In microsoft.public.money, WendyC88 wrote:

- quote -

To reduce the number of existing payees, go
Banking-> AccountTools-> Categories&Payees-> Payees (or, better yet,
click Shortcuts and add Payees as an icon); select a
payee and use Move to combine payees. This is better in most cases
than Delete.



Then GoToPayeeRulesManager
Your downloaded transactions may come with some generic term where
the Payee should be. Excluded Payee Names identifies words and
phrases that should be ignored from the payee field (e.g., check,
deposit). Add words that are generically added by your bank.
Unfortunately there are no wildcards, so check 334, check 335, and
check 336 will each be treated as potential new payee names. Set
Tools-> Settings-> OnlineServices-> ShowStandardizedPayeeNames to
combine new payees that come in that differ only by a number or
punctuation at the end. This may work better after you have
combined payees from previous downloads.

Hi, please bear with me and thanks for your patience on my previous basic
questions.

I have searched the group for an answer and cannot find an MS FAQ to help,
but I have a pretty basic question or two.

I cannot figure out how to standardize Payee names. Based on advice posted,
I am using the advance register, version 2008 plus deluxe. When the
transactions downloaded, for exmaple, I'll see chik-fil-a and a store number
various times with different store numbers (yes.. luv chick fillet) I set
the setting to use standardzied payee names but I still get the store
numbers. When I change one such as cf#123 to just cf, the others obviously
don't change. So I tried in payee options to set any cf download with a
store number to just cf, but it states I already use cf, choose something
else.

In acct tools-> catagories and payees-> payees rules manager, how do I set any
download of a retailer with any variations to just one single name? Under
preferred payee name on the left, I have about 5 different versions of a
store such as chik-fil-a #123, chik-fil-a #456, chik-fil-a #789 etc. For
123, Iset payee name variation to just chik-fil-a, but when I try to add the
same thing to entry 456, it tells me it is already being used as a payee
name or variation. This is backwards from quicken where I create a
variation and then assign all the various downloaded store numbers to it.

Also, if I change a catagory and sub-catagory for a payee in the register,
will it stick going forward? It doesn't seem like it does that and I cannot
find a master list of what payee has what catagory assigned to it.

Thanks..