transfers/payments?

pamela77
pamela77 Member ✭✭✭
When I transfer money from one account to another or pay a cc bill, quicken puts 1 transaction in each account each showing the words "transfer" or "payment" but it doesn't seem to recognize that it is actually the same transaction. Is there a way to get quicken to recognize that, or do I always have to go in manually and fix it. If so, I change one of them, and delete the other?

Sometimes I find then that quicken thinks that transaction is missing (the one I deleted) and it downloads it again.

Best Answers

  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Answer ✓
    If you are downloading transactions in both accounts, there's no way Quicken knows from the downloaded transaction data which account in your Quicken file the transfer is to or from. Think about it: if you pay your credit card bill from your checking account, your bank transmits a checking transaction that money was transferred out — but it doesn't know the actual names of your accounts in Quicken to be able to specify where the money went; and the credit card company knows it received a payment, but it doesn't know which of your Quicken accounts it came from. 

    There are several strategies to deal with this: 

    (1) Leave it alone. You have two separate transactions in the two accounts, each one correctly updating the account. You don't have to link them.

    (2) Edit the downloaded transaction in one of the accounts from Category=Transfer to Category=Transfer:[account name], creating a linked transaction in the two accounts. In the other account, delete the downloaded transfer transaction each month.

    (3) Manually create a manual transaction which is a transfer between the two accounts, and schedule this as a monthly recurring transaction. 

         a) Make the scheduled transaction have no amount. Each month, mark the recurring transaction as Paid. After you download the transaction in this account each month, drag the downloaded transaction over your manual transaction and Quicken should ask if you want to merge them. The merged transaction will retain the date and amount downloaded, but the category (transfer) of your manual transaction, so you don't have to set that up each month. 

         b) If you look up the transaction amount each month before you download the transaction, in Quicken mark the transaction paid and edit the amount to the actual amount of the transaction. When Quicken subsequently downloads the transaction, it should automatically match the downloaded transaction to your manual transaction. 

    Either 3a or 3b handle one side of the transfer; on the other side, you still have to delete the downloaded transaction. I don't do this, so someone with more knowledge will correct me if this is wrong, but I don't think you can match the downloaded transaction in both accounts to the same manual transfer transaction. For one thing, the dates may be off by a day (e.g. the payment out of your checking account is February 3 but the payment in the credit account is February 4), and a linked transfer can't have different dates in the two accounts.

    Note that once you download a transaction in Quicken, it will not download the same transaction again. So if you delete a downloaded transaction, it will not come back. (Every transaction is assigned a unique transaction ID by the financial institution — the FITID — and Quicken retains a list of every FITID it has ever downloaded, so if the financial institution download the same transaction again, Quicken will ignore it. 

    As I alluded to above, I don't deal with this because I enter my transactions manually most of the time (unlike the majority of Quicken users), so if there are other tricks to making this more efficient, hopefully someone who does this every month will jump in with more or better advice. ;) 
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Answer ✓
    I'm not Jared, but you're welcome! Hope it makes sense.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Answer ✓
    I've got one little thing to add to @jacobsanswer number (2) above: When you edit the downloaded transaction in one of the accounts to make it a Transfer, Quicken will very often (but not always, depending on dates, etc) recognize that the newly created transaction in the 2nd account now matches the already-existing transaction and offers to match it. All you have to do is accept that offer.

    I don't have this happen a lot because I also manually enter my transactions before downloading. If find the work involved in manual pre-entry really hardly any different than editing the downloaded transactions later. The features of auto-completion and QuickFill transactions really help here. The benefit of this method is that when something doesn't match, it really grabs your attention. It could be that you mistyped the amount, or it could be that the payee charged the wrong amount. Without pre-entry, I might very well miss the latter. It also catches any unexpected transactions that could be bogus credit card charges.

    BTW, I only do this with my Banking accounts. I don't do it with my brokerage (mostly Fidelity) accounts as I find that the downloads are reliable and the situation isn't the same where a lot of money is flowing in and out of the accounts.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • pamela77
    pamela77 Member ✭✭✭
    Answer ✓
    Jacobs, I'm sorry about saying jared. I was responding on my phone while working out it the yard, and between spell correct and my tiny phone I made the error, sorry. I really am grateful for your help.

Answers

  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Answer ✓
    If you are downloading transactions in both accounts, there's no way Quicken knows from the downloaded transaction data which account in your Quicken file the transfer is to or from. Think about it: if you pay your credit card bill from your checking account, your bank transmits a checking transaction that money was transferred out — but it doesn't know the actual names of your accounts in Quicken to be able to specify where the money went; and the credit card company knows it received a payment, but it doesn't know which of your Quicken accounts it came from. 

    There are several strategies to deal with this: 

    (1) Leave it alone. You have two separate transactions in the two accounts, each one correctly updating the account. You don't have to link them.

    (2) Edit the downloaded transaction in one of the accounts from Category=Transfer to Category=Transfer:[account name], creating a linked transaction in the two accounts. In the other account, delete the downloaded transfer transaction each month.

    (3) Manually create a manual transaction which is a transfer between the two accounts, and schedule this as a monthly recurring transaction. 

         a) Make the scheduled transaction have no amount. Each month, mark the recurring transaction as Paid. After you download the transaction in this account each month, drag the downloaded transaction over your manual transaction and Quicken should ask if you want to merge them. The merged transaction will retain the date and amount downloaded, but the category (transfer) of your manual transaction, so you don't have to set that up each month. 

         b) If you look up the transaction amount each month before you download the transaction, in Quicken mark the transaction paid and edit the amount to the actual amount of the transaction. When Quicken subsequently downloads the transaction, it should automatically match the downloaded transaction to your manual transaction. 

    Either 3a or 3b handle one side of the transfer; on the other side, you still have to delete the downloaded transaction. I don't do this, so someone with more knowledge will correct me if this is wrong, but I don't think you can match the downloaded transaction in both accounts to the same manual transfer transaction. For one thing, the dates may be off by a day (e.g. the payment out of your checking account is February 3 but the payment in the credit account is February 4), and a linked transfer can't have different dates in the two accounts.

    Note that once you download a transaction in Quicken, it will not download the same transaction again. So if you delete a downloaded transaction, it will not come back. (Every transaction is assigned a unique transaction ID by the financial institution — the FITID — and Quicken retains a list of every FITID it has ever downloaded, so if the financial institution download the same transaction again, Quicken will ignore it. 

    As I alluded to above, I don't deal with this because I enter my transactions manually most of the time (unlike the majority of Quicken users), so if there are other tricks to making this more efficient, hopefully someone who does this every month will jump in with more or better advice. ;) 
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • pamela77
    pamela77 Member ✭✭✭
    Thank you Jared, you really are very considerate to offer such a detailed answer
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Answer ✓
    I'm not Jared, but you're welcome! Hope it makes sense.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Answer ✓
    I've got one little thing to add to @jacobsanswer number (2) above: When you edit the downloaded transaction in one of the accounts to make it a Transfer, Quicken will very often (but not always, depending on dates, etc) recognize that the newly created transaction in the 2nd account now matches the already-existing transaction and offers to match it. All you have to do is accept that offer.

    I don't have this happen a lot because I also manually enter my transactions before downloading. If find the work involved in manual pre-entry really hardly any different than editing the downloaded transactions later. The features of auto-completion and QuickFill transactions really help here. The benefit of this method is that when something doesn't match, it really grabs your attention. It could be that you mistyped the amount, or it could be that the payee charged the wrong amount. Without pre-entry, I might very well miss the latter. It also catches any unexpected transactions that could be bogus credit card charges.

    BTW, I only do this with my Banking accounts. I don't do it with my brokerage (mostly Fidelity) accounts as I find that the downloads are reliable and the situation isn't the same where a lot of money is flowing in and out of the accounts.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • pamela77
    pamela77 Member ✭✭✭
    Thank you, I have seen that matching occur and I use it, then delete the other transaction in the other account. When the dates don't quite match, I usually pick one of the dates and it doesn't bother me of the other date is off a little bit. It is usually just a day or two. Do you think this can result in any problems that I am not seeing?
  • pamela77
    pamela77 Member ✭✭✭
    Answer ✓
    Jacobs, I'm sorry about saying jared. I was responding on my phone while working out it the yard, and between spell correct and my tiny phone I made the error, sorry. I really am grateful for your help.
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    pamela77 said:
    When the dates don't quite match, I usually pick one of the dates and it doesn't bother me of the other date is off a little bit. It is usually just a day or two. Do you think this can result in any problems that I am not seeing?
    Only if it happens to make it fall outside the right date window when you reconcile.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
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