Bank transfers : Wrong account credited

When downloading online transactions, some transfers are credited in the wrong account.

For example, if account MyAccount receives transfers $100 to an account unknown to Quicken, Quicken assumes wrongfully to apply a charge on my VISA account.

This seems to occur on several accounts where the transfer is going to an account unknown to Quicken.

Example:

Account, Payee , Memo, Category, Payment, Deposit
MyAccount, Virement, VIREMENT W3 - 0327, VISA, 0, $100

Account, Payee , Memo, Category, Charge, Payment
VISA, Virement, VIREMENT W3 - 0327, MyAccount, $100, 0

Why is Quicken applying the $100 transfer as a charge on my VISA ?

How do I revert the VISA charges and transfer those to a fictitious account?

USE CASE : I share a bank account with my son.
When he transfers money to another account I do not own, Quicken tries to apply the transferred money to my VISA. Why?

Best Answer

  • Quicken_Tyka
    Quicken_Tyka Alumni ✭✭✭✭
    Answer ✓
    Hello @Jean-Martin Verreault

    Thank you for the additional details, although I apologize that you have not received a response.

    To correct a transfer, you will need to edit the transfer in the starting account or the "From" account. Where the money is coming from, to begin with. This will correct the end transfer to the correct account.

    If this is not the behavior that you are experiencing, please provide more details on what is happening. Alternatively, you may consider contacting support directly for assistance.

     https://www.quicken.com/support#contact-support

    Quicken Care has the tools to initiate a screen share to view the issue in real-time to be able to offer a solution.

    Thank you,

    -Quicken Tyka

    ~~~***~~~

Answers

  • Quicken_Tyka
    Quicken_Tyka Alumni ✭✭✭✭
    Hello @Jean-Martin Verreault

    Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to report this issue, although I apologize that you have not received a response.

    How do you handle downloaded transactions? Are the transactions entered into the register automatically or do you have a chance to review the transactions?

    If you do not review the transaction prior to them being entered into the register, I would take a moment to review the steps and information available here.

    If you review the transactions already, I would next take a look at renaming rules as well as the memorized payee list.

    Please let us know how it goes!
    -Quicken Tyka

    ~~~***~~~
  • UKR
    UKR SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭

    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 can be found for the detection and processing of transfer transactions 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.

    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. Review each downloaded transaction, make changes if necessary (e.g., to get a payee name = "Starbucks" instead of "POS TRANS 070119 STARBU", "POS TRANS 070219 STARBU", "POS TRANS 070319 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.

     

    In case 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.


  • Jean-Martin Verreault
    Jean-Martin Verreault Member ✭✭
    edited December 2020
    Hi UKR,

    Thanks for all the detailed explanations.

    I am not automatically accepting downloaded transactions.
    'Automatically add to banking registers' is off.
    However, since I have many accounts and it is too much time consuming to accept transactions one by one I often go the quick way of 'Accept All'.

    I believe what is the main cause of my issue is the setting for:
    'Transfer Detection'->' Automatically create transfers when detected'.

    I have turned that off for now but kept 'Confirm possible transfers before entering in register'; so I can review them before accepting the suggested transfer.

    Now, my biggest challenge is how do I revert past automated transfers that were done wrong by Quicken.
    It appears that I have lots of them and consequently account balances are way invalid.

    So I am unsure about how to proceed.

    Also, I may have to create dummy registers as some transfers are destined for accounts that I do not own and are not in Quicken.

    JM



  • UKR
    UKR SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    > I may have to create dummy registers as some transfers are destined for accounts that I do not own and are not in Quicken.
    If you're sending money to relatives, for the niece's birthday, for example, just record it as a categorized expense instead of a transfer.
    > As to transfers that were created and recorded incorrectly:
    Fix them, going back in time as far as your incorrect records go. When fixed, you should finally be able to correctly reconcile, not only your Checking account, but also all your other "Transfer-to ..." accounts
    > To prevent incorrect transfer transactions in the future
    As I've stated above: For best results manually enter transfer transactions into your register BEFORE you download transactions from the bank. This will ensure your transfers have already been recorded correctly, e.g.,
    Checking to [VISA Account] using Payee Name "VISA Account".
    Checking to [Savings Account], using Payee Name "Savings Account".
    etc.
    > In your son's account
    when transferring money out of the son's account to another account which is not tracked in your Quicken data file,
    either leave it uncategorized
    or categorize it to some expense category
    or use the son's account register name (e.g., "[Son's Checking]") to make it a "Transfer to Same account" to make it neither an expense nor income in your data file.
    Your son's account should be in its own, separate Quicken data file, with its own set of categories and accounts, e.g., savings, credit cards, checking, cash, etc.

  • I have tons of incorrect transfers.

    For example, there are many transfers; money out of my son's checking account applied as a charge on my Business VISA card by mistake by Quicken.

    How do I correct those?

    Should I :
    1-delete the VISA charges ?
    2-move the VISA charge to an account for my son's transfer to a special son's transfers account ?

    For the above can it be done in batch ?

    JM
  • UKR
    UKR SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    > For example, there are many transfers; money out of my son's checking account applied as a charge on my Business VISA card by mistake by Quicken.
    Which account has the correct entry?
    Please understand that transfer transactions are a matched pair. Delete one of the pair and the other one in the other account disappears. Change one in one account and give it a different transfer-to account and you'll correct the bad pairing.
    So, in case of a transfer from your son's account to an untracked account, change it as I said earlier, to one of the suggested alternatives:
    > In your son's account
    when transferring money out of the son's account to another account which is not tracked in your Quicken data file,
    • either leave it uncategorized
    • or categorize it to some expense category
    • or use the son's account register name (e.g., "[Son's Checking]") to make it a "Transfer to Same account" to make it neither an expense nor income in your data file.
    Changing these transactions to a different category will make the transaction disappear from the VISA account.
    Take a look at the Edit / Find/Replace function to see if you can use it to make the desired change for a number of selected transactions.
    Do be sure to have or create a backup of your Quicken data file before you start making mass changes to transactions. If you make a mistake that you can't figure out how to fix, restoring your data file from the backup may be the only way out of that bad situation.
  • > Change one in one account and give it a different transfer-to account and you'll correct the bad pairing.

    How do you change one in one account ?

    Do you mean, change the Category field value of the paying account to the name of the receiving account?
    Or vice-versa: Change the Category of the receiving account to the name of the paying account?

    Otherwise, how does one move the matching transaction of a transfer to the correct account?
  • Quicken_Tyka
    Quicken_Tyka Alumni ✭✭✭✭
    Answer ✓
    Hello @Jean-Martin Verreault

    Thank you for the additional details, although I apologize that you have not received a response.

    To correct a transfer, you will need to edit the transfer in the starting account or the "From" account. Where the money is coming from, to begin with. This will correct the end transfer to the correct account.

    If this is not the behavior that you are experiencing, please provide more details on what is happening. Alternatively, you may consider contacting support directly for assistance.

     https://www.quicken.com/support#contact-support

    Quicken Care has the tools to initiate a screen share to view the issue in real-time to be able to offer a solution.

    Thank you,

    -Quicken Tyka

    ~~~***~~~
  • Out of the blue, Quicken 2020 ( win cloud) yesterday created transfers that are completely wrong. The program took it upon itself to enter (via download) transfers OUT of my checking acct and into all 4 of my brokerage accts and declared the transfers to be interest credited to those same 4 accts on the same day. None of it makes sense.

    Something is seriously wrong with this cloud version, which I detest completely. I have been a quicken user for more than 25 yrs and have never had this happen. It is rather scary and seriously undermines my faith in Quicken.
    There were NO TRANSFERS of any type and I verified it with my brokerage firm.
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