Checking account errors...MAC

Bob.

Today after update, my only checking account balance dropped by 2/3 rds! It appears to have downloaded 30 transactions going back to last December that all were not reviewed and uncategorized. They matched exisitng payments except for "uncategorized".

I hope I did the right thing.

I selected each pair and matched, then had to enter the category even though the exisitng one was correct. After match there was no category, so felt logical, though I would have though the match would have had the existing category survive.

Obviously this was a surprise. Working through it. I do not yet know if any deposits were also duplicated, but it does not appear so.

Any idea why this happened? And if I have solved this incorrectly, please advise.

Bob.

I think that made it much worse. Now every matched transaction in checking created a new transaction uncategorized in the account that was paid. Must restore from backup. Now really confused what best to do.

Bob.

Restored. Now have those 30 incorrect entries. Will make another backup of Quicken and then delete those 30 new entries.

Update: That seems to have worked. Subsequent update did not download them again. I'll have to hope it does not happen again. I'm sure it has something to do with 1st of the month, but not sure what, why or how. Any insight appreciated.

Will send report.

John_in_NC

I'm glad you got it worked out.

I'm not there to confirm, but most likely something changed on the backend (data providers) that caused the last 6 months of transactions to be presented as new, unique transactions. So, Quicken dutifully imported them.

It sounds like deleting the duplicates was the right course of action in this case.

Bob.

thanks. Interesting it was 6 months. Must mean something. Hopefully not to be repeated.

John_in_NC

I wouldn't read into 6 months.

I typically spare the minutia, but your usual "download" typically has a batch of transactions-be it 30, 60, 180 days worth. (How long depends on connection method, bank, etc.)

And each transaction has an ID identifier. If the ID is new (Quicken has never seen that transx ID before), it imports the transaction. If not (Quicken has seen that ID before), Quicken ignores it. This happens each update, and is how Quicken filters out which transactions are new.

In your case, all your old transactions likely got new IDs, so Quicken imported them again. Deleting them works because Quicken has now seen those IDs and will ignore those transactions in future downloads.

90 days worth of data is most common, but longer data horizons can occur with some banks. In your case, it appears to be 180 days. Your bank's data provider likely changed how it generates new IDs and created new ones. This happens from time to time.

jacobs

@Bob. You may be aware, and if so, just ignore this information…

As part of the OFX/QFX standard, every transaction downloads with a unique Financial Institution Transaction Identification number (FITID). You can see the FITID number if you click on a transaction and do View > Show Inspector, or you can make the FITID column viable in your register. The value of the FITID number is generated by the financial institution; it's nothing Quicken does. But Quicken users these numbers to determine which transactions are new and which are not. Even if you delete a transaction you've downloaded, Quicken retains the FITID number of every transaction ever downloaded, so it can ignore a downloaded transaction which has a previously-used FITID number. (Otherwise, you'd delete a transaction in Quicken, and upon the next download, it would pop right back up again.)

So… if transactions ever download more than once, you can bet that the financial institution has screwed up and generated new FITID numbers for those transactions. Since Quicken uses the FITID number to determine what's new and what's not, an "old" transaction with a new FITID number is "new" to Quicken. You can easily verify this by looking at your duplicated transactions and comparing the FITID numbers; if they're different, then the financial institution messed something up. And deleting the duplicates in Quicken is the correct corrective measure.

Bob.

@jacobs one clue that is was different is that all were uncategorized. Be that as it may, interesting that Quicken Mac is not only more "self healing" but also restores from backups MUCH more gently that Q Windows.

Will see how July 1 goes, but leaning hard toward abandoning my Windows version and running Mac exclusively.

jacobs

It’s actually odd that the duplicate transactions were uncategorized. Do you have the setting for auto renaming and categorizing (server-based categorization) turned off, and no QuickFill rules (local categorization) for any of these Payees? Downloaded transactions have no categorization coming from financial institutions, so any categorization you see in Quicken is what Quicken applied at the server or local level.

Bob.

It’s actually odd that the duplicate transactions were uncategorized. Do you have the setting for auto renaming and categorizing (server-based categorization) turned off, and no QuickFill rules (local categorization) for any of these Payees? Downloaded transactions have no categorization coming from financial institutions, so any categorization you see in Quicken is what Quicken applied at the server or local level.

I have to both look and think about it. I know I have one rule for a Payee Name change. I "thought" all coming in were categorized? Bill Payments should be, of course, since the reminder has the category. I will have to watch to see more.

Quickfill rules are turned on - Category Only. Not seeing server side as you show it. I have an "Automatically improve the quality of downloaded payee names and categories". That it?