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Merging single transactions into a split transaction?

Ray Molver

I have decided to merge three separate accounts with the same Bank into one account in Quicken.
This has resulted in more than one transaction with the same Bank on the same date, but for different amounts, in numerous cases.

I would therefore like to merge all individual transactions on the same date into one split transaction.
Does anyone know if there is an easy way to do this?

I am using FTM 2019 latest version and Win10 version 2004.

Thank you.

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jtemplin

Just curious: why would you want to merge the accounts and transactions in Quicken? If they remain separate in the real world at the bank, how will you reconcile the accounts? AFAIK, reconciliation doesn't allow you to pick individual line items from a split.

And if you're downloading from the bank, you'll always have to fuss with the transactions. They'll never come from the bank the way you want them. And I know of no easy way to take several transactions and magically merge them into a split.

What's your use case that makes you want to do this? I think for many of us, we think our Quicken accounts should be mirrors of your real accounts. Merging them hides that reality. Let reports merge the accounts.

splasher

Good luck with what you are trying to do, but Quicken was never meant to be used that way. As stated by @jtemplin , Quicken is supposed to mirror real life, one bank account for one Quicken account.

Why do you think you want to do it this way? What is your end goal?

Rocket J Squirrel

Ray Molver said:

I have decided to merge three separate accounts with the same Bank into one account in Quicken.

As others have said, this is not a good idea. Or are you actually merging the 3 accounts at the bank into 1 in real life?

Ray Molver said:

I am using FTM 2019 latest version and Win10 version 2004.

What is FTM?

Ray Molver

I have assigned a separate tag to each of the different Bank accounts and I allocate the corresponding tag to every transaction for each Bank account.
I can then run a separate report for each of these tags in order to view the all the transactions and the closing balance of each bank account.
In effect, the result is that I have the benefit of a control account containing a number of sub accounts, which I am still able to view and reconcile separately. The closing balance of this control account then shows me the total amount that I currently have available with that specific Bank.
Finally, I meant to say that I am using the latest version of Quicken.

Chris_QPW

What is confusing me is that as far as I know it is impossible to link more than one online account to one Quicken account for downloading transactions.

Quicken links an account by details like the account number, and your online accounts would have different account numbers. And besides once you connect an online account to an account in Quicken you can't connect it to another until you disconnect it.

Did you actually find a way to connect multiple online accounts to one Quicken account?

If not then that would mean that you are manually entering these transactions, and as such you could just enter them as a split instead of trying to combine them. At least for the new transactions. For old ones of course you would have to go in and change them, and as the other have pointed out there isn't any "fast way" to do that.

Ray Molver

I live outside of the USA and I therefore I don’t have the option of linking Quicken to online bank accounts, unfortunately.
All my transactions have to be manually entered.

Frankx

Hi @Ray Molver,

So you have apparently already created what you are referring to as a "control account" and now you want to take all the disparate transactions within that account and merge what are clearly separate transactions, that have occurred on a particular date, into one transaction - on a date-by-date basis. Wow, I have never even thought of thinking about doing that! But you've already completed part of it.

You said "the result is that I have the benefit of a control account containing a number of sub accounts". But in reality you actually don't have any "sub accounts". And your "control account" is not actually a control account at all. In accounting, a control account (e.g. in the case of accounts receivable or accounts payable) is a "master account" that contains a summary of transactions that are individually recorded in a sub-ledger. You have no sub-ledgers and your "control account" has a mis-mash of transactions from random banking accounts that doesn't "control" anything. Sorry, but I just can't see any "benefit" from what you've done.

All that being said, I know of no way to automatically, or easily, "merge" the disparate transactions from three bank accounts into one transaction per day. That would need to be done manually, perhaps using excel (which - if you decide to actually do it might at least provide you with a road map of where the daily combined entries came from).

Good luck!

Frankx

volvogirl

Gee I know you are already into doing it that way but did you think about doing it a different way? Having all the accounts separate and the TAG is the control account?

jtemplin

I still don't understand why you can't use reports as a view onto all the sub-accounts without having to fuss with the underlying transactions. Create a report and only include the subaccounts in the account list. Am I missing something? What's the use case for having the "master" (as you call it) being a real register in Quicken? I still fear you have no reliable audit trail of what came from where if you lump all the subsccounts all together.

If you're selecting the correct accounts, and they're strictly subaccounts and nothing more (meaning there are no extraneous transactions that need to be excluded), why do you even need tags?

I guess I try to keep things simple. This sounds so unnecessarily complicated and defeats several built-on Quicken features.

John Sellers

On reason to combine transactions into a split would be if one has the items of an itemized receipt and wished to combine them into a receipt.

Likewise there may be cases where monthly statements could be treated the same way.