Quicken and downloading accounts problem.

[SwordGuy]

I'm going to try to use quicken again.  It's been a long time.

I would like to download the various transactions from the bank and especially the credit cards.

Here's the problem I had in years past.


I have a checking account at one bank and a credit card at another.

I write a check to pay off the credit card.

When the info downloads, it doesn't understand that the check on one account pays off the other.    If I entered the check manually into Quicken and link it to the CC account, then when I download the CC it won't recognize the payment and the check I've already got issued are the same.

Do I just resign myself to entering everything manually?   Or just never link the accounts together if I'm going to download the credit card transactions?

[secondcor521]

I'm not sure when you last used Quicken, but I've used Quicken for the last decade and it has always handled that situation perfectly fine for me.

I have both accounts set up in Quicken.  I enter the payment transaction as a transfer between accounts.  I have both accounts set up to download transactions.  The transaction will download on one side (probably the credit card side) then the other individually, and it automatically matches the downloaded transaction to the entered one.  All I do is hit "Accept" (both in the credit card account and the bank account).

ETA:  The above is on Windows with Quicken Deluxe 2017.  I've never used Quicken on a Mac but have read that it is a second-rate product.  If you're using a Mac, I think many people will install a Windows emulator of some kind just to run Quicken inside it.

[SwordGuy]

I'm not sure when you last used Quicken, but I've used Quicken for the last decade and it has always handled that situation perfectly fine for me.

I have both accounts set up in Quicken.  I enter the payment transaction as a transfer between accounts.  I have both accounts set up to download transactions.  The transaction will download on one side (probably the credit card side) then the other individually, and it automatically matches the downloaded transaction to the entered one.  All I do is hit "Accept" (both in the credit card account and the bank account).

ETA:  The above is on Windows with Quicken Deluxe 2017.  I've never used Quicken on a Mac but have read that it is a second-rate product.  If you're using a Mac, I think many people will install a Windows emulator of some kind just to run Quicken inside it.

It has been awhile, so perhaps it's better.  (Or I'll be smarter this time around.)

Thanks!

[Sibley]

There are 2 ways to handle this in Quicken, at least that I'm aware of. The first is to have Quicken directly link that payment to the account. So in your checking account, it would show as:

payee: Credit card name     category: "Credit card in quicken"   amount $$

Then in the credit card account, it would show as:

Payee: credit card name      category: "checking account"   amount $$

(I'm pretty sure - I actually don't like the direct link so have trained it not to do it, and I change it when it does anyway).


The other option is to have categories setup to use in place of the linking categories. I have one called "Credit Card", which all payments on a credit card are assigned to, regardless of the in or out side. This allows my to use the reports without double counting.

So, my checking account reads:

payee: Credit card name     category: "Credit Card"   amount $$

Then in the credit card account, it reads:

Payee: credit card name      category: "Credit Card"   amount $$

Since one is a debit and the other is a credit, they net to zero in the reporting, as long as both accounts are included in the report.

I have had problems with a few banks not downloading nicely into Quicken. For those, I export the transaction list from the website in the appropriate format and import it. That works fine.