Cleaning up Payees take 2

Question

Recently, I've posted a few questions seeking help to clean up payees in payee lists.  I think all of the recommendations were helpful and all revolved around the theme of modifying the memorized payee list.  I modified the list extensively mainly through merging.  An issue remains when I try to modify a report by selecting payees.  I'm finding multiples of the same payee with slightly different names.  Such as:

I know I merged various names for Andy's.  And I applied the option when editing of including all past transactions. Is there a way to cleanup/remove the extraneous Andy's names?  In the memorize payee list only the correct name exists which is Andy's Lawn and Landscaping.

Why do the extraneous Andy's name still appear in the payee list when modify a report?  How do I get rid of them?

acs2 · Answer

Thanks,  I realize I still have transactions to clean up.

I also use the memorized payee list in this way.  I edit a memorized payee name and click the box at the bottom which is Apply to Existing transactions.  When I have done this the memorized payee name does update BUT the transaction does not.  See this sequence of attachments

Payee is Alive Cafe > Open Edit window in memorized Payee list > Check apply to existing transactions >edit name to Alive Cafe New > Hit Ok.  The name in the Memorized list has updated to Alive Cafe.  The transaction name does not update to Alive Cafe New.

I've done this a few times and the problem repeats itself.  I think this may be a problem that needs to be reported

Alive Cafe T1.png

Alive Cafe pre edit .png

Alive Cafe pre edit New name .png

Alive Cafe New name in Memorized .png

Alive Cafe T2.png

UKR · Answer

Cleaning up the Memorized Payee List is just one part of the whole task.

You also need to clean up the existing register transactions.

If you have multiple variations of the same Payee, as shown in your image above, you need to clean up those.

To do so use the Edit / Find/Replace menu item. Select all of those variations and replace them with the desired common spelling.

This will remove the variations you see in report selections by payee name and show you only the one commonly used name.

Finally, if you rely on downloaded transactions to be automatically accepted into your registers, you may need to define Renaming Rules so that new transactions appear with the desired, correct, Payee Name in your registers.

(This is not necessary if you manually record register transactions with correct Payee Names prior to downloading. Quicken will match a downloaded transaction to an already existing register transaction when it can)