Automatic bill payments

Posted by <Jeff on April 17, 2009, 1:32 pm

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Using Quicken 2008 Deluxe in Windows XP.

I use automatic pre-authorized bill payments for a number of recurring
bills. When I download transactions from my bank into Quicken, they all
come down with Payee being "Pre-authdebit" and the automatically entered
"Category" and "Memo" being the same as the last such transactions (which of
course is wrong most of the time). So I have to manually change the
Category and Memo individually on each one as I accept these transaction.

Is there a trick to make Quicken differentiate between the many
"Pre-authdebit" transactions when it downloads them so it automatically
enters the correct Category and Memo?

Thanks.

Jeff

Posted by John Pollard on April 20, 2009, 1:02 pm

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Jeff@unknown.com wrote:

> Using Quicken 2008 Deluxe in Windows XP.

> I use automatic pre-authorized bill payments for a number of recurring

> bills. When I download transactions from my bank into Quicken, they

> all come down with Payee being "Pre-authdebit" and the automatically

> entered "Category" and "Memo" being the same as the last such

> transactions (which of course is wrong most of the time). So I have

> to manually change the Category and Memo individually on each one as

> I accept these transaction.

> Is there a trick to make Quicken differentiate between the many

> "Pre-authdebit" transactions when it downloads them so it

> automatically enters the correct Category and Memo?

Are you talking about authorizing a payee to electronically take funds
from your payment account each month to pay your bill?

And are you saying that nowhere in the resulting transaction in your
real-world
payment account is there any text unique enough to identify the payee?

If there is no way to identify the payee in the downloaded transaction, I
think there is no way to get the transaction automatically categorized if
you Accept is as a New transaction.

[You can stop Quicken from assigning the wrong category and memo by
removing any memorized transactions for "Pre-authdebit" and making sure
"auto memorize" is turned off. But that will just insure that new
transactions for that payee do not get any category or memo assigned.]

I'm guessing you know the payee and amount before the transaction clears
the payment account, so you could start by having a Quicken Scheduled
Transaction for such an occurrance. If the amount is the same each time,
you could have Quicken automatically enter the transaction for you; if the
amount is different, have Quicken remind you to enter ... and you modify
the amount at that time.

When the downloaded transaction arrives, you should already have a
transaction in your Quicken register for that transaction. If Quicken
doesn't match the two for you, use Manual Match to match them. The
pre-existing register transaction will retain the category and memo from
its Scheduled Transaction.

--

John Pollard

Posted by <Jeff on April 21, 2009, 12:36 am

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> Jeff@unknown.com wrote:

>> Using Quicken 2008 Deluxe in Windows XP.

>> I use automatic pre-authorized bill payments for a number of

>> recurring bills. When I download transactions from my bank into

>> Quicken, they all come down with Payee being "Pre-authdebit" and the

>> automatically entered "Category" and "Memo" being the same as the

>> last such transactions (which of course is wrong most of the time). So I

>> have to manually change the Category and Memo individually on

>> each one as I accept these transaction.

>> Is there a trick to make Quicken differentiate between the many

>> "Pre-authdebit" transactions when it downloads them so it

>> automatically enters the correct Category and Memo?

John Pollard wrote:

> Are you talking about authorizing a payee to electronically take funds

> from your payment account each month to pay your bill?

> And are you saying that nowhere in the resulting transaction in your

> real-world

> payment account is there any text unique enough to identify the payee?

> If there is no way to identify the payee in the downloaded

> transaction, I think there is no way to get the transaction

> automatically categorized if you Accept is as a New transaction.

> [You can stop Quicken from assigning the wrong category and memo by

> removing any memorized transactions for "Pre-authdebit" and making

> sure "auto memorize" is turned off. But that will just insure that

> new transactions for that payee do not get any category or memo

> assigned.]

> I'm guessing you know the payee and amount before the transaction

> clears the payment account, so you could start by having a Quicken

> Scheduled Transaction for such an occurrance. If the amount is the

> same each time, you could have Quicken automatically enter the

> transaction for you; if the amount is different, have Quicken remind

> you to enter ... and you modify the amount at that time.

> When the downloaded transaction arrives, you should already have a

> transaction in your Quicken register for that transaction. If Quicken

> doesn't match the two for you, use Manual Match to match them. The

> pre-existing register transaction will retain the category and memo

> from its Scheduled Transaction.

Thanks John.

> Are you talking about authorizing a payee to electronically take funds

> from your payment account each month to pay your bill?

Yes.

Thank you for the suggestion about a scheduled transaction. I will try
that.

Jeff