Quicken saves wrong withdrawal amount to investment register

"Sometimes"? Have you attempted to determine how the conditions when the problem occurs, differ from the conditions when the problem does not occur?

Is that what you want to happen?

I don't think the "Lock" option should have any effect on your issue, one way or the other. The purpose of locking a Memorized Payee is to prevent the Memorized Payee from being changed when you enter a transaction in an account for that memorized payee that has data different than the memorized data.

What Quicken Edition (Starter, Deluxe, etc.) and Release (in the form Rnn.nn - see Help > About Quicken)?

[I have no Withdraw transactions in any of my real-world retirement accounts, so I created a few test accounts to examine this issue.]

When I tested in Home, Business & Rental Property (R38.29) I got some mixed results, which I too am unable to explain. On the entry of multiple different "Withdraw" transactions in more than one IRA account, I occasionally saw the problem you report; but more often than not, Quicken worked as expected. [I only tested with a non-zero Memorized Payee amount.]

One factor that seemed to make a difference was whether I entered the transaction directly in the investment "Transaction List" (the investment account equivalent of a non-investment account "register") - or used the investment account "Enter Transactions" button.

When I entered the transaction directly into the "Transaction List", I either saw your problem, or another problem. The "Action" column for IRA accounts does not have a simple "Withdraw" choice: it only allows "WithdrawX" transactions (a restriction which seems to be unique to traditional IRA accounts - I don't see it in Roth IRA or 401k accounts). Sometimes as I completed the rest of the WithdrawX transaction, it did not attempt to use the Memorized Payee ... and required me to enter a "transfer account". Other times it used the Memorized Payee, did not ask for a transfer account (at some point during my keying of the transaction, WithdrawX changed to Withdraw), and overwrote my amount with the amount of the Memorized Payee (just as you described).

However, when I used the "Enter Transactions" button (top left of the investment account Transaction List), I was virtually always able to complete a plain "Withdraw" transaction (Quicken made no attempt to force a WithdrawX), the Memorized Payee was used, and my override of the memorized amount stuck.

I'm not sure just what Quicken has in mind as far as entering Withdraw transactions in IRA account. They do seem to have some different treatment of certain IRA transactions (different than in other investment accounts), and I don't recall any meaningful explanation from Quicken as to their intentions.

I use the "Enter Transactions" button for all transactions in these IRA investment accounts. I enter the Sales first to generate the cash and then press the "Enter/New" button. I then proceed to enter the "Withdraw" transaction to generate the distribution out of the account. I did notice that, if I am entering more than one withdrawal at a time, the first one gets recorded with the wrong amount (reverting to the amount in the memorized transaction), but the second one gets recorded with the correct amount (meaning the amount I typed in).

I did not want it to happen in the particular cases I was referring to. In those cases, I wanted to retain the payee, category and memo, but not the amount. Right before saving the transaction and after I had already changed the amount, when Quicken recorded the transaction, it changed the amount back to the amount that had been in the memorized transaction.

Quicken Deluxe for Windows (Win 10 Pro, version 21H2 is my OS), the latest version R38.29, Build 27.1.38.29

That's why I use the "Enter Transactions" button?so I can use "Withdraw" and not "withdrawX". When I set up my IRA accounts many years ago, I set those accounts up in a separate Quicken file, separate and distinct from my "regular" accounts. I don't remember why I did that. Now I wish that I could combine them, but when I read up on how to do it, it looked like a daunting task so I left things alone. Now I record the withdrawals in the IRA Quicken file and record those IRA distributions as deposits into our bank account in my "regular" Quicken file.

As a work-around, I will try setting up the withdrawals with the amounts of this year's distributions -OR- change Quicken preferences to not memorize transactions (but it's such a time-saver). I'm still amazed, though, that I cannot change an amount in a memorized transaction and have it record properly. I do it all the time with the accounts in my "regular" Quicken file.

I did some more testing and in more cases than not, I reproduced your problem

I had hoped that using "Enter/Done", then initiating a new transaction with the "Enter Transactions" button might cure the problem - sadly, it did not.

Is it your intention that the Withdraw transaction "transfer" the funds from the Sell transaction to another Quicken account? Or are you recording some expense category in the Withdraw transaction?

Do these transactions occur at regular intervals? Would they lend themselves to being Scheduled Transactions ("Reminders")?

In my regular Quicken file, I never use "Automatically memorize ..."; only a small fraction of my transactions benefit from memorization.

The only time auto-memorize gets turned on for me is when I create a New Quicken file (because Quicken insists on turning that feature on in every New file ... which. maddeningly, turns it on for EVERY file on the same pc) - or when I am testing.

I manually memorize the transactions I want memorized (usually by right-clicking an entered transaction and selecting "Memorize payee"); after some 20+ years of using Quicken, I only have about 280 memorized payees.

[Note: you do not need to memorize payees to take advantage of Quicken's "QuickFill" feature for entering payee names: any names in your Quicken Address Book designated as "QuickFill" can be used for Quickfill when entering transactions: just select the Preference to have Quicken "Add Address Book QuickFill items to Memorized Payee List". When the only reason for having a Memorized Payee is to permit Quicken to auto-fill that payee name when entering transactions, the Address Book is a better choice anyway: there is some limit on the number of allowed Memorized Payees, but no limit (I know of) on Address Book entries.]

As I was thinking about auto-memorize just now, I double-checked my Preferences in the test file I was using for your problem and realized that I had auto-memorize turned on. When I turned that Preference off, and did some additional testing, more of my results retained my override of the memorized amount. I did use Enter/Done, rather than Enter/New. You might want to test that for yourself.

I don't believe the behavior you're seeing is what Quicken intends to happen. And I don't think it's because you have your data split between two files. But, as I noted earlier, Quicken seems to have some special criteria for IRA accounts - and it sometimes appear those criteria are not acting as Quicken intends (or certainly not as users would prefer).

If nothing provides acceptable relief, I suggest you use the Quicken Help > Report a problem feature to report this to Quicken. I think it's best to include all the Quicken Log files AND your sanitized data file.

No, I am not transferring the funds to any account within the Quicken file in question. They are actually going to an account in my "personal" Quicken file so it's recorded only as a simple withdrawal to reduce the cash that was left from the Sale transaction.

Most but not all of them are now monthly so I could do that. Good idea!

I *like* the Memorized Transactions filling in the category and memo. I just don't like it when the changed (by me) amount entered doesn't "take."

I think I'll try the Scheduled Transaction route before I send any of my info to Quicken. My problem is more of an annoyance now that I've worked around it for so long by having to edit the amount a second time after recording the transaction. I notice it right away now since I always now look at the cash balance in the account before I finish with that account (the cash balance should always be zero so it's easy to spot).

Thanks so much, John, for all your help! I've been using Quicken since

1989 myself (I bought it with my first PC in 1988?an IBM Model 30 286 with IBM DOS 4.0) and I still find issues like this.

Another (perhaps obvious) thing I could do is to download the transactions from the various financial institutions. Although I do that all the time for my "personal" non-retirement Quicken accounts, I've never done it for the accounts in my IRA Quicken file. I actually like inputting transactions manually and using the downloads only as a check on my data entry and to reconcile the accounts.

Another thought.

You could create a dummy checking account specifically to hold your IRA withdrawals. Then use a SoldX transaction to combine the Withdraw with the Sell - transferring the cash from the IRA to the dummy checking account. IRA cash will be reduced with one less transaction to enter; and hopefully no need to override any amount. Tracking all the withdrawals should be easy as that is all the dummy checking account will contain.

[Sadly, while Quicken allows a SoldX to be manually entered into an IRA account, it does not allow a memorized SoldX transaction to be entered in an IRA account from the Memorized Investment Transaction List. However, if you put that memorized investment transaction in a Scheduled Transaction Group, you can enter the Scheduled Transaction Group in the IRA account.]

Good thought, but I don't want to have a dummy cash account that makes it look like there's money that isn't really there.

Crazy how this whole problem even exists!

You can completely hide that dummy account, so it won't appear, or affect balances, in the Account Bar, Reports, other features/displays, or dropdowns.

See the Display Options tab in the Edit Account Details for the account.

Checking all three boxes in the "Account Display" section on the Display Options tab will make the account (and its contents) virtually invisible.

When all three of those Display options are checked; you can always get to that account by selecting "Show hidden accounts" in the Account List, then clicking the account name to open its register, or clicking Edit to open its Edit Account Details dialog. If you wanted to see the account in a report, you'd just Customize the report to "Show hidden accounts", then select the hidden dummy account. To make it easy to "see" the account's contents (when it is totally hidden), you could create, and Save, a report that displays the transactions in that account, and have Quicken display an icon on the Quicken Toolbar to run the report.

Yes, I understand that. I have some hidden accounts in my "personal" Quicken account for accounts that have been closed. Even if it's hidden, I would prefer not to have some bogus account with a balance in the IRA Quicken file. I'm going to be showing my wife how to use Quicken and I don't want to have to explain to her or anyone else for that matter why there's an account in there that doesn't really exist!

I don't want to solve one minor problem by introducing another one.