Deleting old, unused payees (Q Mac)

When trying to delete old unused payees from my list, I'm told that I can't delete them because they are used in transactions and are already labeled "hidden". Is there a way around this?

Answers

  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Even though the payee is hidden, it can still be present in existing transactions. (Hiding a payee just makes it stop being shown in popup lists when entering a transaction.) The transactions using the payee might even only be in hidden accounts. But transactions in those accounts still exist and any Payees used in those accounts can't be deleted. You would have to delete all transactions that use the payee (even in hidden accounts) before you can delete the payee.

    If you want to get the hidden payees out of the way when reviewing the alphabetical list of Payees in the Payees window, you can uncheck the Show Hidden box at the top left of the window to hide the hidden payees in this list.

    The above is for current QMac. If you are using an older version, it may be different.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    If there's a Payee you no longer want, it can't be deleted because then you'd have transactions with no Payee. So if you really want to delete a Payee, you can do one forgo things:
    • Delete the old transactions which use this Payee, and then Quicken will automatically delete the Payee
    • Merge the Payee you don't want into some other Payee. You could even create a Payee called "Deleted Payees" to merge several Payees into.
    That said, I don't see any value in doing this; it's doing extra work and I can't see what benefit it achieves for you.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • UKR
    UKR SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    OTOH, if these unused payees are spelling variations of the same payee, e.g. McD, Mac Donald, McDonalds, etc. or Lowes #123, Lowes #234, etc. you can do some cleanup by merging the variations into one standard name.
    Quickfill and/or Renaming Rules would help avoid variations in the future.
  • lhossus
    lhossus SuperUser, Mac Beta ✭✭✭✭✭
    One more suggestion:

    Rename the Payee by placing a "zz " before the original name.

    This simply has the effect of grouping all old unwanted payees at the bottom of the list, thus getting them out of the way.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • macOS Monterey 12.6 on MacBook Pro 13" M1
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