Downloading Transactions

Graywolf

I switched over to Quicken Classic from an OLD version of Quicken. No serious problem, and much more flexibility with look and feel. As I try to incorporate new (to me) features, I found something that I'm thinking I'm making harder than it should be. Our credit union is on the list of institutions that I can download transactions. I set it up, and wanted to review each one before I put it in the ledger, but the new transactions don't show up in the list until I enter them in the ledger, then they show up in the downloaded transactions as MATCHED. This is fine, but it seems like it should show up in the downloaded transactions list. It seems to be there but doesn't show up until I enter it. What am I doing wrong?

NotACPA

When you do EDIT, Preferences, Downloaded Transactions … what's checked? What options have you selected?

splasher

Are you saying that you manually enter a transaction and then, during the same Quicken session it shows up in the Downloaded Transactions section without you doing a One Step Update?

Or, is that you enter them on one day and then they show up downloaded the next day?

Most, not all financial institution download connections are either Express Web Connect or Express Web Connect+. With EWC and EWC+, the information downloaded today was collected by Q's aggregator last night, so things that show up today on the FI's website, won't be available for download until tomorrow.

Please clarify your exact sequence of actions so that we can better understand what is happening.

Chris_QPW

Here is what I got.

1. You have the automatic add to the register option off so the downloaded transactions are being placed in the Downloaded Transactions tab at the bottom of the register.
2. But for some reason you don’t see your transactions in that list so you have entered a transaction manually into the register and at this point it shows up in the Downloaded Transactions tab list as Matched.

Here is my guess at what is happening.

The transaction you are looking for is in the Downloaded Transactions tab list, but isn’t visible because you need to scroll down in the list to see it. (And maybe there is something wing where you can’t scroll or there is some kind of refresh problem or display problem.)

When you enter a manual transaction Quicken will match it to on that is in the Downloaded Transactions tab and it sorts Matched transactions to the top of that list which now makes it visible to you.

What is preventing you from just selecting the first transaction in the Downloaded Transaction tab list and entering it into the register by either hitting Enter or the Accept button?

An image of what you are looking at might help. You can drag and drop an image in the comment box.

Graywolf

My apologies for not responding. My wife had surgery, and haven't gotten back on. Chris_QPW describes what is happening well. I hesitated to do a screenshot of what things look like because it is my family's financials. I reconcile monthly when my credit union posts the transactions. It tells me all of the transactions have been downloaded, but they do not appear in the section "Downloaded Transactions" until I type them into the ledger. Even if I use a slightly different name in my ledger (I want the generic name for some things, not the corporate name), it usually finds it, and it appears in the Downloaded Transaction list, with the corporate name, which is on the credit union file. It just seems like I'm missing something in my setup.

[Edited-Readability]

Graywolf

I left out that I tried resorting by date, status, and everything else I could think of.

[Edited-Readability]

Quicken Alyssa

Hello @Graywolf,

Thank you for following up. I hope your wife has a speedy recovery!

Were you able to check and see if you can scroll through the downloaded transactions section like @Chris_QPW had suggested? Or is the Downloaded Transactions box completely empty until you manually enter one of these transactions?

Looking forward to your response!

Graywolf

No, you cannot scroll thru the downloaded transactions until I type it in the ledger. My bank started having the electronic download available only recently, and it downloaded all the transactions from the beginning. Seems like I must be missing something or don't have something turned on.

Chris_QPW

I’m sorry I missed taking into account that you just started this process. If this is the first time you have set up for downloading of transactions Quicken does put the transactions directly into the register even if you have selected to have them go through the Downloaded Transaction tab. Future transactions will go there.

Have you tried sorting by “order entered”?

That should put all the downloaded transactions at the end of the register.

Graywolf

I don't see where to sort by order entered. I wonder if part of my problem is going from a 10 year old Quicken, and converting to the Quicken Classic Deluxe. I just restored my file after thinking "I wonder what would happen if I pressed ACCEPT ALL, and it apparently updated my whole register from the beginning. Fortunately I did a back up before I started messing around. Perhaps it's best to just keep using it the old way, but it seemed like it would be real easy just to click on the new months individual transactions instead of having to retype everything.

Chris_QPW

Select the gear icon in the upper right of the register and Sorting options.

Using ACCEPT ALL is the worst thing one can do in my opinion.

Quicken has two modes controlled by this option:

Edit → Preferences→ Downloaded Transactions → Automatically add to banking register

If you use this option transactions got into the register, but the it a blue dot/status column that gives A status of New or New Match (expand column to see text) and you can click on it to mark a transaction reviewed or you can click on the cleared status of a manually entered transaction to match it to a downloaded one.

If you don’t select this option Quicken works like it did in the past where the transactions are put in the Downloaded Transactions tab. And what you should do is click on each transaction and verify it is correct and the select Enter to record it into the register. Or right click a use the manual match if needed.

If one Selects ACCEPT ALL you are assuming that all the transactions will be correct for matching existing transactions and all the categories are correct and all that, but what makes this the worst is that once you do that there is no indication of which are new or matched like there is in the first option with maybe the exception of the CLR column.

Not that the matching of existing transactions is mostly done just by the amounts matching. And when switching over between pure manual entry to downloading the likelihood that Quicken gets this all right is pretty slim. And since the first down will include how ever far back the financial institution chooses to send (usually 90 days but it can be more) you can have a lot of duplicate transactions to deal with.

josephc4ms

Hello, Chris_QPW,

I made all of those mistakes after coming back to quicken from a period of time trying to like the cloud alternatives. I ended up deleting all of the accounts and restarting.

However, I can't seem to just turn off all renaming to get quicken to just keep the original bank-provided/revert payee names. [like old quicken - as Graywolf and others have recalled]

Do you know if it's actually possible to turn off all renaming - so that all transactions are downloaded and keep the 'revert' payee name? And if it is, how do we do it?

details in a separate thread - How to prevent renaming of downloaded transactions

Chris_QPW

@josephc4ms I put my one suggestion in that thread that it might be transfer detection gone a muck. I see that the others have stated the normal suspects.

josephc4ms

Chris_QPW, thank you,

I replied to your xfer detection thoughts in How to prevent renaming of downloaded transactions. I think we have elaborated all of the usual suspects and I think I've shared screenshots of them all. Please correct me if there's something I missed.

Is there anything else or is it simply impossible to have 'all manual' downloads that go into the Downloaded Transactions list below the account register and all the Payees are raw from the FI (like old quicken did).

Thanks again,

joseph

Graywolf

Chris_QPW great help. I learned the hard way about ACCEPT ALL and had to restore to my prior back up (which I did before I started experimenting). You've given me a much better Idea on how it works, and I think I'm pointed in the right direction. My monthly batch is after the first of the new month so wish me luck.

Thanks to all who took their time and helped out.

Chris_QPW

I'm glad I'm able to help @Graywolf. Note that the changeover and starting of downloading is really one of the hardest parts of this. So, hopefully you can get past that, and the problems will be far less.