Best Way to Keep Quicken Tracking Account Transfers

AreYouKiddingMeNow · September 20

New quicken user and I have somehow messed up all my account balances for the 3rd time labeling my various transfers. It always comes back to labeling transfers. I don't understand why I can't manage them through quicken. Why isn't it as simple as changing the description in my checking account to [Credit Card Account] and changing the description in my credit card account to [Checking Account]. Every time I try to reconcile all my account transfers it ends up blowing up my account balances in quicken.

NotACPA · September 20

It's not the Description that needs to be change to record a Transfer, it's the Category in the originating account that needs to be changed to point to the name of the card account in Square brackets, [VISA].

And properly recording the transfer in the originating account should cause to offsetting transaction (in Visa) to automatically appear also.

splasher · September 20

And properly recording the transfer in the originating account should cause to offsetting transaction (in Visa) to automatically appear also.

This means you only have to change one side of the transfer.

Chris_QPW · September 20

Given that this caused failure for reconciling I’m going to guess that you are actually talking about the category field not the payee/description field. I’m assuming that you are downloading transactions not manually entering them.

Basically once both sides of a transfer are in the two registers you can’t turn them into a linked transfer just by changing the category field.

This stems back to the way manual entry works, which the others have eluded to.

When you enter a transaction with the category to [other account] that creates a linked transaction in the other account. This is true even if you are just changing the category to the [other account] syntax.

So, let’s walk through what happened to you. You download both accounts and now you have a deposit in one and a withdrawal in the other for same offsetting amounts. You are basically reconciled at this point, but the two transactions aren’t a linked transfer transaction. When you go in and change the category to a transfer format Quicken it doesn’t find the other side of the transfer in the other account and merge them into a linked transfer, it creates a new linked transaction in the other account. So, at this point you have one duplicate transaction in the other account. Do this again in the other account and you create a duplicate transaction there.

So, what is the solution?

You need to deal with transfers before they get recorded as two separate transactions.

One possible solution is to turn on Quicken’s transfer matching, but that isn’t the surest way to do it.

Instead of repeating what I have said on this subject please read this comment.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20509652#Comment_20509652

Chris_QPW · September 20

BTW I'm not sure how Quicken would handle "Cash Representation" given a linked checking account.

In my mind, it isn't a given that the two are mutually exclusive.

One has to realize that the investment data is sent to the Quicken investment account. The financial institution has no knowledge of if you are using the linked checking account or not.

The rules for "Cash Representation" are, if person wants to treat it as a security, then they get the buys and sells. In this case the transactions are going to show up in the investment account, not the linked checking account. If the user chooses to treat is as "cash" and have Quicken ignore the buys/sells then it becomes a simple cash transfer in and out of the cash balance, and as such would be shown in the linked checking account.

I see no conflict between these options.

AreYouKiddingMeNow · September 20

Thank you for all the detail. And most of what you described is what I am seeing in my registers. I do have both transfer detection and automatically add to registers selected. But yes, I have many entries in my credit card accounts that are categorized [Same Credit Card Account]. And in my checking account many transfers to other accounts are uncategorized. So they are both there and technically reconciled but improperly categorized.

Chris_QPW · September 20

Even though I don’t see it mentioned much more a while back they changed something that started having people report that Quicken was now putting [This Account] {the account you are in}. This was happening to me too. I don’t think they have ever resolved why it just started happening a few months ago.

So, let’s call that a bug, and the workaround is to take the decision out of Quicken’s hands. As for the others not getting marked as transfers, since Quicken’s transfer matching is just a guess it can certainly get it wrong especially if you have multiple transfers for the same amount.

If I have a one off transfer I sometimes let Quicken’s match it (but with conformation on).

But in general you need to use one of the other methods I stated in the included comment to change it into getting the linked transfer in and have the downloaded transaction match that transaction in the register.

dasw · September 21

I am a new user of a Quicken Subscription with Classic Premier but used Quicken manually for many years. I just ran into an internal transfer problem when I made the initial download of my checking and savings account from my bank. I was confused when my checking account balance was thousands of dollars in the red. With the help of another Quicken Community user I was able to see that the reason for the discrepancy was two fold. Firstly my initial opening balance was negative and then I eventually found there were many internal transfers between the checking and savings missing. The Checking account transactions were downloaded from 2022 and the saving was downloaded only from early 2025. Many of the internal transfers were done from before 2025 and there was no link between the two accounts on those dates so the internal transactions were eliminated.

Chris_QPW · September 21

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20510757#Comment_20510757

Switching over from manual entry to downloading is always very tricky. Quicken doesn't do a good job of matching up tons of existing transactions, and it also as you have encountered, Quicken makes a guess at what the opening balance is and will change it. It makes that guess by the fact that in the downloaded information there is the online balance. It uses that and the transactions in the register to back calculate the opening balance. Clearly if you have more transaction history than what is downloaded this back calculation can be way off.

AreYouKiddingMeNow · September 21

So I am trying to use the transfer memorized payee rules to categorize these transfers. But what does the other side of the rule look like in the link you sent? There has to be a rule in the checking account to reconcile it to the rule in the credit card account? I keep running into the issue that once I set the rule and apply it to past transaction I end up in the same situation, where account balances get messed up. Then I go into the other account and make a rule to reconcile the error but that doesn't work.

Chris_QPW · September 21

I see that I left something vital out about that method.

I know that the transactions for my credit cards hit the credit card account at least one day before they hit the checking account and that I download each day.

As such when the credit card payment comes in and is matched to the memorized payee, that creates the linked transfer to the checking account. When the checking account transaction is downloaded it is just automatically matched to the existing linked transfer transaction that is in the checking account.

Thinking about this and if I delayed the downloading, I wouldn't know which downloaded transaction would be processed first. If it hit the checking account first, then I would end up with one duplicate transaction in the checking account, but still a linked transfer one to the credit card account.

For me I would be able to see that right away because I have this setting off:

Edit → Preferences → Automatically categorize transactions

With this off, and no memorized payee that matches, the category would be blank on the duplicated transaction, and then I could just delete it. This has yet to happen, I'm not sure if I have or have not delayed the downloading of transactions around the time that these transactions come in where the possible situation would be setup.

AreYouKiddingMeNow · September 22

Ah got it. Appreciate the insights and on a go forward basis it will be very helpful. It's my past transactions in Quicken that keep giving me a hard time. I guess I should just focus on the future!

Best Way to Keep Quicken Tracking Account Transfers

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