So… it switched my categories. How can I 1.)Customize it's categories or 2.) revert categories to what they were before I ran this?
It is also changing my tags…
I have not experimented with this yet, but there is a new section in Edit > Preferences that should control the categorization. Hopefully you are not forced to use Quicken's default Categories.
Please let us know what you find.
Unfortunately:
Retail Purchase Categorization categories take priority over Memorized Payee Rules for Amazon transactions when the feature is turned on.
Orders are retrieved and categorized. The extension pulls any new Amazon orders (changes since the last retrieval) once every 24 hours and assigns the most appropriate category from your Quicken category list.
We can't rely on Quicken to assign the most appropriate category. We need a process to let us over-ride the assigned category, and remember it for future categorizations.
I will try this new feature, but it is a mystery how Quicken will know what is the most appropriate Category to use from my Category list for each item in the order.
How will it know for example that when I buy pool supplies, I use Household:Pool rather than Home:Home supplies or another one of my Categories or its built in Categories? I agree with @Greg Brown that we will need a way to over-ride its default assignments.
I am also not too crazy about this either…
Select the time range for retrieving your Amazon orders.
Note: These preferences are set during initial setup only and cannot be changed afterward.
it is working for me, seems to pick a random category at times, it put in charity for a merchandise on mine
I don't have this feature in my Quicken yet, but I really wonder what people are expecting this to do.
Let's start with the original problem. Transactions are downloaded with the same payee's name and therefore there isn't any way for a memorized payee to give you different categories. And because Amazon also can download multiple items at a time, the lack of a payee name for all the splits means there isn't a payee's name for anything other than the base transaction.
It seems to me the simplest solution would have to put the description of the item in the memo, and then the user could have used their memorized payee's names to set the categories. I wonder if this feature was tested in beta and if anyone suggested something like that. At any rate, clearly, based on your comments they didn't do that and instead are just guessing at the categories.
I guess that might be good for a person that doesn't care about the exact categories used (which I would think is a pretty rare Quicken customer), but I can't see how the majority of people will be happy with this.
At any rate it definitely sounds like something I'm not going to use. First off, I don't use Chrome and I have no desire to install it on my machine. Next, most of what my wife orders from Amazon I just categorize as Entertainment, and so that is the default. For the rarer times I order something it ends up in Computer or Household, and I just change the transaction category once they come in.
Why only Chrome or Edge? No one that cares about their security and privacy uses Chrome, and Edge is, well, Microsoft, need I say more? How about adding FireFox and DDG?
Update, I just got this feature enabled, and I do use MS Edge so I'm going to be trying it out, more out of curiosity than any other reason.
The first thing I want to address is a comment I saw on the add-in and that is how does it select the data set. For me it picked the right one, but I currently have 5 datasets associated with my Quicken Id, and the add-in settings only allow for the my "real one". Note the others aren't setup for any online accounts so that might be it. Others seem to not be as lucky, and the wrong dataset is the only choice. So, first question to @Quicken Kathryn can you please find out what determines what Quicken cloud data set(s) are picked?
The next feedback is just what has already been stated. I did the three months back categorization (just to try) and the categories it picked aren't the ones I would want, but as some new feedback, I noticed that returns aren't being categorized. This would cause another problem for me. I would always want my categories to balance out. If I buy something and categorize it as Household, then if that item is returned, I would want the return to be categorized as Household too. From this first pass, the returns seem to be using the standard system and pick up my original memorized payee category. Not ideal and there may be nothing that can be done about this, but it is something to think about. Manually changing these as I would have done in the past is certainly possible though.
I'm going to run this for a day or so to see the actual process for new transactions. I have a feeling that the categorization is being done at the server level and there isn't anything people can do with it, but I want to see it in both automatic transaction mode and going through the Downloaded Transactions tab, which should give some indication of where this processing is being done. The main reason I'm interested in this is because I see that they are already putting the item descriptions in the memo. Given that, and if there was an option added to not put in the automatic category, just the memo then I can see how this process might be updated to use the user's memorized payees.
This issue, of having Amazon purchases impossible to categorize, was driving me crazy. A couple years ago the work-around I devised was to add Amazon Business to my Prime account, which unlocked the ability to assign a PO# to an order. I then created default PO#s for my purchase categories in quicken (e.g. groceries, pets, books, pool, clothing, etc). There's also an option to just type in any PO# you want, in case my premade PO# "category" was not a good match.
Anyway, all that just to get a PO#/Category/Tag/memo— something to describe the order that I could then retrieve later. How do I retrieve it later? I download a reconciliation report (available with the Amazon Business option) and it pulls a large spreadsheet showing the orders along with the PO#. I can then use that to exactly match the order with a category in quicken.
The biggest problem is that the final step is a manual process. I literally look through a spreadsheet to get the PO# then use that to put in the category in Quicken.
I'm excited to see this feature, but like many, the first thing that caught my attention: "how in the world are the categories assigned?"
The dream is that my PO#/category would be used to match in quicken but there's no way Quicken would plan on people having Amazon Business. So the true dream is that Amazon would allow users to put a memo/category/something on each order, which would then be used in Quicken. Otherwise, I don't see how Quicken could ever match categories.
Consider the old-school option of memorizing categories based on merchant name. "Well, the grocery store is for groceries, joes hardware store is for tools, Shell is for gas". You can realistically start assigning categories on all the merchants that you use. But it's not feasible to use this method for individual items—there are too many!
Seems to me that the only workable modern version of this would be having an option in Amazon, upon placing an order, to put in a category, which would then get pulled down by Quicken.
I can certainly see the point, but I doubt Amazon cares much about making such an interface.
I will say my I also see the flaw in my idea about the using memorized payees to match memos. I was really only thinking of my use case.
In general, I don't try to get too far into detail categories, they are just too hard to maintain. So, my categories pretty much line up with the payee names. This carries on to my categorizing items from Amazon, my categories are quite broad, and my wife and I tend to buy the same kinds of things, so we have a shot at maybe doing this.
I'm really actually wondering/trying to pin down exactly where the categorization is being done, because frankly this breaks the current system. With the exception of QIF which really was never meant for transaction importing, all the other protocols purposely left out sending the categories even if the financial institution let you do it on their website. So, the procedure has always been that Quicken makes guesses at the category based on the payee/memo and now there is a flow where the category is being introduced.
I noticed that they did upload my categories during the setup, so they aren't completely assigning them to random/fixed categories, but it is also looking like all of this is being done on the Quicken server, which means to me there isn't very much chance of the user getting the categories they want using this method.
I commend Quicken Inc for trying to solve this problem, but at this point it really feels like one of those features where they should have got more feedback and how people wanted it to work, and if it was even possible to provide that functionality.
My approach for categorizing Amazon purchases is to keep a tab for the Amazon "Your Orders" page open in my browser. Most of the time there is only one item in each Amazon order, or if there are multiple items they are related. Then when a transaction downloads, I match the amount with the order to see what category to use and add a descriptive memo.
Complications arise when there is a return that is credited to my Amazon account, so the amount charged for a future order does not match the original order amount.
I suppose a better way might be to enter the transaction in Quicken with the correct Category(s) and memos when I place the order; then when the charge downloads, Quicken will match to the existing transaction based on the amount.
i successfully pulled the amazon transactions, as they appear in the My Orders. I then get message "
Orders are now auto-categorized and will be reflected in your transactions after the next One Step Update.
But, alas nothing happens. i spent too long online with support. They stated, that this feature is ONLY for the web/cloud account. so…, i activated the cloud account, but still nothing. From earlier comments, I don't believe that to be a true statement. i requested the 3 months history and future, and fully expected the transactions to all be duplicated in my register because i had already pulled them down PRIOR to this new feature being activated. My question is has any one actually pulled in the automatically downloaded and categorized transactions in the register on the desktop?
I pulled down for 3 months and future ones. What I got is that they updated my previous transactions. There wasn't any duplicating, because in fact they didn't "download". What I think they really did is change them in the Quicken Cloud dataset and then synced that to the Quicken Desktop data file. Note I don't have "Sync to Mobile/Web" on, this is purely done with my accounts setup with Express Web Connect +. I'm sorry I can't remember if it was done before I ran One Step Update of not. I haven't yet got any new Amazon transactions, so I can't comment on how they are handled.
Her is an example of one of the transactions that it changed:
And I thought I would throw this out too, here:
If I go to the extension in MS Edge, selecting Quicken|Retail Purchase Cate…:
This comes up:
And selecting the gear icon:
And selecting My Orders:
Also, I was just looking closer at this, and I see a pattern I didn't expect.
Not all of the transactions have been changed. Some of them have my original categorization.
When I see that, there isn't any memo. Wild guess is, when they don't see a match, they just leave it alone.
One thing I can say for sure is this all very confusing. Trying to track any given item through Amazon's system when it was ordered with something else is a nightmare.
you are absolutely correct. the changes were sooo subtle i didn't notice them and it didn't duplicate anything. i'm pleased. i'll now turn quicken web off. my memory is it just causes issues. thanks!
Well, I got my first new Amazon transaction. There are some things I can point out, but in truth this doesn't really exactly point out where things are being done and how they might be changed, but it does point at some possible limitations.
For this I'm looking at it with the Downloaded Transactions tab since that at least separates out some of the processing.
As you can see from above, the transaction isn't just "synced in" it does go through the normal processing steps which is promising. And as I click on the transaction in the Downloaded Transactions tab:
Opening that spit:
Just want to mention that "Gifts" is not what I would have categorized these; this is a guess on some part of the Quicken process.
I'm also going to show the complete memo of the first item for comparing to what I'm going to show next.
DINDOSAL Green Velvet Wired Ribbon, 4 Inch x 10 Yards
From the extension:
Mind that Order Id. Clicking on it brings up the order at the Amazon site. I will also note that the tax is recorded separately, which isn't unexpected, but think of the ramifications of returning items. You could for instance return two of each, or 4 of one, or any such combination.
Looking in the Cloud Sync Log file, I can find this transaction:
{"id":"730438064001781760","createdAt":"2026-07-09T15:00:05.337899Z","modifiedAt":"2026-07-11T03:37:07.030708Z","totalAmountForProducts":"30.12","merchantId":"740052858212192256","merchantName":"Amazon","shippingFee":"0.00","additionalCharges":[],"adjustmentsAmount":[],"totalBeforeTax":"30.12","tax":"3.00","grandTotal":"33.12","inStorePurchase":true,"items":[{"id":"730438064010170368","amount":"2.99","name":"DINDOSAL Green Velvet Wired Ribbon, 4 Inch x 10 Yards","quantity":"4"},{"id":"730438064014364672","amount":"4.54","name":"DINDOSAL Champagne Velvet Wired Ribbon, 4 Inch x 10 Yards","quantity":"4"}],"paymentInfo":[{"id":"730438064022753280","lastFourDigit":"XXX","name":"Visa","type":"Visa","amount":"33.12"}],"orderDate":"2026-07-07","orderDetailsLink":"https://www.amazon.com/gp/css/summary/print.html?orderID=113-5849410-1128224","merchantOrderId":"113-5849410-1128224","payee":"AMAZON","status":"COMPLETED"}],"metaData":{"pageSize":35,"limit":200,"asOf":"2026-07-11T03:51:03Z","lastRefId":"730438064001781760","currentPage":1,"offset":0,"totalPages":1,"totalSize":35}}
What I don't see in there is any category field.
I'm posting this mostly because I said I would follow up on this, but as I have thought about this, I realize that not only can I not really determine where the categorization is done, as was pointed out, my idea that using the memorized payee list to do this would be a very limited use case. Individual items vary so much that unless there was a way to set the category at ordering time, you most likely have to accept either the guesses Quicken makes have to be OK most of the time with you tweaking the categories on some items at time. Or manually changing the categories after downloading all the time.
And given the natural of Amazon where they break deliveries in strange ways at times, I don't think pre-entering and trying to match will work.
For myself, I'm just going to drop the whole thing and go back to my simple categorization methods.
You are the only other person I know that uses Roboform…😀👍️
I know this is a feature that has been requested, but I am weary of Quicken doing anything related to online.
My first question is - does it automatically enter the transaction? Or does it go into Downloaded Transactions? I always like to review transactions before entering them.
Is there a way to flag transactions in Quicken Desktop that you have already manually categorized so this process doesn't go back and change any that I don't want it to change. I have been manually categorizing Amazon transactions for years and I have a lot of my own custom categories. I would love for it to only look at the transactions in my Desktop Quicken that I haven't "frozen" so they don't change them again.
Yes, if you don't have the Automatic Transaction entry mode on transactions will go through the Downloaded Transactions tab. See my other post above.
When you set it up, you have two choices. One is for it to look back 3 months and do the transactions that it can match. The other is to only do it for new downloaded transactions.
But note your future transactions will not get your custom categories unless you change them after every download.
EDIT: From what I have seen the only time it looks at the past transactions and override your categories is the first time if you tell it to go back 3 months. I don't think it will override any transaction where you have overridden the automatic category.
The Memorized Payee List is completely ignored for these transactions.
With Automatic transaction entry mode, the transactions will just appear in the register with the automatically assigned categories.
If your transactions are going through the Downloaded Transactions tab and you select a transaction in the Downloaded Transactions tab, you will see that transaction in register just like before, but the category will have already been automatically assigned. In this respect it isn't any different than using the option for Quicken to automatically assign a category. Of course, at this point you can change the category before entering it into the register, but you will end up doing this for every item where you disagree with the automatic one assigned.
The other special thing about this mode is that it does automatic line splits for each item in the Amazon invoice and gives each an automatic category. This is what people wanted, but if one insists their own categories, it can cause more trouble that it saves.
Let me give you an example. In my other post you will two items, ribbons. Quicken assigned them "Gifts".
I use Entertainment for these because that is what my wife uses them for. If I were to use this feature and I wanted to keep my categories, then on ever download I would have to change the two "Gift" entries to "Entertainment" opposed to what I would have done is just categorized the whole amount with "Entertainment". And in fact, since most of the things we get from Amazon are used for this purpose I have "Amazon" mapped to "Entertainment" in the Memorized Payee List and only have to change the category for the times it is a different category.
And I noticed something for the people that want to track taxes. The taxes were not given a separata line item. So, if you are in that boat, you will also be fighting this system to get that result. So, those people might be having to change categories and even amounts and add a tax line.
I just turned on for future transactions, if it starts adding new generic categories that will be annoying, but just populating what it is in the memo saves sooo much time searching amazon to figure out what the heck it is. If I can over-ride the categorization, even this a big win. This is an ideal thing for an AI agent to learn what categories I use and get better over time if I override them. allowing and learning recategorization seems like a no brainer part of the feature. I am excited to see how it works. Best feature I have seen in forever from Quicken. Hopefully it stands up to that once I get some transactions flowing. I didnt choose the 3 months because I woudl be afraid it woudl overwrite everything I had painstakingly looked up on amazon and then categorized to the categories I use previously.
Thank you
I'm glad it works for you, but this feature does not work for me. The idea sounds great and I'll be thrilled when it works. When I finally found the Amazon extension button to sign up, it correctly showed the Amazon account and then ran for about 10-15 minutes. When it finished it said no orders found. HAHA…pretty much like other Quicken features, doesn't work right. In my Quicken all transaction view, I see 690 "Amazon" transactions in the last 90 days. In case you doubt me, see the images below. Enabling this feature should be easier, troubleshooting problems like this should be easier, and the categorization feature should work well or Quicken should not offer it. If it miscategorizes (which is going to be highly likely) or overwrites changes made then it is going to make Quicken more frustrating than it already is.
Quicken should fix this problem as well as the other problems I've reported, but they never seem to get around to it. Anyone else have one or two stock tickers sync wrong? It irks me every month or so I have to go in and manually fix the stock price of a ticker because Quicken syncs with the wrong ticker. How the hell can that happen when the ticker symbols are different?
@byoksh If you would like help sorting out your mismatched securities, please start a new discussion and describe the problem in detail.
@byoksh I wonder if there is some transaction limit? Maybe try running the RPC for only 30 days of transactions
For what it is worth, I tried this again recently and it is no longer getting the order transactions. I can select "Get Transactions" and nothing past 7/7/2026 is downloaded. What's more in an effort to try to get it to work again my downloading of transactions has been messed up. I think this will mark the end of me using Quicken. I will post about that in the Water Cooler thread shortly.
Oh, and BTW I did do some debugging of the extension and found out that it isn't what seems to do the scraping of the Amazon web page. It seems like there is something on the Quicken server doing that and the extension gets the information from the Quicken server. At least I see nothing that accesses the Amazon website.
