Does no bank include account info on ACH utility payments any more in their data?

Does no bank include account info on ACH utility payments any more in their data?

Rental Property Investor · Jersey City, NJ · Member since 2011 · 1k+ posts · 876 votes
I manage my rentals, and in addition to water and common space electric & gas bills have a dozen 'landlord accounts' that activate when a tenant moves out so the place has power till a new tenant moves in. For decades I could simply search my downloaded transactions in Quicken for the account number and quickly categorize them all. Then a few years ago Investors Bank was acquired by Citizens and they stopped. The only data on the transaction was the utility name. I had to spend hours going through my accounts manually matching amounts to the account. I recently switched to Chase because I remembered they included the info, but of course there was no way to check and no CS person could say! But they don't include the info either now! I can download a CSV with far more info on the transaction, but not the damn Account Number! Look at all this info, but not the account number. The asterixis are edited for privacy. ORIG CO NAME:PUBLIC SERVICE ORIG ID:422121*** DESC DATE: CO ENTRY DESCR:PSEG SEC:PPD TRACE#:0910000106******* EED:260*** IND ID: IND NAME:NAME OF MY COMPANY TRN: 0340*******TC Does anyone have any experience with this? It seems insane. I can't imagine being one of the big management companies with hundreds of units dealing with this.
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  • Member since 2025 · 91 posts · 55 votes
    7mo

    Super frustrating! There are tools that can help but you're correct that this has become more opaque in the last few years. Check out tools like Stessa--they sync with your utility accounts and bank. It uses AI to match the dollar amount from the utility bill to the transaction in your bank feed, effectively doing the "matching" for you.

  • Bo SmithPro Member
    Hinton, WV · Member since 2026 · 1k+ posts · 373 votes
    7mo

    This bank data mess is so frustrating. Quick fix that saved me hours: set up autopay with custom references like "123MainSt-Electric" in the memo field. Then your downloads automatically have property identifiers. Can you switch these to autopay with custom refs?

    • Rental Property Investor · Jersey City, NJ · Member since 2011 · 1k+ posts · 876 votes
      7mo
      Quote from @Bo Smith:

      This bank data mess is so frustrating. Quick fix that saved me hours: set up autopay with custom references like "123MainSt-Electric" in the memo field. Then your downloads automatically have property identifiers. Can you switch these to autopay with custom refs?


       Thanks, but no options for that!

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