How to handle transfers between accounts that post on two different dates?

biocoder

How to handle transfers between accounts that post on two different dates?

My credit card records the date that it's scheduled to initiate the withdrawal from my bank account.

The bank account records the date that it was withdrawn from the bank account.

When I set the transfer category, it creates a manual (now duplicate) transaction in the other account with the same date as the one I'm setting the transfer category.

Chris_QPW

There are basically three ways to handle this.

1. Accept the fact that the dates will not be exactly what you have from your financial institution(s). Which BTW happens all the time because there are in fact multiple "dates", like the date that the actual transaction was done on, the one that the financial institution first saw the transaction, the date that it posted. And there is can also be the date you entered a transaction in Quicken. Imagine writing a check. You write and enter it into Quicken, then mail it. On another date they cash it. On another date the financial institution sees it and marks it pending. On another date they post it.
2. Use an intermediate account. Transfer to it in the first account. Then do a transfer out of it into the final "to account" using the different dates.
3. Don't use a linked transfer. Use a regular category. Long before computers came around double book accounting worked that way. That is where "balancing the books" came from. As long as the two transactions are "offsetting" the math will come out right.

marcaronson408

Here is what I do.

I set the category for both transactions to "[acct name]", where "acct name" is the name of the account where the transaction happened. This results in the transaction being recorded as going back into the same account and the payment will not be included in any of your spending reports. It's important to note that the individual credit card transactions will all be properly categorized and included in your spending reports.

Here is a concrete example that assumes that I pay my citi credit card from my Bank Of America account:

• If the credit card's quicken account name is "citicard", then I assign the category "[citicard]" to the payment transaction in that account.
• If the bank's quicken account name is "BofA", then I assign the category "[BofA]" to the payment transaction in that account.

As long as you are downloading the individual credit card transactions and properly recoding the category for those transactions, the spending will be properly accounted for in all the various reports.

Hope this helps!

Marc

q_lurker

I operate quite comfortably using the option 1 @Chris_QPW identified. While sometimes slightly inaccurate in one account or the other, I appreciate the simplicity it provides. The parallel he cited with a written check applies for me. I tell the CC to withdraw their due amount on a date. That is the date recorded for the transaction. That the bank may not post the withdrawal until a day or two later and the CC may credit it on a third date does not matter to me.

Chris_QPW

As I look at @marcaronson408's answer I realized that I didn't explain #1 clearly enough, just assumed that people knew something about Quicken that might not be obvious. And that lead me to realize that the original question was in fact a bit different than what I answered.

My answer was for the first question.

How to handle transfers between accounts that post on two different dates?

But I didn't read enough and answer this question.

My credit card records the date that it's scheduled to initiate the withdrawal from my bank account.

The bank account records the date that it was withdrawn from the bank account.

When I set the transfer category, it creates a manual (now duplicate) transaction in the other account with the same date as the one I'm setting the transfer category.

#1 (which is what I use) assumes that you want to use linked transfers, which I see that you are trying to do. Quicken just calls this a transfer, I'm calling it a linked one because the two transactions are linked together.

The problem you are having is very common. It starts with the fact that all Quicken knows about the two transactions is that there is a withdraw in one account and a deposit in the other account for the same amount on approximately the same date. The even necessarily the same. That is very little to go on.

So, what is the approach so that you can get a properly linked transfer?

That depends on a few things.

I will start with the most reliable method. Make sure that the transfer is entered into the registers before the transactions are downloaded. This can be a manual entry, or one entered by a reminder. Then what should happen is that as the transactions are downloaded, they will be matched to the one in that is already in the register. Note that if the amount changes from what is actually downloaded, what you will need to do is change the amount of the pre-entered transaction to match the amount of the downloaded one and then do a manual match of the pre-existing transaction to the downloaded one.

If you are not using this preference, and getting your transactions in the Downloaded Transactions tab:

Then it is a matter of just making sure that the first side of the transfer is entered correctly. As in, as @marcaronson408 explained you use the syntax of [Other account] for the category when accepting the transaction into the register. This will make it a linked transfer to the other account. When you download/accept the other side of the transfer into the account Quicken should match the now pre-existing linked transfer transaction to the downloaded one.

If you are using the preference above the procedure is a bit different. Again, though the best practice is to have a pre-entered transaction in the register that Quicken can match to.

If you haven't pre-entered the transactions, and you have downloaded and only got one side of the linked transfer, then you should change the category to a linked transfer [Other Account], and then what will happen is when the other side of the transfer is downloaded Quicken will match it to that pre-existing transaction.

But there is a special case where both sides of the transactions are downloaded at the same time, and the transfer hasn't been pre-entered. There is an option for Quicken to make a guess that the two transactions should be a linked transfer.

Note this is just a guess, so if you are going to use this option make sure you have the Confirm on and that you are careful of what you tell Quicken is a linked transfer.

The timing of this kicking in is when the second transaction goes into the register. Since when you are using the Downloaded Transactions tab, that would be after you have accepted the transaction into the register, this should never apply to that mode because you should have corrected category to the [Other Account] as you looked at it and before accepting it into the register.

This preference is more for the "Automatically add to banking register" mode. But note that if there is a time gap between when one side of the transfer comes in and the other and you downloaded in between this time, it is best that you fix the first side after you download and while you are reviewing your transactions.

OK, let's get back to your original question of "how to fix it" when you haven't matched a pre-existing linked transfer.

For the Downloaded Transaction tab, I pretty much explained that. You really need to fix it as you are accepting transactions into the register. If you didn't then what you will need to do is just do what you did and delete the duplicate manual transaction.

When using the "Automatically add to banking register" mode where you might have downloaded both sides of the transfer at the same time, and provided that you didn't use the automatic transfer detection for whatever reason, the procedure goes like this.

You change one of the sides of the transfer to the [Other Account] syntax as you are reviewing the transactions. This will result in a duplicate transaction in the other account. Now when done reviewing/fixing the transactions in this account go to the other account. The one that was downloaded into this account will have a blue dot/New status, and the one coming from the other account will have a red pencil/Uncleared status. If you click on the red pencil/Uncleared one you will get this menu:

By selecting this you will get a dialog like this:

This will allow matching the two, and they will be merged into one transaction (the linked transfer).