An idea to solve Quicken report payee selection box not showing needed payees.

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MarioV
MarioV Member ✭✭
edited April 2023 in Reports (Windows)
In doing end year tax reports, I found some needed payees don't appear in the customizing payee list. Researching this it appears there's a limit on how many the list can display. I have many accounts and transactions going back many years in my Quicken file. So, it seems a solution would be to export the accounts and needed transactions to a new Quicken file (even if only temporarily), resulting in fewer total transactions than the original file, probably less than the limit and, therefore, fully viewable in the payee list. If the newly created file is no longer needed after the report has been run, printed, or saved as a PDF, the new file could become the one normally used going foreward or, if no longer needed, could be deleted and the original file continued to be used going forward. delated. I haven't tried this strategy yet. Does it sound like it would work? No harm in trying.
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  • MarioV
    MarioV Member ✭✭
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    I don't know how to edit my suggestion above. I forgot to include exporting a shorter time frame to a new file - the prior tax year in my case for example.
  • UKR
    UKR SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
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    How many distinct Payee Names do you have?

    Do you have only one Payee Name for, e.g., Payee Name = "Starbucks" or do you have multiple variations, e.g. "POS TRANS 070119 STARBU",
    "POS TRANS 070219 STARBU",
    "POS TRANS 070319 STARBU", etc. for each transaction?

    If you have multiple variations, all for the same Payee, I recommend you standardize the Payee Names. Use Edit Menu / Find/Replace to use just one standard Payee Name. This will help with making reports and views give much better, more meaningful results.
    (Note: Do be sure to have or create a backup of your Quicken data file BEFORE you start making changes involving many transactions.)

    Has your Memorized Payee List grown too big?

    How many Memorized Payee List entries do you have in your file? A couple hundred? Several thousands?

    Click Help in the Menu Bar. CTRL+click About Quicken and it'll tell you in a File Information window.

    To trim the list and keep it in shape please do this:

    In Edit / Preferences / Data Entry and Quickfill make sure you have a checkmark at
    [√] "Remove memorized payees not used in [xx] months"
    and set [xx] to something like "18". Do not set it to zero. IMHO, you should set the number to 12 or higher for best results, so that once-a-year payees don't vanish.

    Restart Quicken for the change to take effect and housekeeping to clean up the Memorized Payee
    List.

    Check the File Information box again to see the reduced count.

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