What is the expected behavior of Quicken to prevent duplicate register entries from Bill Reminder?

Question

The attached message to error trap (prevent) a duplicate happens intermittently and similarly from entry attempts directly in the register and from register entry attempts directly in Bill Reminder.  I don't notice any consistency for nearness of due date, or anything else.  Thank you.

Chris_QPW · Answer

The real problem with this "feature" is that for some people it has "false positives".  Meaning that thinks a reminder is the same as an already entered transaction when it is a completely different transaction.

I certainly agree that people should get their reminders recorded in the register before the downloaded transaction shows up and as such this trying to guess if a downloaded transaction is an existing one in the register wouldn't be needed at all.

And that is what aggravates people, they are already entering their reminders before the downloaded transaction, and as such there isn't any chance that the reminder lines up with a transaction that has already been entered, but they keep getting prompted to ask this question.

UKR · Answer

When you download transactions from the bank, do you typically have due or past due scheduled reminders still waiting to be executed, i.e., converted into real register transactions?

IMHO, scheduled reminders should be turned into real register transactions prior to downloading bank transactions.

At least for me the process of matching a downloaded transaction to a real register transaction seems to be working better than having to fiddle with reminders. I hardly ever get the above message.

I also hardly ever get a problem with a downloaded transaction which Quicken attempts to mismatch to a prior instance of same transaction.

Chris_QPW · Answer

I think that is one of the reasons why people have suggested that they want to turn off that message:

Option to Turn Off "Is this the payment for..." — Quicken

I don't think anyone has figured out exactly what criteria they use to determining if they should show this message or not.  I certainly have been able to figure it out.