Renaming Rules

This solution is not for everyone but I ended up writing a program to re-map all my downloaded transactions -- outside Quicken. The rule business is a pain. All my banking-on-line payments were ending up as "Bill Payer" in the Name field and the payee was in the memo field. I swap the purchase date for debit card charges with the posting date and also populate the "Num" field with codes of my choice depending on the transaction type.

Or something almost as good: see Quicken "Renaming Rules" (in the Online Menu).

You can have Quicken rename your downloaded payees (before they are Accepted) based on the contents of the payee name or memo fields.

John,

No offense, but I think you missed the point here.

Unfortunately, I have a credit card like the first poster where EVERY purchase shows up with the payee field named, (I love this), "payee".

Then, in the memo field, they have the actual name of the place where the credit card was used. Along with the date of the transaction, which store number, and anything else that whoever the processor was could think of.

Discover, on the other hand, actually does put into the Payee field the name of the place where the card was used (Borders, Ye Olde Friendly Restaurant, etc.).

In Quicken 2006, I ended up having to cut and paste the payee from every downloaded transaction from the memo field to the payee field. A pain, but the card in question wasn't my primary card, and I could live with it.

In Quicken 2008, the first version of Quicken in which I had the naming rules turned on, Quicken happened to see the first "payee" transaction and promptly used the renaming rules to change the payee to the name of a local Chinese restaurant I frequent. Every single transaction after that (thinks of Frankenstein's Monster clumping down the street) got renamed to that Chinese restaurant. At this point I finally read up on the renaming rules and discovered that the rule was that if Payee payee, the Chinese restaurant was substituted in.

So, for about 50 or so payees, now, I have rules. Every new one that comes in that Quicken hasn't seen before infects the whole process, because Quicken, by preference, seems to think the right thing to do when it sees that "Payee", is to substitute in the Memo field name - and then use that particular self-generated rule for all the rest of the transactions!

As the original poster points out, what would work better is a method in the renaming rule where if the "Payee" field has something in it that the user sets, the Payee field becomes set to what's in another field - like the "Memo" field contents. And maybe >then< run the renaming rules on the new Payee field contents.

The second poster is basically doing just that, by swapping the contents of the Payee and Memo fields, then letting Quicken doing its thing. Which works better, when the Payee field (which it appears to favor) has at least a piece of the actual payee.

Oh, well.

Ken Becker

Ken,

Very good explanation. In previous versions of Quicken I would just make a global edit of the qif file with notepad and then import it. I took a look at the qfx file format and its not as easy to edit it with notepad. I was hoping there were some programs floating around out there that could do this or that maybe I was missing something.

I try to pay for everything with my credit card because it gives me a good record of my spending so I have a lot of rules to write.

No offense taken; you may very well be right. But I'm not understanding why.

I don't understand why creating a renaming rule that uses the text in the Memo field to put the correct name in the Payee field doesn't achieve the desired result. This capability didn't exist in Q2006, but it does in Q2007 and Q2008.

You can use renaming rules without having Quicken create them automatically.

You can also tell the renaming rules NOT to rename certain payees.

Huge snippage:

John, you're absolutely right in everything you've said about the naming rules; one can set up the naming rules to do the renaming based upon what's in the memo field, and so forth.

I think the issue is that, with this scheme, one therefore needs to have a rule for _every_ _single_ _payee_. OK: If I use a credit card with a total of ten payees, that works out fine. Ten rules later, I'm set, and all the downloaded transactions work just fine.

Right now I've got 40+ payees with a rule for each payee and, at least once a week to once a month, I have to create a new rule for each payee as that payee shows up for the first time.

The sneaky part is that when the first new payee shows up, that payee _does_ get properly named since Quicken looks in the memo field when it doesn't have a rule. Let's suppose the payee in this case is "Vendor X", and that name is in the memo field in the first unknown-to-Quicken transaction; Quicken then creates a rule that says, "If Payee field ="payee", then Payee = "Vendor X" ".

That happens to be correct. But when more new, unknown-to-Quicken payees show up (Let's call them "Vendor Y", "Vendor W, and "Vendor Z", they all get renamed to "Vendor X" - since they all have "payee" in the "Payee Field".

It's not insurmountable; one has to keep a sharp eye out; one can turn off renaming rules and do things manually through the cut-and-paste method; and, once one has got in a couple-three dozen renaming rules, maybe the renaming rules are OK, anyway; but, as I said in the previous email, I wish there was a way to tell Quicken that for a particular account that has new, unknown-to-Quicken transactions, that it should: a. Always look in the Memo Field to figure out the payee. b. When it creates a renaming rule this way, the rule so created should read, "If Memo Has "Vendor X", then Payee = "Vendor X", rather than the new rule being, "If Payee == payee, then Payee = "Vendor X", which is what it currently does.

I consider this a bit of a bug, not a feature. Like I said, there's workarounds, it's not causing premature baldness to do the workarounds, but I kinda wish somebody at Quicken would fix the "generate-new-rule-based-on-memo" bug, because that's what it is.

That, or send out a hit squad to the banks and credit card people who do that stupid thing of filling out the payee field with "Payee" all the time.

Ken Becker

I understand possibly needing a new rule for each NEW payee, not EACH payee.

When Quicken doesn't have a rule, it shouldn't look anywhere; it should just accept the downloaded transaction as is.

This has me confused. The renaming rule (for the case you describe) shouldn't have anything to say about what is in the downloaded payee field. The renaming rule should only say that if the downloaded Memo field contains Vendor X, then make the register payee name say Vendor X.

Again: if you want to rename your payees based strictly on the contents of the Memo field, you don't tell Quicken what to expect in the downloaded Payee name field.

It only does that because you have told Quicken to look at the contents of the downloaded Payee name field when making its decision.

As I said above - your renaming rule should not tell Quicken anything about the contents of the downloaded payee name field if that field is not unique to the renaming process (and it is not in the situation you describe). You do not have to specifiy the contents of the downloaded payee name field when you create a renaming rule.

I should have said in my previous post that it sounds like you are letting Quicken create the rule; you should turn off the automatic creation of renaming rules.

Just turn off the automatic creation of renaming rules, not the use of them.

The capability is pretty much already there, as I mentioned in my previous post (except I don't think it can be done automatically by Quicken ... but that's not a bug).

The only possible useful modification I can think of would be to permit the user to designate whether multiple comparisons for a single rule should be treated as "or" conditions or "and" conditions (it appears they are currently only "or" conditions).

I'm glad you mentioned that Ken. I noticed this too but I thought I was doing something wrong with the rule and it was driving me nuts.

Joe

Yep. The first few times that caught me as well. I'd see a downloaded charge in my register from a company that I knew I hadn't made in years. Really threw me until I figured out what was going on.

John,

Sorry I haven't gotten back to you earlier: Something about Xmas and all that.

However: You're right. I could turn off the rules. But I kinda like how Quicken's renaming rules works in the _rest_ of my various accounts, so I don't exactly want to. What I do now: Every time Quicken pops up that dialog that it's creating a new renaming rule, and it's in that particular credit card account where the credit card people are putting the word, "Payee" into the Payee Field, I go in and edit the rule right then and there.

Every time I do this the first thing I see is that Quicken now has a rule where if the Payee Field == payee, then change the Payee Field to be "Name of the New Vendor". Oops. I change that rule to read, "If Memo Field Contains "New Vendor", then Payee Field is set to "New Vendor".

I still end up having to cut-and-paste the "New Vendor" name from the memo area, cursing under my breath, "Now, why didn't Quicken just do what I just did, make the rule Contains in Memo rather than Payee Field == payee!"

That's why it's a bug, not a feature, in the auto-rename. They actually state in the Help File that Quicken looks in the Memo field to figure out the Payee Field name when it can't figure the rule - but if the Quicken Programmers are smart enough to get the vendor name from the Memo field, you'd think that they'd be smart enough to make the renaming rule get the vendor name from the Memo Field as well!

It's just bad programming, that's all. And a bug. But in the nature of bugs, this one isn't a show stopper, since there's workarounds that can be taken by the user to fix it.

There is one more thing I'm going to try: After getting started on this thread, I took a closer look at those renaming rules. One of the rules is that one can create state that if Payee Field == Payee, then _don't_ apply a renaming rule. That at least would keep me from getting caught out because I didn't notice the rule being created for the Payee, and I would certainly notice that "Payee" in the Payee field in the register, and would then create a proper renaming rule on the spot. But I'd be doing that manually... And it'd be nice, but not critical, if the Intuit guys could fix that code of theirs to create a proper renaming rule under the circumstances.

Or we could form a lynch mob, complete with flaming torches and pitchforks, and go after the credit card company that isn't smart enough to put the proper name in the Payee Field.

Now, if we want to talk about real, there's-no-good workaround bugs, then talk about the treatment of 529 plans in the Education and Retirement planners. 529 plans are tax-free, so Quicken sticks them in the retirement planner to be used as retirement funds. However, the 529 plans are meant to be used for education.

So: In the retirement planner, if one marks a 529 plan as "Not Available for Retirement", Quicken removes that account as being available to fund College Education! If it's marked as Available for Retirement in the retirement planner, then it's also available for funding College Education.

Umm.. Sorry, but if the money is going towards education, then it's really not going for retirement, and the way Quicken handles it it's going towards both or neither. Nice if the real world worked that way. Sounds like Intuit got an If-Else-If clause with a bit of inverted logic. Unfortunately.

Oh, well, back to work.

Ken Becker

I suggested looking at that back in my first post.

Not one of my financial institutions puts any payee info in the Memo field; they try to put everything but the kitchen sink in the 32 character payee field. I'd rather have all that non-payee-name stuff in the memo field and nothing but a payee name in the payee field.

I'm sorry I sent this because there is much more to say. Not that what I didn't mean what I said here, but if I think it's worth addressing your issue when I next check messages here, I'll tell what I should have said.

My bank always populates the Payee field with the word "Purchase" then puts all the payee info in the memo field. Obviously they are the ones causing the problem. I've tried to contact someone at the bank about it but so far nobody seems to know what I am talking about.

In the past few days I've had to create over 75 renaming rules to handle all my payees and will have to continue to create new rules to handle new payees.

I also don't need ALL the info from the memo field but it would still be better than just the word "Purchase".

"Joe McDermott" wrote

That's one way to look at it. Quicken, on the other hand, says you can download this information but doesn't convert it to properly match the fields that QUICKEN HAS DEFINED. Apparently there are no accepted standards across the industry for defining fields in a data record so I think Quicken is as much (or more) to blame than the Financial Institutions. They are allowing you to access THEIR records. They are not obligated to make it conform to what Quicken has set up.

Huh?

The OFX specs control the format/content of the downloaded data (not the financial institutions nor your personal finance software); there is some room for interpretation - especially in investment accounts; but the financial institutions should be sending their data according to the OFX specs ... which have nothing to do with "what Quicken has set up". The OFX specs define both a payee name field and a memo field. Putting the payee name only in the Memo field seems clearly NOT what the OFX specs had in mind.

I disagree. OFX is a standard with definitions developed by Microsoft, Intuit and Checkfree. The garbage that your bank (and in many cases my Bank and Credit Cards) place in those fields resides on the FI side and is a result of antiquated computer systems. I too would just like the Payee Name (nothing else) in the Payee field and the rest of the information in the memo field.

"Oilcan" wrote

You are free to disagree all you want.

We all know Microsoft is arrogant. Now add Intuit.

WE have created a standard and YOU (financial institutions) MUST conform to it............sorry, it doesn't work that way. If you contact your "bank" I suspect this is pretty much what they will tell you.

Feel free to keep disagreeing.......just don't expect the situation to change.

A well designed data import program would allow the user to define a mask for each source, ONCE, and would use it to reformat the data on each subsequent download. Looks like that's not the case here.

"A well designed data import program would allow the user to define a mask for each source, ONCE, and would use it to reformat the data on each subsequent download. Looks like that's not the case here."

Ken, I agree. I would like to assign renaming rules by source. I wiped out my renaming rules earlier in this year because I could not trace the behavior. Its better but not perfect.

Oilcan