the Cloud Sync Log, which confirms that it is coming from Quicken's server.

I have sent a report.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for the additional information,

When I dig into the issue further, it is possible that what you're seeing is because of Automatic Categorization Engine (ACE). ACE learns and evolves based on user-modified data and, as such, may display different names than you would expect. The article linked below mentions ACE at the bottom, but the link for more information throws a 404 error. I notified our content team of the issue.

That said, since you are seeing payee renaming becoming less useful, I forwarded this to the proper channels to be further investigated. In the meantime, please navigate to Help > Report a problem and submit a problem report with log files attached in order to contribute to the investigation.

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.

To answer your question about the suggested names coming from a Quicken server, rather than locally, according to this article on how Quicken suggests Category and Payee names, you are correct. Quicken will first check renaming rules. If there isn't a renaming rule for that payee, then Quicken will compare the downloaded payee name with its own database of standardized merchant names. If Quicken doesn't find the payee there, then it will display the way it was sent by the financial institution.

We apologize for any inconvenience!

Thank you.

(CTP-11778)

Jim_Harman

Prior to R59.35, I was running R59.18, which I installed on 10/26.

On 9/19/24, BROWN DOG COFFEE CO BUENA VISTA CO was changed to Dog.com.

On 3/29/24, RING'S END #15-FAIRIFELD FAIRFIELD CT was changed to Ring.

I will add dates to the examples in my original post.

I realize that we can't expect the automatic renaming to be perfect, but it seems to have gotten worse recently.

Because these errors all occurred on an EWC+ connection, I assume the suggested names come from a Quicken server and not locally. Is that correct?

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

To clarify, this issue started when you accepted R59.35? Do you recall which version you were using prior to that? Knowing which version was the last version where payee renaming was working as expected can help us investigate what changed.

Thank you!

Jim_Harman

Thanks for your interest, @Quicken Kristina

The examples above occurred between 11/22 and 12/13. I accepted R59.35 on 11/22 and R60.15 just recently.

There were no Renaming rules for the Payees in my examples at the time the transactions were received.

The option to automatically create renaming rules is not checked and the option to automatically apply Quicken's suggested name is checked.

In the first example, the Downloaded Payee was

and the name was set to Wine & Spirits.

I will continue to watch this and post more examples when I see them. Another user posted a similar example here

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7958228/how-can-i-edit-payee-renaming-rules

If you search the Community for Renaming rules you will see numerous other examples and considerable confusion.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Jim_Harman,

To help troubleshoot this, please provide more information. When did you first notice this behavior? Did the start of this issue coincide with any recent changes (such as a software update)?

Since there recently was an issue with Payees being truncated (which has now been resolved), there is a chance that your Quicken learned incorrect renaming rules. If you haven't already done so, I recommend going to Tools>Renaming Rules and checking to make sure there aren't any incorrect rules causing this.

I look forward to your response!