No September posts

It's hard to figure out what is going on... but I saw your post ;-)

Interesting, I don't believe I've seen any posts or replies in the Quicken NG for the entire month of September. First time that in 2024 we did not have any activity for an entire calendar month. (And indeed, this is the first post in October as well.)

Can't be a good sign.

Well…. I thought about posting last month. Does that count? :-)

Actually, I’ve thought about posting the following question for several months but life kept intervening and…. you know…

Quicken Classic Premier Version R59.10 Build 27.1.59.10 Windows 10 Home

When I finish manually balancing my checkbook & credit cards I do a Find & Replace to change my manually entered Cleared (C) to Reconciled (R). For years the F&R function only addressed the account I had open at the time. At some point quite a while ago one of my retirement accounts would also be changed from Uncleared to Reconciled. I have looked & looked for a solution to no avail. The one retirement account is set up exactly the same as my other ones yet the others are no issue, just the one. Not an earth shattering issue for me, just a nagging ‘what the…’ brain nag.

Any thoughts?

Thanks Rich

I can't recall a time when a Find & Replace did not search all accounts. But the fact that it does return results for all accounts, should not prevent you from achieving your goal.

When the Find completes, the dialog it presents shows the Account of each found transaction. You can sort the found transactions by account name (click on the Account heading text), then select all the transactions for your target account (as you would select multiple files in Windows Explorer).

When you then fill in the Replace options and click OK, only your selected transactions will be modified.

But the above begs the question: why do you use Find/Replace to mark your transactions Reconciled? Why don't you use Quicken's Reconcile feature?

If you use Quicken's Reconcile feature, it will deal only with the transactions in the account where the reconcile is initiated, and upon completion (when you have determined that the eligible transactions should be marked Reconciled), Quicken will mark all the eligible transactions with an "R" for you.

I don't manually reconcile (ie: I use downloads), but I am not sure why you have to do any manual updates to change the "C" to "R". Doesn't the reconcile dialog do that for you after you've marked which checks have cleared?

When I balance my respective accounts I do them manually. It’s a “me” thing as it helps me thoroughly understand our spending/earning. So as I mentally clear (or correct) an entry I “c” it. When I’ve completed my review of the account + statement I “R” it. Yes, I know it’s more labor intensive but it helps me learn & retain the info.

I don’t use some of the automated Quicken tasks opting to enter manually. The added labor of entering myself aids in my understanding of our finances. Math, or in my case simple arithmetic is not my strong suit. In my mind 2+2=22. Issues such as multiple items in one purchase that get shipped & billed separately even though the original order had one grand total trip me up until I can “see” it. It’s also a bit of Old dog, New tricks resistance.

Just to attempt to better understand your most recent comment (and the lack of some comments):

Did none of the above explain your "nagging" issue ... or help you to deal with it?

For example:

2.) Were you able to mass change the "Cleared Status" for only the account being reconciled using the approach I suggested?

I have no disagreement with expending a bit more manual to get a better, more reliable, more informative, result. I do the same in Quicken sometimes.

But I am confused about why using the Quicken Reconcile feature would provide less visibility/understanding of the reconcile process.

The Quicken reconcile feature initially presents all transactions in the account that are eligible for reconciling. In your case - since you do not download - that would be all unreconciled transactions in the account.

Once the eligible transactions - and only the eligible transactions - are displayed in the Reconcile dialog, it is basically a manual process to determine whether a transaction should be treated as "reconciled": I do that by comparing totals (net of eligible transactions AND net of deposits and net of withdrawals) with my printed account statement (whose "Ending Balance" amount I manually enter in the reconcile dialog).

If I am comfortable that the totals presented in the Quicken reconcile dialog are correct (Quicken shows a $0.00 "Difference" between the printed statement and my Quicken transactions, I will just click the "Done" button.

But if I have ANY reason to question whether my Quicken transactions are correct and complete for the reconcile, I manually compare every eligible Quicken transaction to every transaction on the printed statement. That manual process will discover any missing, extra, or incorrect Quicken transaction - which I can then fix by adding, deleting, or modifying Quicken transactions. After which the reconcile dialog will definitely show a "Difference" of $0.00 and I know for certain that the account is "reconciled".

When I know all the transactions in the Quicken reconcile dialog are all the transactions that belong in the reconcile and that their amounts are correct, I just click the "Mark All" button (which changes the "Cleared Status" of every transaction in the reconcile to "R"), the click the "Done" button.

Corrections:

OK, the beauty of Q is that it allows so many different ways to do similar things according to the desires of the users. My original reply was simply to alert you to a facility that apparently you do know exists but choose to not to use. No worries from this end.

One more thing: Your comment "...multiple items in one purchase that get > shipped & billed separately" would indicate to me that you only should have only ONE entry in Q, since that is the only transaction that will have any matching reality (whether a check or a charge or whatever aginst the single single purchase).

The only Cleared transactions when I do this are in the single account I am currently working with. The Retirement account involved has no entry (eg: uncleared) in the Status column.

I have never used the Reconciled feature simply assuming that once I balanced each relative account using “c” I could simply Find & Replace the “c” with an “R”. No particular reason I haven’t used the function, just habit. I will check it out.

Sounds easier than my F&R method. Thanks.

John had the same question. There’s no particular reason for my F&R method other than that’s how I began & now it’s habit. I will look at the function as it sounds more efficient. Thanks

Rich

Yes. When I click Purchase on a vendor’s website I get an invoice with one $ figure.

Made up example:

ACME Widget Corporation. One (1) transaction Total of Two (2) widgets for wife (a pink one for $25.25) & myself (blue for $24.75). Total for Tickets + Tax = $50.00 which I enter in Quicken.

However, on the credit card Statement it will show two transactions each with a unique date of transaction (when respective item was shipped).

It has happened all too frequently that wife orders several items - say 12

- in one transaction/invoice which then generate billed/shipped invoices x

Rich

In that case, assuming you're writing a single check to the credit card company to cover the purchases, you should only be entering one transaction for the payment as that reflect the financial reality.

Are you using a credit card account in Quicken as well? If so, each purchase could be entered as a split transaction so each item could be identified and categorized differently if need be.

Also, your check that you write to the credit card company in that case would have the category set to the name of your Quicken credit card account so it would be debited to your checking account and simultaneously credited to the credit card account. As mentioned above,each of the individual pieces of the credit card charge could have differing categories with notations in the credit card account.

I hope this is what you already do?

Well, no. That said, it makes perfect sense which is probably why I never did it. I will consider your suggestions & see if it will help me as opposed to how I’ve been doing it. Thanks!

Rich

The key, and you might already know this but I'm only saying it since once you start, it's tough to 'undo' a process is the following. Create an account for your credit card, and enter all the individual transactions within that as you go along as you purchase items using that card throughout the month. You can use splits to categorize different types of purchases within the single transaction if need be.

For example, if I make a $30 charge at a supermarket which consists of $20 bananas and a $10 auto windshield fluid, I'd make the Payee the name of the supermarket and within that single transaction I'd create two split entries categorizing one as 'Food' and the other as 'Auto' (or whatever you wish to call them). Your reports will be accurate as to the categories you are using for different types of purchases.

Thus, as you move from month to month, your credit card account will have the correct balance that you owe throughout.

Then, when you pay the credit card through a checking account monthly, enter the name of the credit card account as the payee in the checking account transaction. An offset credit will be automatically entered into the credit account account showing that payment has been made and your CC balance will be lowered by that value.

To reiterate, don't make the mistake of trying to categorize the CC purchases within the CHECKING ACCOUNT transaction that you use as the payment! Those should always by in the CC account as you move along during the month.

Good luck!

NEVER assume I know what I’m doing !!! Ha!!!

Yes, I have separate banking & cc accounts in Quicken. That said, I sincerely appreciate your input. I have learned a lot by lurking in this newsgroup occasionally popping up for a question.

Rich