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From: Edward on 31 Jul 2010 07:55
On 7/30/2010 10:40 AM, John Pollard wrote:
> Edward wrote:
>> I found a duplicate entry of the payment from Regions Bank to the
>> Chase account (that was downloaded automatically, and entered twice by
>> Quicken); when I deleted one of the entries, Quicken recalculated all
>> of the entries after the entry I deleted, and now the register
>> correctly adds charges and subtracts payments. There is a glitch in
>> Quicken somewhere, I just don't know where.
>
> From your description, I don't think there is any glitch in Quicken.
>
> When you overpay your credit card balance (no matter how, or why ...
> including, by accepting a duplicate payment transaction), your credit card
> balance will switch from a negative (displayed in red) to a positive
> (displayed in black). If you don't realize that the account is overpaid
> (if you don't notice that the balance amount has changed color), you may
> think something is wrong.
>
> But when your credit card balance becomes zero, or positive (not a normal
> state for a credit card - most folks do not intentionally overpay their
> credit card bill), another payment will make the balance even more
> positive. And subsequent charges will decrease the positive amount
> (until/unless the amount of additional charges is enough to force the
> balance negative ... it's normal state).
>
> I believe what you saw in Quicken was perfectly normal*, and correct,
> behavior.
>
> [* I don't know why there was a duplicate payment transaction, but
> generally Quicken just presents you with the transactions that your
> financial institution provides to Quicken. Depending on what download
> method you use, you can verify that by looking in your OFXlog (Help>
> Product and Customer Support> OFXlog), or in the downloaded QFX file.
> Regardless of how the duplicate got in your "Accept transactions into
> register" window; once you Accepted that duplicate payment transaction,
> Quicken did just what it should.]
>
>
Thanks John. I restored an older Quicken file to check what you
suggested and you were right. I did not notice that the color of the
balance had changed from red to black and I was only considering the
amount. That restores my faith in Quicken.

I download transactions from my checking account and from my credit card
account. When the credit card payment is recorded in my checking
account, it cross-references (if that is the correct term) my credit
card account, and when I download from my credit card account, it
records the transaction again. Something must have changed in the way
in which Quicken accepts the data, or in the way the bank transmits the
data, because I have not had a problem with duplicate transactions
before. I haven't changed any settings.
From: Han on 31 Jul 2010 08:00
Edward <Edward(a)nospam.com> wrote in news:i312vh$q0q$1(a)news.eternal-
september.org:

> Thanks John. I restored an older Quicken file to check what you
> suggested and you were right. I did not notice that the color of the
> balance had changed from red to black and I was only considering the
> amount. That restores my faith in Quicken.

I consider that something in the way you set up things. Any idea how
something got to be a credit rather than a debit?

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid
From: John Pollard on 31 Jul 2010 09:07
Edward wrote:
>
> I download transactions from my checking account and from my credit
> card account.

> When the credit card payment is recorded in my checking
> account, it cross-references (if that is the correct term) my credit
> card account,

I call that a "transfer" transaction - where entering one transaction
creates a second transaction in the TO account.

> and when I download from my credit card account, it
> records the transaction again. Something must have changed in the way
> in which Quicken accepts the data, or in the way the bank transmits
> the data, because I have not had a problem with duplicate transactions
> before. I haven't changed any settings.

This is a problem that seems to bedevil quite a few Quicken users;
generally I think it's a matter of timing and taking precautions to insure
that when the second half of a transfer transaction is downloaded, that
the Quicken transfer transaction has already been created ... so the that
downloaded transaction will have a Quicken transaction to "match".

It probably doesn't matter which Quicken transaction you process first ...
which Quicken transaction becomes the "transfer" transaction. But it is
important that the Quicken transfer transaction is created before
Accepting the downloaded second half of that transfer.

In my case, my credit card transaction payment is downloaded before my
checking account transaction for that payment (the credit card company
clears the payment before my bank does). So I modify the downloaded
credit card payment transaction to be a transfer transaction (so it has
the checking account name in square brackets in its category field - which
creates an equal and offsetting transaction in the checking account).
Then when the checking account transaction is downloaded, it has a
transaction in my Quicken checking account to "match" to. If Quicken
doesn't recognize that the two should match - and gives the downloaded
transaction a status of "New", I use "manually match" to make sure they
match.

In theory, the above could be mostly automatic (say, if the credit card
payment transaction was a scheduled transaction - with the correct
"account category" that made it a transfer transaction - that entered your
Quicken credit card account before either real-world transaction
downloaded); but rather than assume anything, I always visually check
before Accepting downloaded transactions (in this case, particularly
before accepting the second half of the payment transfer transaction ...
you can create the "transfer" transaction while the downloaded second half
of that transfer is sitting in the "Accept transactions into register"
window, if necessary).

--

John Pollard
news://<YOUR-NNTP-NEWSERVER-HERE>/alt.comp.software.financial.quicken
Your source of user-to-user Quicken help


From: Edward on 31 Jul 2010 15:15
On 7/31/2010 8:07 AM, John Pollard wrote:
> Edward wrote:
>>
>> I download transactions from my checking account and from my credit
>> card account.
>
>> When the credit card payment is recorded in my checking
>> account, it cross-references (if that is the correct term) my credit
>> card account,
>
> I call that a "transfer" transaction - where entering one transaction
> creates a second transaction in the TO account.
>
>> and when I download from my credit card account, it
>> records the transaction again. Something must have changed in the way
>> in which Quicken accepts the data, or in the way the bank transmits
>> the data, because I have not had a problem with duplicate transactions
>> before. I haven't changed any settings.
>
> This is a problem that seems to bedevil quite a few Quicken users;
> generally I think it's a matter of timing and taking precautions to insure
> that when the second half of a transfer transaction is downloaded, that
> the Quicken transfer transaction has already been created ... so the that
> downloaded transaction will have a Quicken transaction to "match".
>
> It probably doesn't matter which Quicken transaction you process first ...
> which Quicken transaction becomes the "transfer" transaction. But it is
> important that the Quicken transfer transaction is created before
> Accepting the downloaded second half of that transfer.
>
> In my case, my credit card transaction payment is downloaded before my
> checking account transaction for that payment (the credit card company
> clears the payment before my bank does). So I modify the downloaded
> credit card payment transaction to be a transfer transaction (so it has
> the checking account name in square brackets in its category field - which
> creates an equal and offsetting transaction in the checking account).
> Then when the checking account transaction is downloaded, it has a
> transaction in my Quicken checking account to "match" to. If Quicken
> doesn't recognize that the two should match - and gives the downloaded
> transaction a status of "New", I use "manually match" to make sure they
> match.
>
> In theory, the above could be mostly automatic (say, if the credit card
> payment transaction was a scheduled transaction - with the correct
> "account category" that made it a transfer transaction - that entered your
> Quicken credit card account before either real-world transaction
> downloaded); but rather than assume anything, I always visually check
> before Accepting downloaded transactions (in this case, particularly
> before accepting the second half of the payment transfer transaction ...
> you can create the "transfer" transaction while the downloaded second half
> of that transfer is sitting in the "Accept transactions into register"
> window, if necessary).
>
Thanks again John. I really appreciate the time you take to answer
questions and resolve problems on this forum. I have not had match
duplicate transactions before, so I would guess that something changed
in the timing that my bank processes payments, thus throwing off the
sequence that has been working for years.

From: R. C. White on 31 Jul 2010 22:00
Hi, John.

As I've mentioned here before, Merrill Lynch withholds federal income tax
from the dividends that they receive in my account. (I could stop this, but
it provides a few dollars buffer so that I never owe a penalty for
underpayment of estimated taxes.) Each time I receive a dividend, ML
downloads two transactions for me. The first is the dividend, properly
credited to _DivInc, which I simply Accept. The second is the withheld tax,
which they code as Cash, as though ML had written me a check to withdraw
funds. I've learned to first enter a transaction to record the withheld
amount and date, as an XOut to the [FIT Prepaid] Account. (I've created a
few Memorized Investment Transactions for these.) Then I Accept the
downloaded transaction and Quicken automatically Matches it to the
withholding transaction.

(I've also learned that this is less hassle than first Accepting the
withholding transaction and then trying to correct it. Q insists that I
Delete the wrong version and then enter the correct version.)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.)
rc(a)grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Using Quicken Deluxe 2010 and Windows Live Mail in Win7 x64)


"John Pollard" wrote in message
news:i31765$vkq$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...

Edward wrote:
>
> I download transactions from my checking account and from my credit
> card account.

> When the credit card payment is recorded in my checking
> account, it cross-references (if that is the correct term) my credit
> card account,

I call that a "transfer" transaction - where entering one transaction
creates a second transaction in the TO account.

> and when I download from my credit card account, it
> records the transaction again. Something must have changed in the way
> in which Quicken accepts the data, or in the way the bank transmits
> the data, because I have not had a problem with duplicate transactions
> before. I haven't changed any settings.

This is a problem that seems to bedevil quite a few Quicken users;
generally I think it's a matter of timing and taking precautions to insure
that when the second half of a transfer transaction is downloaded, that
the Quicken transfer transaction has already been created ... so the that
downloaded transaction will have a Quicken transaction to "match".

It probably doesn't matter which Quicken transaction you process first ...
which Quicken transaction becomes the "transfer" transaction. But it is
important that the Quicken transfer transaction is created before
Accepting the downloaded second half of that transfer.

In my case, my credit card transaction payment is downloaded before my
checking account transaction for that payment (the credit card company
clears the payment before my bank does). So I modify the downloaded
credit card payment transaction to be a transfer transaction (so it has
the checking account name in square brackets in its category field - which
creates an equal and offsetting transaction in the checking account).
Then when the checking account transaction is downloaded, it has a
transaction in my Quicken checking account to "match" to. If Quicken
doesn't recognize that the two should match - and gives the downloaded
transaction a status of "New", I use "manually match" to make sure they
match.

In theory, the above could be mostly automatic (say, if the credit card
payment transaction was a scheduled transaction - with the correct
"account category" that made it a transfer transaction - that entered your
Quicken credit card account before either real-world transaction
downloaded); but rather than assume anything, I always visually check
before Accepting downloaded transactions (in this case, particularly
before accepting the second half of the payment transfer transaction ...
you can create the "transfer" transaction while the downloaded second half
of that transfer is sitting in the "Accept transactions into register"
window, if necessary).

--

John Pollard

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