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What is an easy way to move select entries from multiple accounts from one Quicken file to another?

DawnMC

I have had Quicken Home & Business since 2018 and had them set up in one file to make it easy to reconcile transfers between my business and personal accounts.

I set my categories up with a distinct "leader" to identify it as a business category vs. personal (for example, I use a fuel category for personal and a fuel category for business, so the business would lead with (CI), the company's initials.

Two years ago, Quicken repeatedly suggested that I split personal from business, and so I did (which was very painful to do and keep my history).

Now I frequently need to Journal expenses over from personal to busienss or vis versa , but do not know an easy way to do this.

It is common for businesses (even small ones) to have holding companies, and you may need to allocate expenses or journal something between the Quicken files.

The methods suggested are not working (highlight entries and copy the transaction, open the Quicken file you want to copy to, and paste the transaction in - once I open the second file and try to paste, the paste option is not available).

This seems elementary to me, but Quicken doesn't seem to see the need.

Help

Dawn

[Edited - Readability]

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Sceptic

@DawnMC You said, "Two years ago, Quicken repeately suggested that I spilt personal from business and so I did (which was very painful to do and keep my history)."

May I ask who at Quicken repeatedly suggested this, and what the reasoning was?

If you're using Quicken Classic Business & Personal (formerly Home & Business), the product is designed to support both business and personal finances in the same data file. The recent name change did not change that fundamental capability.

DawnMC

I have the classic business and personal. I was having issues with the connectivity to Chase and the downloads and constantly having to deactivate accounts and reconnect.

Support with Quicken is hit or miss, I find that I generally know more than most of the tier 1 support and end up teaching them things that they didnt know they could do. I do get some really good level 2 support, but still have issues around certain things (like quicken changing or abbriviating payee names - which I can choose to revert back to but would rather get the correct name to begin with. I am not memorizing the names or electing for quicken to change the name).

Sceptic

@DawnMC connectivity issues is not a good reason to split your data file. In my opinion, you should have never split your data file into two separate files. But ultimately, it's up to you how you want to use Quicken ongoing.

For the transactions you are asking about, I think the safest thing to do is run a transaction report in one file and use it to create the transactions in the other file. I see no other way than to update the other file with manual updates.

mshiggins

@DawnMC how many transactions per month do you typically need to copy between your business and personal files?

Chris_QPW

The only reason I can think of that would justify splitting your personal and business account into separate files would be if they are different tax entities and even then, even then it might not be ideal for things like the tax planner, but one could separate them in the reports.

As for Chase accounts, these days I have a checking account and two credit card accounts, and before the end of last year I used to have IRA and brokerage accounts with them, and I never had any problems with any of them.

DawnMC

Can you tell me how you would do that? I have tried multiple ways, including what is suggested by quicken.

Filter for the transactions (all accounts and individual account) and copy transactions - the open the desired file to copy to and paste transactions in.

* I set up a manual JE (journal entry) account to bring them into.

* THIS ONLY WORKS IF I DO ONE transaction at a time - i have over 300 that I need to move/copy - quicken claims you can do multiple??

I would generally need to move 30-50 entries monthly.

DawnMC

I would generally need to move/copy 30-50 entries monthly.

But I need to currently move about 300 to get both files correct Personal and Business since the split.

DawnMC

I am the tax planner lol - I have over 25 various accounts between personal and several businesses. It is a very simple setup, if quicken allowed for easy movement between quicken files, which is a common accounting practice.

Chase connectivity was and still is a constant issue for years and Quicken's support dropped to less than pitiful after their split from intuit. The support has improved, but right now I just want to move forward and get the correct data reflected where it should be via a journal entry (as is generally done during month end for all accounting groups.

There is also the benefit of separating my personal and business files in quicken, because I am trying to bring a jr accountant on to have accounting support on the business side and they do not need access to my personal finances.

DawnMC

Sceptic

@DawnMC Quicken does not support copying and pasting multiple transactions directly from one data file to another.

If you're trying to move 300 transactions, manually entering them is probably not the best approach. A CSV file import may be an option.

What type of account are these transactions in (banking, credit card, investment, etc.)? Are the transactions in one account or several?

Sceptic

That's a reasonable reason to maintain separate data files. If you're planning to give a junior accountant access to the business records, keeping your business and personal finances in separate Quicken data files provides a clear separation and avoids exposing personal financial information.

The tradeoff is that Quicken doesn't provide an easy way to move transactions between data files, so tasks like transferring 300 transactions can become cumbersome. Unfortunately, that's one of the limitations that comes with maintaining separate data files.

Chris_QPW

Yeah, but Quicken is a personal finance software, not accounting software. And its feature set is mostly driven by what users request (and in the case of Quicken Windows US can get at least 50 votes on an idea just to be sent to the developers).

You can see if any other people would like the feature by going to the Home web page and selecting New Post → New Idea, that is how Quicken Inc takes suggestions.

mshiggins

@DawnMC are the account names for the accounts in your personal file the same as the account names in the business file? If so you could export QIF files from the personal file and import QIF into the business file.

If the account names are not the same in the personal and business files, you might want to review some exported QIF files from each file to see how the account names are listed. You can open QIF files with any text editor, like Notepad.

Then the process would be export QIF from the source Quicken file, use a text editor to edit the account names to match the file for importing, and import the QIF file into the target Quicken file. It sounds complicated, but once you have done it a time or two, it’s actually pretty straightforward.

The file exports and file imports are done via the File menu.

Chris_QPW

BTW as a side comment about Chase (or any financial institution) reliability and the split from Intuit affecting that. That never happened, as in Intuit is Quicken Inc's aggregator and as such 99.99% of the time when there is a "connectivity problem" it is between Intuit and the financial institution. All downloading of transactions has always and still is down by Intuit.

I have been in Quicken's forums since 2007 and with the exception of "change overs from one connection type to another" in general I don't see any increase of the number of financial institutions that are having problems. But a better way to state that is that there have always been lots of financial institutions are any given time that have had problems.

And the "change overs" have been caused by the financial institutions. It is the financial institutions that decided to go to FDX (What Quicken Windows called Express Web Connect +). They had their reasons. Both the concern of having aggregators having customer usernames and passwords, and the fact that each of the aggregators that wanted to get information used a different protocol.

But the main problem is the fact that the financial institutions have never established a standardized protocol that all of them use.

Way back when Intuit, Microsoft, CheckFree, and "the financial institutions" got together and created OFX (QFX/Direct Connect) at the peak only about 4,500 financial institutions adopted it out of maybe 20,000. So, that is why Intuit created Express Web Connect, which is "log in as the user at the financial institution and get an "agreed upon formatted file". Nothing wrong with that idea, a server faking being a user logging into a financial institution's website that keeps changing. It isn't like any hackers would do something like that.

FDX/Express Web Connect + is their latest attempt at a standard protocol. What are the major problems with it? Well, let's start with the simple fact that they won't all adopt it so all they did is add yet another protocol. And the second problem is that OFX/Direct Connect was directly between Quicken (the program) and the financial institutions, and with Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect + you have to go through an aggregator. So, you have a flow of Quicken, Quicken Server, Intuit server, financial institution. The more complex you make a system the more likely it will fail.

DawnMC

Hey Chris, my main issue and reason for the initial post is a Quicken copy paste (Quicken recommended step) that is supposed to work and doesnt - it has nothing to do with finance vs accounting software. Quicken absolutly can work for the purposes of accounting, I make it work everyday for the last 8 years for my personal, consulting business, my husbands compay, rental business and investing - it is the basis for my all my reporting, planning, cash flow, and tax filings (among other things).

Accounting and Corporate finance is what I do for a living and I use all kinds of financial / accoutning systems.

I appreciate everyones feedback, but the original question has been buried in the questions asked about why quicken recommended I split personal and business and chase's need to reconnect frequently.

I did manage a work around by copying and pasting the transactions I wanted to journal over to the 2nd quicken file into a temp account that I exported and imported. It worked fine, just more time consuming than the simple copy transactions and paste the transactions to the second file that Quicken states works.

Thanks again

DawnMC

Thank you so much, this is what I ended up doing - I was just hoping to get the copy paste transactions to work to save time. Appreciate it.

DawnMC

Quicken support claims that you can copy multiple transactions from one file to another (not just one account to another in the same file). I havent been able to get that to work, but I did manage a work around by copying and pasting the transactions I wanted to journal over to the 2nd quicken file into a temp account that I exported and imported via QIF files. It worked fine, just more time consuming than the simple copy transactions and paste the transactions to the second file that Quicken states works.

DawnMC

Thanks for the break down - that is definately very interesting to fully understand the process and get the history. I know they made the change from direct connec to web connect but not the details.

Chase has really been the main financial institution that I have consistent issues with - finally down to only one account that acts up. I have been conneded at some point with Chase, Wells Fargo, Capital One, Acorn, Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, Prudential, E-trade, Fidelity….and others - and most have worked very well.

I was told by Quickens level 2 support that quickens platform has not been revamped since it was created, making it very difficult to modify or add onto. Which means more patches to try and expand or fix problems.

BTW - if you arent already, you should request to be part of their BETA team - they may have asked you already.