Duplicate bills in Bills & Income window (Q Mac)

J D Thomas · May 2022

I wrote about this a while back, but that discussion has been closed. So:
Some of my credit card bills show up as duplicate entries in the B&I window. Only some. Others are listed only once, which would be expected.
In my original post someone from Quicken asked if I am storing my file on Dropbox. I am. I need to access my file from any of 4 Macs here. I am the only one who accesses this file—EVER—and I fail to see why this would cause this issue. Others have chimed in stating they have the same problem, but no current tickets are open as of now.
If I delete the bill, both obviously are deleted. And if I reenter the bill, sometimes only one shows and other times the duplicate appears.
This is clearly a bug Quicken, and it's been ongoing since v5.x
I am on a Mac, macOS Mojave 10.4.6, using the latest Version 6.7.0 (Build 607.44072.100).

jacobs · May 2022

J D Thomas said:

In my original post someone from Quicken asked if I am storing my file on Dropbox. I am. I need to access my file from any of 4 Macs here. I am the only one who accesses this file—EVER—and I fail to see why this would cause this issue...

This is clearly a bug Quicken, and it's been ongoing since v5.x

So you feel there shouldn't be a problem storing your data file on Dropbox, even though it is expressly not supported by the company, and then blame Quicken for a bug. I don't know about the duplicate bills issue, other than that I haven't seen others reporting the same issue. But I do know that storing the data file on Dropbox is not supported and has been known to cause a variety of problems — from getting completely locked out of the data file to small and seemingly inexplicable data glitches. I've seen this reported many times over the years, and many users have reported their problems went away after they relocated their data file.

It doesn't matter that you're the only person to access the data file. The problem is the way Dropbox syncs data between your Macs and the cloud, and the way a program like Quicken updates its database. The Quicken data file is not a single file at all; it's a Mac "package" file, which is essentially a wrapper around a folder of files and sub-folders to make it appear like it's one file. Because there are lots of files and folders involved, there can be permission problems which develop when you use the file across different Macs. And the database within the data file has data written to it in pieces which may sometimes not mesh with the way Dropbox syncs chunks of data between the Mac and the cloud.

There is a safe way to use Dropbox for Quicken file storage, but it involves a few extra steps that will add a few seconds to your use of Quicken. My suggestion is to store a .zip copy of your Quicken data file (as well as your automatic Quicken backups) on Dropbox. Each time you want to use Quicken, copy the .zip file to your local hard drive (e.g. a location not configured to be synced/stored on Dropbox), decompress it, and double-click it to launch Quicken using that file. When you’re done using Quicken, quit, compress the data file, and copy the .zip file back to Dropbox (or a folder ron your Mac which is synced with Dropbox). Yes, this adds a few seconds each time you start and finish using Quicken, but once you’re used to it, it is literally just a few extra seconds — and it’s a safe way to use one Quicken Mac data file on multiple computers.

You can streamline this further by using Quicken's automatic backup files (which are essentially the same as .zip files) by placing your Quicken data file in a non-Dropbox folder on your Mac and setting Quicken's backup file location to Dropbox or a folder synced by Dropbox. Each time you want to use Quicken on one of your computers, you would then restore the most recent backup to your local hard drive, using the same name and overwriting the existing local copy there. When you quit Quicken, it will auto-save a backup to your backup folder which is stored on Dropbox. So this cuts out one step of manually copying back the file at the end. (I personally prefer to make the .zip file and move it manually, because people can get tripped up with the automatic backups which each have a new filename, but others prefer the backup method.)

Whether making this change will solve your duplicate bill issue, I honestly don't know. It might, or it might be something completely unrelated. Nonetheless, I'd encourage you to establish a safe way of working with your data across multiple computers as described above, because even if it doesn't fix the bills problem, I believe it will save you from eventual grief; I've seen too many people report problems tied to cloud storage to not strongly encourage doing this in a way which its supported and known to be safe.

One you make the change, I'd go through and clean up your current duplicate bills, and then see if the problem recurs over time or not. If it does, at that point I'd advise using Quicken Support by phone, so a representative can screen-share to see what you're seeing, and you can push for them to open a ticket to be escalated if they are unable to solve the problem.

AnneK48 · May 2022

I am here to verify this is NOT a Dropbox issue. I am not on Dropbox and this is also happening to me. It has been going on for quite a while and is a bug. I just posted that I am having the same problem. Maybe others may not recognize it as a problem either because they don't care or think it is normal, but I have been using Quicken for many years and don't consider it normal. I was mostly on a PC, but changed to a Mac a couple of years ago. I can also attest to the fact this affects some credit card accounts and not others. When setting up the new credit card for payment I literally followed the "recipe" for one of my accounts that only has one entry. I entered all the same fields from one that I knew was working. I still ended up with two "entries" in the Bills & Income register. It is behaving like a double entry system in a bookkeeping program.

Here is the comment I just posted today:

This is driving my nuts. I am on a MacBook Pro running Monterey 12.3.1 but this issue has been happening for a while. I am just trying to set up a credit card for payment. I enter the Payee name (the name of the Credit Card), then in Category I enter Transfer:[name of credit card], then in account the name of the checking account I want the payment taken out of and then hit "Save." My Bills & Income register looks like the attached screen shot. Two lines. Before switching to a Mac a couple of years ago I was on a PC so some of the credit card payments were inherited. They all look great - one entry. Any ideas what is going on?

Hoss · May 2022

I have a similar issue that has been around for quite a while. When I enter a new bill, I get two entries: one for the account it's coming from and one for the account that it's being paid to. This is quite annoying and doesn't happen in Quicken for Windows.

AnneK48 · May 2022

@Hoss Yes. That is exactly what was happening until today when it got weirder. I had deleted the card referenced in my post above, but now I have an amount due so I decided to give it another shot. I clicked on new and manual and went through all my steps and hit save. So. . .now I have an e-bill instead of a manual bill. I didn't want that so I deleted the bill and started over, careful this time (even though I knew I had done it before) to choose manual. Same thing happened. I decided to right click and discovered I can "Unlink e-bill." I do that and guess what my transaction is only one line - the way it should be. I am on a Mac running Monterey 12.3.1 and Quicken Premier Version 6.7.1 (Build 607.44146.100). I have no idea what is going on. 😀

Duplicate bills in Bills & Income window (Q Mac)

Comments

Categories