Quicken ignores one of two separate, but identical, transactions

jjwkroll

When two identical transactions appear in a banking account on the same day (as with the recent $90 Social Security payments for my wife and I), Quicken only accepts one of them. Presumably the software thinks this is a mistake on the bank's end, but it doesn't even notify me of the issue. I have to go in and manually duplicate the downloaded transaction.

Mac Deluxe 9.2.2. This has only come up within the last couple of months, once with Social Security and once with identical refunds from a payee. I don't think we've had identical transactions before this for it to get triggered.

John_in_NC

I, and others have seen this over the years. Now, I can't say for certain it is the case here for you (you would have to go spelunking in the logs to confirm), but it is related to how the particular financial institution (or their data provider) is formatting it's hidden transaction ID.

I will try to not get into too much detail, but every transaction has a unique ID associated with it. And when you download transactions, (behind the scenes), you get a batch of transactions (say, 90 days worth). It isn't a case where only new transactions are sent.

If that ID has been seen before, Quicken ignores importing to prevent duplicates. If the ID is unique, then the transaction gets imported as new.

The FI (or data provider) is likely using some combination of date, account, amount, etc. to create this ID. And these two transx end up with the same ID. Thus, Quicken ignores the second instance.

Duplicating the transx is really going to be your only option as the program is technically working correctly. It's the data coming from the bank.

You might wish to setup scheduled reminders if the problem is going to be a monthly one.