Transactions getting associated with wrong recurring bill
I have a recurring bill set up for $100 for payee X. Multiple times now a $100 transaction comes through one of my accounts for a different payee (Y) and the recurring bill gets associated with that transaction. That part is slightly annoying, but the bigger issue is that the system also changes the payee from Y to X for that transaction. So to me it looks like I got the bill from X and paid it. But then when the actual bill from X comes through it then looks like I have TWO charges from payee X. So then I have to go to that first one and disassociate it from the recurring bill. When I do that the system correctly resets the payee to Y as reflected in the original transaction information. This behavior makes managing my recurring bills a lot more complicated and error prone than it need be.
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@cheapcontact, thanks for reaching out to the Community!
Since Quicken Simplifi is designed to learn over time, I'd suggest continuing with some manual intervention to see if you can help teach the program and have the behavior improve down the road. The best way to determine if a Recurring Reminder was linked to the incorrect transaction would be to open the Transaction Detail view and review the 'Appears on your statement as…" info. You can then manually unlink the transaction if it's linked improperly, and if the correct one doesn't get automatically linked when it does download, you can manually link it.
Let us know how things go!
-Coach Natalie
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Yeah, I've been using the unlink feature after looking at "Appears on your statement as…" But I don't want to have to double check every bill to make sure it's being associated with the correct transaction. That's a lot of clicking around and double checking. I've only got so much patience/time for fixing it so it can learn. Having the payee being drastically different should prevent it from associating even if the amount is the same, especially for something like a round number where many transactions can match the amount. Shouldn't need to learn that. If it's going to make that kind of wild guess it should wait till the end of the month so that another transaction that matches better has a chance to come through and fill the transaction more closely.
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@cheapcontact, thanks for the reply!
Can you provide a couple of specific examples of the payee being drastically different so I can get a clearer picture of the behavior, please? Have you noticed that the issue happens with a specific Recurring Series or anything along those lines, or does it happen with all of them or seem to be random?
I'm not sure what exact logic is used when matching, but I do know we're working on improving the functionality. We have a new Amount Matching feature for Recurring Transactions that's expected to be available to Early Access users in a few weeks. I'm wondering if this new feature will improve things for you!
-Coach Natalie
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The most recent one took this bill (payee: Act*act*usfkoret San Francisco Usa, amount: $100, expected date: may 25th) and matched it to this transaction (payee: Ca Dir Ach, amount $100, transaction date: may 20th). It's the second month in a row where it miss-attributed the bill to a transaction with a different payee.
There have been other ones in earlier months but I don't have the details in my head any more to tell you the specifics of them.
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@cheapcontact, thanks for providing an example!
Those payee names seem pretty abbreviated and similar, so I wonder if the program is getting confused. What 'Name' is the Recurring Series the transaction is being linked to set up with? Can you keep an eye out for some additional examples and provide those when they come up as well so we can get a broader scope, please?
Much appreciated!
-Coach Natalie
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Here is the details of the series.
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@cheapcontact, thanks so much!
Please share this same level of detail for a couple of additional examples when you come across them. This will give us a clearer picture and allow us to gauge what could be occurring.
-Coach Natalie
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I just found another one.
Payee was impark, for $22 on May 17th. The system associated it with this series (and changed the payee to KQED):
So then on May 24th when the real KQED transaction came in it looked like I had two charges from KQED for $22. I had to go into the earlier one and unassociated the transaction, which properly reset the payee to "impark", and then manually associate the new (real) KQED transaction with the series.
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@cheapcontact, thanks for the additional example!
Can you also provide a screenshot of the Transaction Detail view for each of the transactions for each example provided thus far? This would include the following transactions:
- The 'Act*act*usfkoret San Francisco Usa' transaction that was initially incorrectly linked (the 'Ca Dir Ach' one)
- The 'Act*act*usfkoret San Francisco Usa' transaction that is now correctly linked
- The 'KQED' transaction that was initially incorrectly linked (the 'Impark' one)
- The 'KQED' transaction that is now correctly linked
Each screenshot should show the Date, Payee, Amount, and the 'Appears on your statement as…' info. Feel free to DM them to me for privacy if you'd like. Also, as a side note, the Payee changing when linked to a Recurring Series is by design and is outlined in our support article here, so that part is expected behavior, though understandably misleading when something is incorrectly linked.
Once I review the transactional data, I should be able to get the issue escalated. Before gathering the rest of the data for an escalation, however, I have a couple of additional questions/thoughts:
- It appears that these Recurring Series were made from a transaction directly based on the way they're named — is that right?
- Have you tried editing the Recurring Series to simplify the name a bit to see if that improves the matching? For example, you can try using "KQED" instead of "Kqed Public Media San Francisco Usa".
-Coach Natalie
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