QuickBooks is incorrectly categorizing my phone bill and I can't change it

Hi there, woefullymiscategorized.

This isn’t the kind of impression I want you to have about the product and our support team. Let me route you in the right direction, so the phone bill is categorized properly.

We’ll have to review the mapping of your downloaded transactions to identify the cause of the issue. Performing this task requires us to access the company file.

To keep your data secure, I suggest contacting our QBO Care Team again. Then, provide the case number from your previous call. Our specialists will review the notes and continue performing the troubleshooting steps from where they left off.

1. Press the Help icon at the top to open the QB Assistant window.
2. In the Assistant tab, enter the issue/topic in the field box.
3. Click the Get help from a human link and follow the on-screen steps to complete the process.
4. Choose Chat or Callback.

For tips to keep your downloaded entries organized, click here to view the complete details. Also, these resources provide an overview of how to handle your bank feeds data.

• QuickBooks Online Banking
• Adding Transactions

If there’s anything else I can help you with, leave a comment below. I’ll get back to make sure you’re taken care of. Have a good one.

I called QuickBooks back today to follow up on this matter per your suggestion. My case ID is [removed]. After explaining the issue again, the agent put me on hold to talk to someone else, then came back and told me that the "Descriptions" that QuickBooks puts are not accurate. This was a completely new excuse from my previous calls, where they blamed AMEX. Clearly, no one actually knows why this is happening, hence why I am calling it a bug. The agent was basically saying, "We know that QuickBooks puts in a description, but that's not always right, and you just need to deal with that."

This is not an acceptable answer. QuickBooks is a paid service. It should be describing transactions correctly. I showed the agent all the other transactions in my account where QuickBooks inserted a proper transaction description, so clearly this is some kind of bug that merits further investigation. After reiterating this point, the agent finally told me that he was going to ping the operations team (not sure if that's the exact name of the team) about this issue. I was put on hold for about 40 minutes, and eventually the agent told me he couldn't get ahold of the operations team (he said they might be in a meeting) and that he'd follow up with an email within 1-2 days. Great, another 40 minutes on hold only to be told that I wasn't going to get an answer on the call.

It's honestly baffling to me that QuickBooks staff would tell their paying customers that the descriptions are inaccurate and to just deal with it rather than investigating WHY they are inaccurate and correcting the issue. It would be one thing if I could manually override the QuickBooks-assigned transaction, but I can't, which makes the issue all the more frustrating.

I hope that the agent is, in fact, able to get ahold of the operations team and give me an updated within the promised 1-2 days, but given that this is my 4th call to QB Support and no progress has been made, I am not hopeful.

I also requested to speak to a supervisor but was told I would need to wait for a call back to do that, too. I was told I would receive a call back today, so let's see if that happens.

I called QuickBooks back today to follow up on this matter per your suggestion. My case ID is [removed]. After explaining the issue again, the agent put me on hold to talk to someone else, then came back and told me that the "Descriptions" that QuickBooks puts are not accurate. This was a completely new excuse from my previous calls, where they blamed AMEX. Clearly, no one actually knows why this is happening, hence why I am calling it a bug. The agent was basically saying, "We know that QuickBooks puts in a description, but that's not always right, and you just need to deal with that."

This is not an acceptable answer. QuickBooks is a paid service. It should be describing transactions correctly. I showed the agent all the other transactions in my account where QuickBooks inserted a proper transaction description, so clearly this is some kind of bug that merits further investigation. After reiterating this point, the agent finally told me that he was going to ping the operations team (not sure if that's the exact name of the team) about this issue. I was put on hold for about 40 minutes, and eventually the agent told me he couldn't get ahold of the operations team (he said they might be in a meeting) and that he'd follow up with an email within 1-2 days. Great, another 40 minutes on hold only to be told that I wasn't going to get an answer on the call.

It's honestly baffling to me that QuickBooks staff would tell their paying customers that the descriptions are inaccurate and to just deal with it rather than investigating WHY they are inaccurate and correcting the issue. It would be one thing if I could manually override the QuickBooks-assigned transaction, but I can't, which makes the issue all the more frustrating.

I hope that the agent is, in fact, able to get ahold of the operations team and give me an updated within the promised 1-2 days, but given that this is my 4th call to QB Support and no progress has been made, I am not hopeful.

I also requested to speak to a supervisor but was told I would need to wait for a call back to do that, too. I was told I would receive a call back today, so let's see if that happens.

Another update: I was assured that a supervisor would call me back yesterday. They did not, and no one contacted me today, either.

I don't want to leave you hanging, @woefullymiscategorized.

I understand the eagerness to get detailed information and resolution on your concern about handling and categorizing your phone bills from AMEX.

Since you are promised to get a callback from a supervisor today about your issue with categorizing phone bills, I highly recommend reaching out to our QuickBooks Support Team again. Provide your case number to the specialist who answers your call. This way, they can easily review your previous interaction and then transfer you to a supervisor.

Just in case you want to learn more about categorizing and matching transactions in QuickBooks, feel free to check out this article: Categorize and match online bank transactions in QuickBooks Online.

I hope you can still extend your patience as we're working this out for you.

In addition to the next-day supervisor callback that the support agent told me I would get, the support agent himself also said he'd follow up with me within 2-3 days with further details on the investigation. That never happened, either. Two callbacks promised, and nothing.

Every time I call QuickBooks back it's like I'm starting from 0 again, and it's become a minimum 45 minute exercise every time I call (mainly just waiting on hold while the agent speaks to another team that I guess I can't speak with directly). No progress is being made, despite this being my 4th call in about the issue.

Instead of asking me to keep calling back (which, again, is not working) can an employee on these forums look into the matter as well? 

I appreciate your feedback, @woefullymiscategorized.

I understand how time-consuming it would be to connect with our Support Team from scratch. I'll make sure to pass along your message so you won't go through this kind of experience again. 

For the time being, you can reconnect with our live agent and provide your previous case number as mentioned by Mark_R above. Please take note that our support is open M-F 6 AM to 6 PM PT and Saturday 6 AM to 3 PM PT for QuickBooks Online Simple Start, Essentials, and Plus. And, any time or any day for QuickBooks Online Advanced.

On the other hand, please feel free to check out the topics from this link for more hints and resources about handling your banking transactions: Find help with bank feeds and reconciling accounts.

Please let me know how else I can help you with QuickBooks by adding a comment below. I'm always here to provide additional assistance. Keep safe!

Hi there,

I am writing to update the community that despite me contacting QuickBooks Support 3 times via phone, no one actually seems interested in resolving the issue. All the employee repliers on this forum do tell you to contact QuickBooks Support via phone/live chat, but once you do that, it may as well be a black hole.

After the last time I called QuickBooks, I have received a couple of generic, unhelpful emails from QuickBooks saying to report feedback using the gear icon in QuickBooks online. Why weren't my several phone calls considered feedback?! Why do I have to submit feedback this way, too? Regardless, I have reported feedback using the gear icon that 4 times on 5-1, 5-4, 5-10, and 5-25. 

Can you guess how many follow ups I've gotten? Zero.

This is a bug. It is a problem with QuickBooks and how it "reads" transactions. Sadly, I have no faith that contacting support again will do anything except give me a lengthy runaround and waste my time. Why can't anyone at QuickBook take ownership of this issue, escalate it to the appropriate personnel, and fix it?

This continues to be an issue. I have reported the issue at least 6 times over the past several months using the Feedback feature on the QuickBooks website in addition to my calls to customer support. Nothing.

Is there anyone that can actually assist with this? It's not debilitating to my accounting work, but it is very annoying to see AT&T transactions categorized as T-Mobile.

Angelyn, are you able to assist with escalating this? I have reported this issue at least 6 times using QuickBook's Feedback feature on the website, and my AT&T phone bills continue to be described as "T-Mobile" with no way for me to change them. 

Any help would be appreciated.

I recognize this wasn't an easy process for you, @woefullymiscategorized.

The banking information in QuickBooks depends on the data coming from your bank.

I know you called Customer Support already, but it's still best to contact them. They can pull up your account information and investigate your concern to give you the best resolution. Please note that for QuickBooks Online Simple Start, Essentials, and Plus, our support hours are M-F 6 AM to 6 PM PT and Saturday 6 AM to 3 PM PT. And, at any time or on any given day.

If you still require additional assistance after contacting support, please get back to the Community. This way, we can take another look or help you. Take care.

@woefullymiscategorized  I'm having the same issue. It's not an issue with the data the bank is exporting to QuickBooks. What's actually happening is that QuickBooks is using a very sloppy filter to automatically change the "Description" field based on certain text patterns in the "Bank Detail" field (what's sent over from the bank). 

It's not just happening to AT&T transactions, it's also incorrectly changing descriptions on certain other transactions.  It looks like QuickBooks is trying to detect charges from certain large companies and automatically populate the Description field. There's no rule for this showing in my list of Rules. It seems to be something built into QuickBooks behind the scenes that end users can't access or change.

Here are some examples:

Bank Detail: "AT T Mobility" results in
QuickBooks Description: "T-Mobile"

Bank Detail: "SPOD REF QT3S" results in
QuickBooks Description: "QuickTrip Ref: QT3S"

Bank Detail: "SPOD REF I5BP" results in
QuickBooks Description: "BP Ref:I5BP"

There are probably others that I haven't stumbled across yet.

All of these are incorrect and in some cases very confusing such as AT&T -> T-Mobile. There doesn't seem to be any way to change the description, either before or after accepting and recording the transaction.

I'm not going to spend time calling customer support or submitting feedback, but I hope that someone at QuickBooks will see this and take the initiative to get it in front of the right team so it can be fixed.