How do I stop Quicken from doing bad matching and splitting?

- B
- briforge
  
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posted
19 years ago

Mon, Apr 18, 2005 2:47 AM

When I download my credit card transactions, Quicken does some crappy matching, particularly when allocating money into categories, esp. when splitting. This is a particular problem for places where you can buy anything, like Walmart. I may get groceries or clothes there.

For example, when quicken downloads the transactions it automatically splits the transaction into the same amounts and categories as whatever it matched. So if I have a transaction for $15, and the one it matches it up to was split into $88 for Groceries and $40 for clothes, it will apply those splits to my transaction of $15.

Is there a setting somewhere where I can turn off this matching? For places where there is a single category and that category is always the same (e.g. Pizza Hut into Food:Dining out), it's a nice feature. But this bad matching creates significant problems that are greater than when it gets it right.

- J
- JM
  
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posted
19 years ago

Mon, Apr 18, 2005 3:17 AM

Puruse thru: Edit > Preferences > Quicken Program

Would also go through and clean up Memorized Transactions - keep only the ones you want. I generally set mine to $0 and lock them. Turn off Auto-memorize [in Preferences] - you can easily add a new memorized transaction by right-clicking and select.

- J
- John Pollard
  
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posted
19 years ago

Mon, Apr 18, 2005 1:55 PM

There is nothing wrong with Quicken's "matching"; it is doing the best it can with what you have given it.

If you have a payee that does not use the same category consistently, then do not memorize the category (leave the category blank in the memorized transaction). For that matter, you may not even want to memorize the payee at all.

If the only benefit you expect to get from a memorized transaction is to quickfill the payee name, don't use a memorized transaction, use the address book. Tell Quicken to utilize address book entries in quickfill and check each address book name you want to appear in quickfill.