Manual QFX Imports Creating Duplicates in Quicken Mac (PC Financial – Canada)

Question

Hi all,

I’m using Quicken Classic for Mac (Canada) with a PC Financial account, which does not support direct connectivity, so I rely on manual QFX downloads.

I’ve noticed the following behavior, which I can reproduce consistently:

* Importing a QFX file into a clean account works correctly (transaction count and balance are correct).
* Re-importing the same QFX file, or importing a new QFX export covering the same date range, results in duplicate transactions being added.
* Transaction count increases and balances change (even if nothing was edited).
* There appears to be no safe way to “refresh” or re-import overlapping data without causing duplicates.

I understand Quicken recommends avoiding overlapping imports, but for users without bank connectivity this makes frequent updates difficult unless we strictly import non-overlapping date ranges or wait for statement-period downloads.

For comparison, I tested the same QFX files in iFinance for Mac and duplicate imports are safely ignored.

My questions:

* Is this behavior expected for Quicken Mac with manual QFX imports?
* Is using statement-period downloads only the recommended workaround?
* Are there any best practices for Canadian users without direct bank connections who want more frequent updates?

Thanks in advance — just looking to confirm whether this is a limitation or if I’m missing something.

Kevin

Bitznbytes · Answer

Thanks for the reply — that helps clarify the expected behavior.

I’ve done some additional testing and I think the key difference may be the FITIDs in PC Financial’s manual QFX exports. With a clean Quicken file, the initial import works correctly. However, when I re-import the same PC Financial QFX file, or import another QFX covering an overlapping date range, Quicken adds duplicates and the balance changes.

I tested the exact same QFX files in iFinance, and repeat/overlapping imports are ignored there, which suggests PC Financial’s QFX files may have missing, reused, or unstable FITIDs. In that case, Quicken has no reliable way to de-duplicate on re-import.

So it looks like Quicken is behaving as designed, but PC Financial’s manual QFX exports don’t fully support idempotent imports. The practical workaround seems to be importing each QFX file only once or using non-overlapping/statement-period downloads.

I’ve also submitted logs to Quicken via Report a Problem so engineering can take a look.

Thanks again for the insight.

John_in_NC · Answer

Hi, @Bitznbytes No, that's not normal behavior-and I just tested to confirm that it is working correctly. (It did for me.) Initial import=fine, repeat import ignored everything. That QFX is a mere text file, and in it, each transaction should have a unique ID that prevents that downloading of duplicates so you can overlap data periods. In fact, that automated connection are often doing the same behind the scene. I suggest using the Help: Report a problem and submit your file/logs so the Quicken folks can push this up the chain/have evidence of a problem if the have to report its back to Intuit/PC Financial. If you are curious, you can open your QFX in a text editor and look for xyz to see if your file even has that unique transx identifier.