Hot mess tooday

Question

I am just about done with Quicken unless someone can help me….30+ year user and it just seems to be getting more and more complex and buggy especially after the split.

I don't do Quicken like Quicken would like me to.   We download transactions just a few times a year.  That had not been a problem until today.  I downloaded transactions; bank accounts and CC, and most of the balances were wrong.  I think the last download was probably Feb or early March.  Then Quicken wanted me to install a new update,  The category column disappeared.   Google's AI worked me though a fix, but why did it need fixing?

Then I chatted with a very nice person who admitted that Quicken can have errors in downloads and we might need to go to bank statements to locate errors.  In addition to that little tidbit, I was trying to ask about whether downloads when edited to the correct payee in the register would auto-categorize as it does with manual entries, a suggestion I have made for several years, and he disconnected me from the chat.  If we have to go through statements to find errors and then categorize each transaction, why bother to download?

I don't know what a LifeHub is but I am pretty sure I am not interested in anything else for Quicken, but I could not find a way to get past the offer without restarting the program.

I am not good at technology, but that was not a problem 30 years ago when I knew even less than I do now.

Can anyone help me?  Would I be better to bite the bullet and move to QuickBooks?

Something has got to give.

Thank you for any help and for listening to my rant.  Pretty sure the Big Bosses will never see this and may not care.

Ducksoup_SD · Answer

I'm a long-time user as well, and I get the frustration. But, like most software, Quicken has a point of view, and it can't match everyone's expectations, 100% of the time; sometimes you just have to accept their foibles. You can have Quicken schedule weekly downloads (Sat AM?) from now on, so you never miss any data, and then manually accept them when your schedule allows (monthly? once a quarter?). I tried the auto-categorize and stopped after the first attempt, because it wasn't close and I ended up with far more work than manual accepting and categorizing. Additionally, I've had glitches in the downloads where there was a one-time issue with either Quicken or the financial institution and they doubled up on my transactions, so each transaction was entered twice. If that had been auto-categorized and accepted, it would've been a huge mess. As a human, it was easy to recognize it in the downloaded transaction list and only accept every other one. Accepting transactions manually really doesn't take that long, compared to sorting through all of the automatically inserted errors. You don't have to accept them immediately after a download - they'll wait for you to get around to it (within the next 90 days, per @Chris_QPW). You also don't have to correct the accepted transactions right away, you can accept them without the correct categories or splits and edit them later. That captures all the download information off the servers - date, amount, payee - that you'll need to correctly categorize and split later. I frequently accept transactions that I know will split differently, so I put $1 in one category, the rest in the main category, then edit later when I have the detailed receipts of all my transactions in hand. If you always have an identical transaction - weekly, monthly, yearly - the categories and splits will remain the same when you manually accept them - you won't have to enter the same split, time after time.

"February or March" means 5 or 6 months of transactions to download - I'm surprised the financial institutions leave a full 90 days, as @Chris_QPW suggests, on the server.

I agree with @Chris_QPW, if you don't need the detailed information that Quicken can supply at least once a quarter, maybe you don't need Quicken at all, so just spend your time doing everything manually on paper.

Chris_QPW · Answer

We download transactions just a few times a year.

Sounds like a recipe for problems.  A lot of financial institutions cutoff downloading of transactions to 90 days.

It also begs the question if Quicken is even that useful for a person that can go that long without updating their finances.  It sort of reminds me the people that come in a tax time and want to download the whole year.  Not only is that likely to fail for the same reason, Quicken isn't some kind of magic wand that will get every transaction categorized correct with no help from the user.  In the end I believe these people are just making work for themselves, it would have been better for them to just to directly import/enter into their tax program.

Note QuickBooks is for businesses, as such no investment accounts.

What you might want to consider is either Simplifi or Quicken Business & Personal (don't confuse this with the "Classic" version).  Both of these are Mobile/Web applications.  You would have to start over because they can't read in Quicken Desktop data files, but being server products where the Mobile/Web are basically the GUIs for the data that is stored on the server, I believe it means that the server will be doing downloading periodically and as such should be there when you choose to check on it.

[Deleted User] · Answer

@Ken0315 I will only say a few things and defer to others here to provide some help and guidance with your reconciling issues.

You wouldn't want to go with Quickbooks.  The cheapest subscription (Simple Start) is $35.00 a month.  It's primary niche is small business accounting.

Have you thought about downloading transactions and reconciling at least once a month?  That might help to avoid reconciling issues and big surprises that you are experiencing now.

I think the Quicken Support person was just trying to explain how to reconcile several months of transactions to find your difference.  I agree with them that at this point your only recourse is to reconcile month by month using statements or transaction history from your account with the financial institution.

Here is some information I collected on LifeHub - Quicken LifeHub is a secure, web-based platform designed to help you organize, store, and share your most important personal and financial documents. It’s especially useful for estate planning, emergency preparedness, and ensuring your loved ones have access to critical information when needed.

Lastly, your frustration is understandable, but don't give up.  In my opinion Quicken is the best personal financial software program out there.  It may have it's issues, but I myself have found that they are far and few in-between, and most issues are resolvable with a few troubleshooting steps.

Going forward, it might be better to ask specific questions so that you might get the more appropriate and concentrated responses.  There are many knowledgeable Quicken users in the forum that would be more than happy to help you with your Quicken issues.

Hang in there!