Classic Deluxe/Windows - Any users from Honor CU in MI? Category Issues

Question

Are there any users from Honor CU in MI that can provide tips on categorization for expenses?  All of my checks and more than half of my bill pay items hit the checking account as "Consumer Check Withdrawal".  Is there anything I can do either on the Honor account/bill pay or Quicken to facilitate categorization of expense items/withdrawals?

Chris_QPW · Answer

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7971406/classic-deluxe-windows-any-users-from-honor-cu-in-mi-category-issues

This is a common problem with checks.  The financial institutions don't scan the name on the check and as such usually just put something generic in the download payee name like what you are getting.

So, there are a few ways to handle this problem.  One is to pre-enter your checks so that when you download the transactions Quicken can match them by the amount.

Another way to handle them is to set your memorized payee for that payee to not categorize it.  That way we you review your transactions you can see the uncategorized transactions and fix the payee and category.  If you go to the Memorized Payees (Ctrl+T) and find that payee there is a "Never Auto-categorized" check box you can select.

The last way is to turn off Edit → Preferences → Downloaded transactions → Automatically add transactions to baking registers.

With this setting off you will get a Downloaded Transactions tab at the bottom of the register.  Quicken will put all of the downloaded transactions there, and you will need to click on each one to get Quicken to show you that transaction in the register.  And as you do that and get to a check transaction you can then fix the payee and category, but again you most likely want to setup your memorized payee so that it is either going to not give a category or in this case maybe the one that most of your checks get.

This last one does "fix the problem" but at the cost of making you look at every transaction individually instead of getting them directly into the register and just being able to scan them for problems.

UKR · Answer

Transaction download problems with matching and adding new transactions correctly

First please ensure that all optional settings in Quicken pertaining to recall, memorization, automatic categorization and renaming of payee names are enabled. You find those settings in Edit / Preferences / ﻿Data Entry & Quickfill﻿ and ﻿Downloaded Transactions. Additional settings for the detection and processing of transfer transactions can be found in Edit / Preferences / Transfer detection.

Are you automatically accepting downloaded transactions into your registers?

If you are relying on Quicken to "automagically" fill your account registers from downloaded transactions, you may run into problems. Despite all efforts by the Quicken programmers, the "Autopilot" (that's my name for the part of the Quicken program which processes downloaded transactions and converts them into new register transactions) is not infallible. For that process to work 100% of the time one would need a crystal ball because the information downloaded from the banks often is just too terse and cryptic. As you can see yourself, most downloaded transactions arrive with a less than useful Payee Name.

You should, at least for a while, turn off the "automatically accept downloaded transactions into registers" setting to gain better control over what is downloaded and what to do with it. Click on and review each downloaded transaction, make changes if necessary (e.g., to get a payee name = "Starbucks" instead of "POS TRANS 070124 STARBU", "POS TRANS 070224 STARBU", "POS TRANS 070324 STARBU" or to assign a category) before you click to accept each transaction.

Any changes you make to downloaded Payee Names are remembered in Renaming Rules.

Any other changes you make (add/change Category or Memo text) are remembered in the Memorized Payee List.

Next time the same transaction for this Payee comes along, Quicken should remember and give you a better new register transaction.

Paper checks you write should be recorded in Quicken when you write the check (and BEFORE you download transactions which might contain the cleared check). That gives you a register transaction with correct check number, payee name and category. No matter what information is downloaded from the bank, you already have a correct register transaction which the downloaded data cannot mess up.

The same applies to recurring bill payments. Set up and use Scheduled Reminders to record correctly named and categorized register transactions before the Due Date.

If you have issues with transfer transactions not being generated correctly:

For best results manually enter transfer transactions into your register BEFORE you download transactions from the bank which contain the transfer confirmations. For recurring transfers use scheduled reminders and enter them a day or two before the due date.

Be sure to use distinct Payee Names for each transfer / credit card payment to avoid confusing Quicken - memorized payee entries.

That takes the guesswork out of the Autopilot's process. Because a correctly entered transfer transaction already exists in your account registers, the Autopilot should just match the downloaded transfer transaction to the existing one in both accounts.

Where are the "Auto-accept downloaded transaction" settings?

There are two places where this is controlled in Quicken for Windows:

* Globally, for all accounts, in Edit / Preferences / Downloaded Transactions
* For each account individually, the global setting can be overridden from the Edit Account Details screen, Online Services Tab. Look for blue text "Automatic Entry is: ON / OFF". Click the text to change the setting.

NotACPA · Answer

Have you taken a look at your "Memorized Payee List" to see if that's where the category is coming from?