Venmo best practice

Dolphind23

Windows 11/Quicken V27

So I've looked at the forum posts and the answers aren't easy for me to undersand

I set up my Venmo as an account, all it does is register the outgoing and incoming transacctions.

But if I send my wife $25 for groceries there is 25 less in the register. But the 25 added automatically from my Checking account is not entered. At this point it shows like $-9000 in the Venmo account. Any solutions?

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @Dolphind23,

I understand how frustrating this must be, especially with your Venmo account showing an incorrect balance.

To help troubleshoot, can you confirm if you’re categorizing the transaction correctly in Quicken? When you send the $25, do you also enter a corresponding transfer from your Checking account to Venmo to reflect the payment? Are you using the “Transfer” category for both sides of the transaction? If the outgoing payment is recorded but the incoming adjustment from your Checking account is missing, it could cause this imbalance. Also, have you noticed if this issue happens with other Venmo transactions, or is it isolated to this payment?

Let me know if any of these details help clarify the situation, and we can work on a solution.

splasher

First off, I don't use Venmo, but as a way to "spend/send" funds, it is no different from using Apple Pay. It is a middle man and really doesn't require being represented with its own account. If you set it up as its own account, when you send funds, you would need to transfer funds from the affiliated account (such as your checking) to the Venmo account and then spend it against the appropriate category. Incoming funds would be just the opposite process.

It seems to me that is doubling the number of transactions required and doubling your workload.

Dolphind23

In the Venmo register in Quicken most transactions are given a category, not sure what you mean by correctly. I want Quicken to be one and done so no I don't enter a corresponding transfer, manually.

"If the outgoing payment is recorded but the incoming adjustment from your Checking account is missing, it could cause this imbalance. Also, have you noticed if this issue happens with other Venmo transactions, or is it isolated to this payment?"

This is for all Venmo payments, the only way to link the transactions is manual entry?

Austin@

@Dolphind23 I've run into this same issue, so I'll tell you how I deal with it in case it's helpful.

Unfortunately, the Venmo connection (Express Web Connect) doesn't download the transaction showing that funds for a Venmo payment were pulled from your Checking account—it only shows the Venmo payment itself. Here's an example:

If I have $10 in my Venmo account balance and I pay my friend $5, no money needs to come from Checking—it just sends $5 from my existing Venmo balance, leaving $5 left. Because no money had to be pulled from Checking, no issues here. Quicken downloads the transaction to my Venmo register showing I spent $5 directly from my Venmo Account Balance to my friend's Venmo Account.

However, let's say I again have $10 in my Venmo Account balance and I try to pay my friend $30. In this case, there isn't enough in my Venmo Account balance to cover the payment, so a transfer is initiated behind the scenes to move $30 from my Checking account into my Venmo Account balance, which is then sent to my friend's Venmo Account balance. As you have found, the transaction showing the payment from the Venmo Account balance to my friend downloads into Quicken just fine, but unfortunately the "behind-the-scenes" transaction showing that money was moved into the Venmo Account balance from Checking to cover the payment doesn't download into your Venmo register in Quicken, which causes the account balance to be off (eventually, by a lot, as in your case).

The solution I have found is to go to your Checking account register in Quicken and find any downloaded transactions representing Venmo payments (essentially where money was moved from your Checking account to your Venmo Account balance to cover payments to friends/family via the Venmo app that were larger than the balance that was available in your Venmo account). For me, these transactions download as VENMO PAYMENT or something similar. When these show up in my Checking register, I change the category to [Venmo], which changes it to a linked transfer so the "other half" of the transaction is created in my Venmo register that shows that money was moved into my Venmo account to provide the balance needed to make the Venmo payment.

I've set up a rule to automatically set the category on these transactions to [Venmo] so that whenever one shows up in my Checking account, it automatically creates the other half in my Venmo register, which will keep your Venmo account balance accurate despite Venmo not providing this via their transaction downloads.

Hopefully that all makes sense, and good luck!

BK

The way I treat Venmo in Quicken is exactly identical to PayPal where I don't add either of them to Quicken at all. And I keep the Venmo balance zero at all times.

Sending money: When I Venmo someone, it comes out of my bank account. When that bank transaction is downloaded to Quicken, I edit the payee and category accordingly and also add venmo in the memo field as a reference.

Receiving money: When someone Venmo's me, I immediately transfer it to my bank account. Same as before, when that bank transaction is downloaded to Quicken, I edit the payee and category accordingly and also add venmo in the memo field as a reference.

For me this approach reduces number of accounts in Quicken since Venmo & PayPal are just intermediaries and I don't have to deal with Venmo's 2FA in Quicken every time. Of course, if you maintain a balance in Venmo, then my approach may not work well.

Quicken Jasmine

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20475276#Comment_20475276

Are you still needing assistance? I just wanted to check in as there has not been any activity within this thread for a few days.