Renaming rules updates?

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TTSguy
TTSguy Member ✭✭✭✭
edited January 2023 in Registers & Transactions (Windows)
[Removed - Rant] I'm teaching my wife how to best use Quicken deluxe with lots of issues and questions and not understanding it. When you throw in Memorized Payees into the mix it's even more difficult. Franklly, she asks some questions that I cannot come up with an "understandable" answer for!. She keeps not getting proper name in her transactions. Years ago when we had the old way of doing it, it seemed simple, and since many people have brought up this issue [Removed - Speculation]. It's disappointing!
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  • UKR
    UKR SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
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    You know, the best way to run Quicken and get the results you want is to keep it simple.
    Manually record all transactions as they occur, especially transfers between accounts.
    When using Scheduled Reminders, enter them on or before their due date.
    Definitely record everything BEFORE a transaction confirmation arrives in the next download. This makes it possible for Quicken to match downloaded data to already existing, properly named and categorized register transactions.
    Doing it this way, I find that there's hardly any need for Renaming Rules. I have a total of three, but only for seeing how they work, not because I need them for creating properly named register transactions from downloaded gobbledygook.
  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
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    So, @UKR your solution is to turn an automatic process into a manual one?

    I would be curious to know how many institution problems you have actually caught with your procedure (not trying to pick on you I know other SuperUsers suggest the same, but I just don't get it).

    When I first started using Quicken downloading wasn't an option, that lasted for me a year or so and that was when I was single.  To me matching downloaded transactions has no purpose at all.  If I was going to manually enter everything, then doing a regular reconcile would catch any kind of problems like fraud or even a financial institution problem (which I have never had).

    Getting back to the original question/statement, I personally don't find that the renaming rules are working any different than 20 years ago.  What I do find is many years ago they changed the dialogs, into a form that makes them hard to use.  It is just one of the examples in Quicken of not understanding how to do a proper GUI.

    But more to the underline point.  Years ago, when I was doing beta testing, I noticed that almost no one there was a "new user", only long-time users that had long since overridden the defaults for the new users and such (or never seen the new user settings because their data file is so old).  So, I decided that I would ask my wife to start using/testing Quicken in her own data file as a test.  She only uses Quicken to look at the data and doesn't not enter and such.  Well, that lasted about 1 hour.

    While trying to setup the data file, of course she had to setup accounts.  That didn't go well, and she asked for help, and sure enough the reason it didn't go well is because one had to know to use a given workaround.  So, I showed her that, and then left her on her own, it was more than 15 minutes and again another workaround was needed.

    People that have been using Quicken for a long time (and certainly the Quicken marketing folks) have no idea how difficult Quicken is for a new user.  If you aren't willing to spend hours and hours learning it, you will get nowhere.

    I will save though that I have a system of using Quicken where it is almost totally automatic, so it can be done, but it does require one to adapt to Quicken instead of the other way around.

    If you want to have "automatic" you can't have things like splitting your Safeway bill between different categories for instance.  You have to keep it simple and not worry about all the details.

    BTW I believe in some ways "manual entry" and "automatic" are mutually exclusive.  If one starts creating memorized payees with multiple entries per payee to make it easier for manual entry, that is exactly the kind of thing that is going to trip you up if you are downloading transactions and expecting them be automatically categorized for you.
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