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About the way Quicken suggests categories and payees

To make sure you get the most out of Quicken and to speed up entering transactions, Quicken helps fill in the Category field and clean up payee names automatically. How? Quicken follows certain rules.

How Quicken suggests categories:

For transactions you enter manually

When you enter a transaction, Quicken searches the Memorized Payee List and then the register for a transaction with a matching payee that was entered within the last year.

For transactions you download from your financial institution

How Quicken suggests payee names:

When you download transactions from your financial institution, Quicken first compares the downloaded payee name with the renaming rules you've created (to see the list, choose Tools menu > Renaming Rules). If it doesn't find a match there, it then compares the downloaded payee name to its own database of standardized merchant names.

If the downloaded payee name:

  • Matches one of your renaming rules
  • Does not match one of your renaming rules
  • Does not match a merchant in Quicken's database of merchant names
    If the downloaded payee matches neither a renaming rule nor a merchant in Quicken's database of merchant names, the downloaded payee name is entered into Quicken exactly as it was received from your financial institution.


About ACE

Quicken has implemented Automatic Categorization Engine (ACE) functionality in an effort to make entering downloaded transactions easier and more uniform across multiple users. ACE learns and evolves based on user-modified data and, as such, may display different names than you would expect. For more information see this support article about ACE.

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