How can I change a connected account to leave new entries uncleared after update?

nghoffman

After doing an update on a connected credit card account, I have to unclear the new entries before doing a manual reconcile. I'd like to change the account, or a quicken default, so that new entries downloaded during an update are left uncleared (have the CLR checkbox unchecked).

NotACPA

No such setting exists.

BUT, what you can do during the manual reconcile is click the "Mark All" box at the bottom of the reconcile dialog which will cause it to change to a "Clear All" which you can click to remove all of the check marks.

You can then proceed with your method.

CaliQkn

@nghoffman are you using Quicken Mac or Quicken Windows? Your profile indicates Quicken Mac. But what NotACPA describes is the Quicken Windows process for downloading and clearing transactions, but I don't think it's the same for Quicken Mac. I don't think there is a downloaded transactions list with "Clear All" or "Mark All".

If you are on Quicken Mac then hopefully a Mac user can provide some guidance.

nghoffman

Oh, wow. Your replies got me looking in places I hadn't looked before. It turns out I can unclear them all at once, instead of clicking the checkboxes one at a time.

I can select a range of new transactions from the list, right click to display the popup context menu, hover over "Set Status of Selected Transactions to", and select "Not Cleared" from the submenu.

If I can't set Quicken to load them uncleared automatically, this is the next best thing.

Thanks for your help!

NotACPA

It seems to me that you mis-understand the meaning of "cleared". It means that the transaction has "cleared" your bank, which is why you're able to download it.

"Uncleared" transactions have been manually input, but haven't cleared the bank and "Reconciled" transactions have been compared to the bank's statement and found to match.

It's not apparent why you want to unclear a transaction before you reconcile the account. Because it's those Cleared transactions which appear on the bank/card statement and, if they fall before the statement as-of date are precisely the one's to be included in the reconciliation.

SO, the answer to your question is: You Can't. The process sounds like it's working as designed.

nghoffman

Thanks for your reply.

I understand the default meaning of the “Cleared” checkbox in Quicken — that a downloaded transaction is considered cleared by the bank.

What I’m doing, though, is repurposing the checkbox during manual reconciliation as a way to visually track which transactions I’ve personally matched to my paper statement. To do that, I first need to un-clear the newly downloaded entries and then mark each one as Cleared (blue checkmark) as I manually verify it against the statement.

It’s not a misunderstanding of how Quicken works, but a preference for a workflow that better fits how I want to manually reconcile.

So my question was whether there’s a setting to leave new transactions unchecked after download. It sounds like the answer is no — and that’s what I thought, but I wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing some feature.

Thanks again.

NotACPA

No such setting exists.

BUT, what you can do during the manual reconcile is click the "Mark All" box at the bottom of the reconcile dialog which will cause it to change to a "Clear All" which you can click to remove all of the check marks.

You can then proceed with your method.

CaliQkn

@nghoffman are you using Quicken Mac or Quicken Windows? Your profile indicates Quicken Mac. But what NotACPA describes is the Quicken Windows process for downloading and clearing transactions, but I don't think it's the same for Quicken Mac. I don't think there is a downloaded transactions list with "Clear All" or "Mark All".

If you are on Quicken Mac then hopefully a Mac user can provide some guidance.

nghoffman

Thanks, CaliQkn. Yes, I'm using Quicken Mac.
Thanks, NotACPA. I'll check and see if that's available in the Mac version.

nghoffman

Oh, wow. Your replies got me looking in places I hadn't looked before. It turns out I can unclear them all at once, instead of clicking the checkboxes one at a time.

I can select a range of new transactions from the list, right click to display the popup context menu, hover over "Set Status of Selected Transactions to", and select "Not Cleared" from the submenu.

If I can't set Quicken to load them uncleared automatically, this is the next best thing.

Thanks for your help!

John_in_NC

Yes, you can force all the transx as uncleared either by selecting/right clicking and changing to uncleared. Or you can follow NotACPA suggestion to do that in the reconcile window. The Mac version allows this as well, but it is in the header, not at the bottom:

But I suggest you not "repurpose" the cleared column because it is serving a different purpose as NotACPA describes.

I suggest you instead use the "Status" column (Dot header at left in my screenshot) which is designed for this purpose. Downloaded transactions will have a blue dot (or a blue pencil if it matched a manually entered transaction, unmatched/uncleared=orange) And you can click on that to mark it as "Reviewed" which is exactly what you are doing.

What you are doing does indeed work, but I think it using the cleared column is opening yourself to accidentally unclearing something unintentionally.

jacobs

I'll disagree slightly with John's comment. I do my account reconciliations monthly, and I often want to "start from scratch" and then manually check off as cleared all the transactions appearing on the bank/credit card statement. It's a little extra work, but helps me insure my Quicken entries match the real-world statement, with nothing omitted or extra. So clicking "Clear All" in the reconciliation window provides an easy way to do that, and I don't see anything wrong with using the Clear field in that way.