Even if you can load a .csv file, There is no simple way to download all the transactions since the last time to downloaded.
Bud Lorch Quicken doesn't support importing transactions using the CSV format, but what was suggested is to use a third party program to convert a CSV file to a QIF or QFX file, which Quicken will import.
So, I had a few minutes to spare today... and to avoid manually entering a bunch of transactions, I made a little utility program to convert PC Financial’s Mastercard CSV download to a .qif file.
I’m willing to share this for those who want to do a few last imports before they move to a new card or just want to keep using it. I give no warranties or support. It’s an “AS IS” kind of thing.
Now, importing .qif files kind of suck because it doesn’t really do anything with auto-matching or balances. It’s just away to import some transactions (at least you don’t have to type it all). So, when you save your transactions from PC Financial, you’ll need to make sure you’re not downloading transactions you’ve already imported. I always recommend making a backup before trying something.
If I could figure out a way to direct message people on here you could get in contact with me and I can send it to you... Can anyone assist with that? (I’m new to this site).
Definitely not trying to sell anything to anyone here. How about quicken provide a tool for the "community"? It literally took about 1.5 hours (which included researching the .qif file format).
So, I had a few minutes to spare today... and to avoid manually entering a bunch of transactions, I made a little utility program to convert PC Financial’s Mastercard CSV download to a .qif file.
I’m willing to share this for those who want to do a few last imports before they move to a new card or just want to keep using it. I give no warranties or support. It’s an “AS IS” kind of thing.
Now, importing .qif files kind of suck because it doesn’t really do anything with auto-matching or balances. It’s just away to import some transactions (at least you don’t have to type it all). So, when you save your transactions from PC Financial, you’ll need to make sure you’re not downloading transactions you’ve already imported. I always recommend making a backup before trying something.
If I could figure out a way to direct message people on here you could get in contact with me and I can send it to you... Can anyone assist with that? (I’m new to this site).
But you are re-inventing the wheel. There are lots of CSV-to-QIF converters already out in the web, anyone of them along with the information in this thread (Edit QIF -manually ) make importing a QIF file into Quicken for Windows easy.
-splasher using Q since 1996 - Subscription - Win10 -also older versions as needed for testing -Questions? Check out the Quicken Windows FAQ list
So, I had a few minutes to spare today... and to avoid manually entering a bunch of transactions, I made a little utility program to convert PC Financial’s Mastercard CSV download to a .qif file.
I’m willing to share this for those who want to do a few last imports before they move to a new card or just want to keep using it. I give no warranties or support. It’s an “AS IS” kind of thing.
Now, importing .qif files kind of suck because it doesn’t really do anything with auto-matching or balances. It’s just away to import some transactions (at least you don’t have to type it all). So, when you save your transactions from PC Financial, you’ll need to make sure you’re not downloading transactions you’ve already imported. I always recommend making a backup before trying something.
If I could figure out a way to direct message people on here you could get in contact with me and I can send it to you... Can anyone assist with that? (I’m new to this site).
So, I had a few minutes to spare today... and to avoid manually entering a bunch of transactions, I made a little utility program to convert PC Financial’s Mastercard CSV download to a .qif file.
I’m willing to share this for those who want to do a few last imports before they move to a new card or just want to keep using it. I give no warranties or support. It’s an “AS IS” kind of thing.
Now, importing .qif files kind of suck because it doesn’t really do anything with auto-matching or balances. It’s just away to import some transactions (at least you don’t have to type it all). So, when you save your transactions from PC Financial, you’ll need to make sure you’re not downloading transactions you’ve already imported. I always recommend making a backup before trying something.
If I could figure out a way to direct message people on here you could get in contact with me and I can send it to you... Can anyone assist with that? (I’m new to this site).
So, I had a few minutes to spare today... and to avoid manually entering a bunch of transactions, I made a little utility program to convert PC Financial’s Mastercard CSV download to a .qif file.
I’m willing to share this for those who want to do a few last imports before they move to a new card or just want to keep using it. I give no warranties or support. It’s an “AS IS” kind of thing.
Now, importing .qif files kind of suck because it doesn’t really do anything with auto-matching or balances. It’s just away to import some transactions (at least you don’t have to type it all). So, when you save your transactions from PC Financial, you’ll need to make sure you’re not downloading transactions you’ve already imported. I always recommend making a backup before trying something.
If I could figure out a way to direct message people on here you could get in contact with me and I can send it to you... Can anyone assist with that? (I’m new to this site).
Still safer manually typing in transactions.. and as I am now going to use my PC MC only for the PC points, it is easy ! ... will soon be getting a new MC that has the QFX feature ! have been a Quicken user for 15+ years...
So, I had a few minutes to spare today... and to avoid manually entering a bunch of transactions, I made a little utility program to convert PC Financial’s Mastercard CSV download to a .qif file.
I’m willing to share this for those who want to do a few last imports before they move to a new card or just want to keep using it. I give no warranties or support. It’s an “AS IS” kind of thing.
Now, importing .qif files kind of suck because it doesn’t really do anything with auto-matching or balances. It’s just away to import some transactions (at least you don’t have to type it all). So, when you save your transactions from PC Financial, you’ll need to make sure you’re not downloading transactions you’ve already imported. I always recommend making a backup before trying something.
If I could figure out a way to direct message people on here you could get in contact with me and I can send it to you... Can anyone assist with that? (I’m new to this site).
How "trustworthy" using QIF imports would be really depends on the user's use case.
If you never manually entered any transaction, importing by QIF would be much more reliable than manual entry. It wouldn't make typing errors.
But even with doing only imports through QIF there are some "best practices". One of the main things that would be needed is a "system" to prevent duplicates. The primary way that is done usually is just limit the exporting of the data to a given date range and don't overlap them. Of course that has the problem of what if transactions come in after the time you export on a given day.
The other ways that this can be handled is by "matching" and by handling the problem in the convert itself.
The matching in Quicken was never that good, but it was good enough when everything was exactly like it would be in overlapping transactions.
With that feature gone then it would have to be done outside of Quicken, with creating an unique Id for each transaction, and remembering which transactions have already been imported, and ignoring them.
Or just keeping an eye out for them, and deleting them. I really don't see the big risk in this as long as you are reconciling.
Once you bring in manual entry it gets much more problematic.
As mentioned above with older versions of Quicken you had a chance at matching, that is gone with the subscription version of Quicken, so anyone doing a lot of manual entry is really not going to want to import QIF files.
On the subject of creating QFX files instead of QIF files. There are in my opinion two stumbling blocks.
The first is the online balance. Unless the data you are getting happens to have the running balance, you have no way to know what the online balance is, and you have to set it to zero. This isn't going to play well with any automatic reconciling. And if you are just creating a new account Quicken will put in a balance adjustment to zero the register.
The second part is that the QFX file has the financial institution's identifier in it. Using one that isn't "your financial institution" is a bit unethical.
Then again I see practices by both Intuit and Quicken Inc that I would call a bit unethical. For instance the removal of the QIF functionality. For instance taking up of about 25% of your GUI space if you let your subscription lapse.
And let's face it QFX can only be used with a currently supported version of Quicken. So Quicken Inc certainly doesn't loose customers just because they use say a CSV to QFX converter. It is only Intuit that might be affected. But most likely only in the sense that this feature forces customers to go to financial institutions that are willing to pay Intuit.
I sent this on day one of the new website. Dear Customer Service Rep, You have changed your website. It is very clear and easy to read but the only transaction download that one can do is in a CSV file format. That is not recognized by Intuit Quicken. Do you plan to add that to the file formats of downloads. Your old website had that capability. This is major blow and will probably mean we won’t use your credit card very much in the future as our alternative card from another institution does have that functionality and integrates seamlessly ( as did your old site) I received this in reply That is indicative that thone side of the operation has no idea what the other side is saying; Thank you for your email. In regards to your concern, we apologize for any issues you are experiencing with your online profile. Our new site is still undergoing maintenance at this time and some features and services may experience intermittent issues or outages during these updates. This is a known issue that has been escalated to the appropriate department to be rectified, we will still be supporting the Quicken software and it will become available to use again as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience and frustration caused. Should you have any additional questions or concerns you can e-mail or contact us through your online account. This service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your convenience. Response time for any question or concern is 24 hours. Sincerely, Shawn President's Choice Financial MasterCard PC Financial
I sent this on day one of the new website. Dear Customer Service Rep, You have changed your website. It is very clear and easy to read but the only transaction download that one can do is in a CSV file format. That is not recognized by Intuit Quicken. Do you plan to add that to the file formats of downloads. Your old website had that capability. This is major blow and will probably mean we won’t use your credit card very much in the future as our alternative card from another institution does have that functionality and integrates seamlessly ( as did your old site) I received this in reply That is indicative that thone side of the operation has no idea what the other side is saying; Thank you for your email. In regards to your concern, we apologize for any issues you are experiencing with your online profile. Our new site is still undergoing maintenance at this time and some features and services may experience intermittent issues or outages during these updates. This is a known issue that has been escalated to the appropriate department to be rectified, we will still be supporting the Quicken software and it will become available to use again as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience and frustration caused. Should you have any additional questions or concerns you can e-mail or contact us through your online account. This service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your convenience. Response time for any question or concern is 24 hours. Sincerely, Shawn President's Choice Financial MasterCard PC Financial
Unless this is a sign that they are changing their tune and responding to customer complaints and now simply trying to make it sound like restoring QFX downloading was always part of their plan... Time will tell
PC Financial has given many reasons for abandoning Quicken. It says their new web site is not compatible. It says they are focusing on features customers use.
With regards to this last excuse, even HSBC allows mortgage data to be downloaded to Quicken.
Mortgage data.
How often, I wonder, do HSBC's customers download mortgage data to Quicken? Once, twice a month? Certainly not as often as one might download data from a savings or chequing account. Yet HSBC offers this service.
When I switched to PC Financial MasterCard one of the main attractions was their web site's simplicity. It had everything I needed and was easy to navigate.
Their new web site, as has been discussed, leaves a lot to be desired. Though it focuses on improving its appearance, it's failed miserably, in my opinion. Information is scattered, missing, and poorly laid out.
Will PC Financial listen to its dissatisfied customers? Will it make improvements? Will it restore Quicken downloads and other missing data?
I'm not holding my breath.
Me either. I have 2 other MC, a Visa and an AMEX that all support downloads to Quicken. I am going to change to a different card for my main credit card.
Thank you for your e-mail. In regards to your inquiry, we apologize for any inconvenience however our new website is not compatible with quicken. Your online account will provide the option to download the last 6 months of your statements in a .csv file format. To download your statements using this format, please click on the “Transactions” tab on the top of your page. You can then choose the statement you wish to view by clicking on "Select Dates". Next choose the desired format by clicking the "Print" icon located on the top of the page. Should you have any additional questions or concerns you can e-mail or contact us through your online account. This service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your convenience. Response time for any question or concern is 24 hours. Sincerely, President's Choice Financial MasterCard
I'm just waiting for my Costco MasterCard to physically arrive. I already have confirmation & instructions as to activating it. Adios PC MasterCard
I contacted Capital One to make sure they have support for Quicken. Then I stopped at COSTCO yesterday and was immediately approved for a new card. As soon as I receive it in the mail, I'll contact all companies & utilities that I pay with PC MasterCard and inform them of my new card number. End of the line, President's Choice.
If you are a CAA member their credit card supports QFX and you get CAA dollars . I haven't paid for membership for years now and I generate surplus dollars that can be used for travel, new batteries in fact anything that CAA sells. I have switched to making all my purchases using this card until such time PC reinstates QFX downloading. Absolute PR nightmare PC , to not brief your Customer Support team about the change and have nothing on your website about removing this download functionality. It was appalling business change management practice: it would to my mind be grounds for dismissal of the decision making team and their VP.
Here's the text of a letter I sent to PC Financial this morning ...
To whom it may concern,
I am writing this to provide feedback regarding the recent changes to the PC Financial Mastercard website.
While some of the recent website changes are useful, and the site now looks prettier, I find that overall it is less functional than the old site.
The most grievous change, for me, is the removal of the transaction Download to Quicken feature. When I asked via the website message feature what happened to this feature, the answer I got back was simply that it was no longer available. I was told there is a Download to .CSV option, but that is of no use to Quicken users.
I worked in the software industry for over 35 years, and one rule we always followed was to avoid taking features away from our users unless there was a damn good reason to do so.
So I ask, what was your reason for removing this feature? Revamping the website look and feel or replacing its underlying technology are not reasons to remove a feature. Did anyone survey the user base to see what the impact of this would be? Did anyone do a usability study to determine how much work this would impose upon Quicken users?
Here's the impact on me. Every month I generate about 60 transactions on my PC Mastercard. Where before I could simply download those within 30 seconds, now I have to enter each one manually. But worse than that, as it happens I often enter transactions manually in order to capture certain details I want to track. With the QFX download previously available, I could download the transactions that have arrived since the last time I downloaded, and it would merge anything new in with my manual entries. That meant I didn't have to enter every transaction, and I didn't have to figure out which ones I entered manually and which ones I skipped.
Each month, I reconcile my Quicken account to my paper statement. This involves first downloading transactions to QFX in order to ensure I have all the transactions for the month. Without that step, I will now spend more time reconciling the statement because of transactions I might have neglected to enter manually.
You might wonder why I bother with all this. The answer is that the benefits outweigh the effort. Quicken provides me with budgeting, transaction history, and an overall snapshot of all my account balances, my net worth, and my net worth trend year over year. I can tell you when and where I bought my five year old BBQ, and how much I paid for it. I can tell you how much I spent on groceries this month, last month, this quarter, this year, and every year this century. Quicken gives me complete financial control.
There are thousands of Quicken users in Canada. I don't know how many use PC Mastercard, but you risk alienating all of them be eliminating the feature – even more so, by doing it without notice or consultation or even a decent explanation. There’s not even a mention of Quicken in the FAQ.
As for the rest of the website revamp, my synopsis would be: pretty, with a few new bells and whistles, but not better. The Dashboard is pretty, and the Current/Available Balance chart is nice, but the bar chart showing transaction amounts by day is of very little use.
The new transaction list has some nice filtering options. But the old transaction list was far more dense and compact, allowing me to see many transactions at once. The new list is sparse, with a lot of empty whitespace. There are pretty icon beside each transaction that provide no real value. Where I could once see 20 or more transactions at a time without scrolling, now I can only see a handful. All this will make monthly reconciliation more painstaking.
The Trends feature may be, for those who don’t use Quicken, a nice option. For me, it’s simply not flexible enough. The category bar graph uses categories that are based on merchant industry, which works to a limited extent but breaks down pretty rapidly with multi-category vendors like Shoppers Drug Mart, the grocery store (where I can also get wine, beer, household products, clothing etc.), Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire, etc. A single large transaction in the month, such as buying a travel package, can make one bar very tall and the rest nearly invisible. There is no provision for drilling into the Other category.
The transaction view of the Trends feature provides a bar graph of the daily transaction total for the selected time period. What is the use case for this? Why would anyone care if they had more transactions on Tuesday than on Wednesday? If the point is to highlight large transactions, a top 10 list on the dashboard would be more useful. And you can always sort the transaction list by amount. (Although, I’m not even sure what it means to sort by Highest Date when no date range is selected. What is the default date range?)
Here’s the bottom line for me. PC Mastercard has been my primary-use card for many years now. I have it for the PC Points it generates, and use those points to offset my grocery expenses. That’s the value it provides to me. But my time is valuable too. Now, as a result of these website changes, it’s going to cost me more time to track my expenses on this card. The value it provides has been diminished. So, in response, I will shift my transactions over to another card, one where I will spend less time tracking transactions and still get points benefits. One that has a Download to Quicken option.
Please forward this letter to your website management team. I’m sure they will want to hear this feedback.
Sincerely,
Gary Puckering
Actually it has no any relation with Quicken. Before there was file in format OFX - open financial exchange format, and it is standard supported by quicken, microsoft, etc.. So, they just need to return converter to OFX format.
Here's the text of a letter I sent to PC Financial this morning ...
To whom it may concern,
I am writing this to provide feedback regarding the recent changes to the PC Financial Mastercard website.
While some of the recent website changes are useful, and the site now looks prettier, I find that overall it is less functional than the old site.
The most grievous change, for me, is the removal of the transaction Download to Quicken feature. When I asked via the website message feature what happened to this feature, the answer I got back was simply that it was no longer available. I was told there is a Download to .CSV option, but that is of no use to Quicken users.
I worked in the software industry for over 35 years, and one rule we always followed was to avoid taking features away from our users unless there was a damn good reason to do so.
So I ask, what was your reason for removing this feature? Revamping the website look and feel or replacing its underlying technology are not reasons to remove a feature. Did anyone survey the user base to see what the impact of this would be? Did anyone do a usability study to determine how much work this would impose upon Quicken users?
Here's the impact on me. Every month I generate about 60 transactions on my PC Mastercard. Where before I could simply download those within 30 seconds, now I have to enter each one manually. But worse than that, as it happens I often enter transactions manually in order to capture certain details I want to track. With the QFX download previously available, I could download the transactions that have arrived since the last time I downloaded, and it would merge anything new in with my manual entries. That meant I didn't have to enter every transaction, and I didn't have to figure out which ones I entered manually and which ones I skipped.
Each month, I reconcile my Quicken account to my paper statement. This involves first downloading transactions to QFX in order to ensure I have all the transactions for the month. Without that step, I will now spend more time reconciling the statement because of transactions I might have neglected to enter manually.
You might wonder why I bother with all this. The answer is that the benefits outweigh the effort. Quicken provides me with budgeting, transaction history, and an overall snapshot of all my account balances, my net worth, and my net worth trend year over year. I can tell you when and where I bought my five year old BBQ, and how much I paid for it. I can tell you how much I spent on groceries this month, last month, this quarter, this year, and every year this century. Quicken gives me complete financial control.
There are thousands of Quicken users in Canada. I don't know how many use PC Mastercard, but you risk alienating all of them be eliminating the feature – even more so, by doing it without notice or consultation or even a decent explanation. There’s not even a mention of Quicken in the FAQ.
As for the rest of the website revamp, my synopsis would be: pretty, with a few new bells and whistles, but not better. The Dashboard is pretty, and the Current/Available Balance chart is nice, but the bar chart showing transaction amounts by day is of very little use.
The new transaction list has some nice filtering options. But the old transaction list was far more dense and compact, allowing me to see many transactions at once. The new list is sparse, with a lot of empty whitespace. There are pretty icon beside each transaction that provide no real value. Where I could once see 20 or more transactions at a time without scrolling, now I can only see a handful. All this will make monthly reconciliation more painstaking.
The Trends feature may be, for those who don’t use Quicken, a nice option. For me, it’s simply not flexible enough. The category bar graph uses categories that are based on merchant industry, which works to a limited extent but breaks down pretty rapidly with multi-category vendors like Shoppers Drug Mart, the grocery store (where I can also get wine, beer, household products, clothing etc.), Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire, etc. A single large transaction in the month, such as buying a travel package, can make one bar very tall and the rest nearly invisible. There is no provision for drilling into the Other category.
The transaction view of the Trends feature provides a bar graph of the daily transaction total for the selected time period. What is the use case for this? Why would anyone care if they had more transactions on Tuesday than on Wednesday? If the point is to highlight large transactions, a top 10 list on the dashboard would be more useful. And you can always sort the transaction list by amount. (Although, I’m not even sure what it means to sort by Highest Date when no date range is selected. What is the default date range?)
Here’s the bottom line for me. PC Mastercard has been my primary-use card for many years now. I have it for the PC Points it generates, and use those points to offset my grocery expenses. That’s the value it provides to me. But my time is valuable too. Now, as a result of these website changes, it’s going to cost me more time to track my expenses on this card. The value it provides has been diminished. So, in response, I will shift my transactions over to another card, one where I will spend less time tracking transactions and still get points benefits. One that has a Download to Quicken option.
Please forward this letter to your website management team. I’m sure they will want to hear this feedback.
Sincerely,
Gary Puckering
@Vit Mark: So you suggest cutting off a source of revenue and risking the program becoming unprofitable as happened with Microsoft Money? Or having Quicken replace the lost licensing fees paid by financial institutions by increasing the subscription price to consumers?
QMac 2007 & QMac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
Here's the text of a letter I sent to PC Financial this morning ...
To whom it may concern,
I am writing this to provide feedback regarding the recent changes to the PC Financial Mastercard website.
While some of the recent website changes are useful, and the site now looks prettier, I find that overall it is less functional than the old site.
The most grievous change, for me, is the removal of the transaction Download to Quicken feature. When I asked via the website message feature what happened to this feature, the answer I got back was simply that it was no longer available. I was told there is a Download to .CSV option, but that is of no use to Quicken users.
I worked in the software industry for over 35 years, and one rule we always followed was to avoid taking features away from our users unless there was a damn good reason to do so.
So I ask, what was your reason for removing this feature? Revamping the website look and feel or replacing its underlying technology are not reasons to remove a feature. Did anyone survey the user base to see what the impact of this would be? Did anyone do a usability study to determine how much work this would impose upon Quicken users?
Here's the impact on me. Every month I generate about 60 transactions on my PC Mastercard. Where before I could simply download those within 30 seconds, now I have to enter each one manually. But worse than that, as it happens I often enter transactions manually in order to capture certain details I want to track. With the QFX download previously available, I could download the transactions that have arrived since the last time I downloaded, and it would merge anything new in with my manual entries. That meant I didn't have to enter every transaction, and I didn't have to figure out which ones I entered manually and which ones I skipped.
Each month, I reconcile my Quicken account to my paper statement. This involves first downloading transactions to QFX in order to ensure I have all the transactions for the month. Without that step, I will now spend more time reconciling the statement because of transactions I might have neglected to enter manually.
You might wonder why I bother with all this. The answer is that the benefits outweigh the effort. Quicken provides me with budgeting, transaction history, and an overall snapshot of all my account balances, my net worth, and my net worth trend year over year. I can tell you when and where I bought my five year old BBQ, and how much I paid for it. I can tell you how much I spent on groceries this month, last month, this quarter, this year, and every year this century. Quicken gives me complete financial control.
There are thousands of Quicken users in Canada. I don't know how many use PC Mastercard, but you risk alienating all of them be eliminating the feature – even more so, by doing it without notice or consultation or even a decent explanation. There’s not even a mention of Quicken in the FAQ.
As for the rest of the website revamp, my synopsis would be: pretty, with a few new bells and whistles, but not better. The Dashboard is pretty, and the Current/Available Balance chart is nice, but the bar chart showing transaction amounts by day is of very little use.
The new transaction list has some nice filtering options. But the old transaction list was far more dense and compact, allowing me to see many transactions at once. The new list is sparse, with a lot of empty whitespace. There are pretty icon beside each transaction that provide no real value. Where I could once see 20 or more transactions at a time without scrolling, now I can only see a handful. All this will make monthly reconciliation more painstaking.
The Trends feature may be, for those who don’t use Quicken, a nice option. For me, it’s simply not flexible enough. The category bar graph uses categories that are based on merchant industry, which works to a limited extent but breaks down pretty rapidly with multi-category vendors like Shoppers Drug Mart, the grocery store (where I can also get wine, beer, household products, clothing etc.), Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire, etc. A single large transaction in the month, such as buying a travel package, can make one bar very tall and the rest nearly invisible. There is no provision for drilling into the Other category.
The transaction view of the Trends feature provides a bar graph of the daily transaction total for the selected time period. What is the use case for this? Why would anyone care if they had more transactions on Tuesday than on Wednesday? If the point is to highlight large transactions, a top 10 list on the dashboard would be more useful. And you can always sort the transaction list by amount. (Although, I’m not even sure what it means to sort by Highest Date when no date range is selected. What is the default date range?)
Here’s the bottom line for me. PC Mastercard has been my primary-use card for many years now. I have it for the PC Points it generates, and use those points to offset my grocery expenses. That’s the value it provides to me. But my time is valuable too. Now, as a result of these website changes, it’s going to cost me more time to track my expenses on this card. The value it provides has been diminished. So, in response, I will shift my transactions over to another card, one where I will spend less time tracking transactions and still get points benefits. One that has a Download to Quicken option.
Please forward this letter to your website management team. I’m sure they will want to hear this feedback.
Sincerely,
Gary Puckering
Actually it has no any relation with Quicken. Before there was file in format OFX - open financial exchange format, and it is standard supported by quicken, microsoft, etc..
"OFX" was never supported by Quicken Windows.
The history is this Intuit, Microsoft, CheckFree got with the "financial institutions" and created the OFX standard to replace the QIF format because the QIF format was never a standard and was only designed as a support tool for Quicken even though others picked it up and used it. And of course to address some of the problems with the QIF format like the lack of an unique Id.
After that standard was created, Intuit immediately added some fields to it and called it QFX. The main purpose of those fields are for Quicken to check if the financial institution is a "participating partner", and reject the import if they aren't.
And Intuit charges for Direct Connect support (Quicken to QFX server), and Web Connect (importing a QFX files, which is actually just the "response" part of the messages that Direct Connect would send).
Note that Quicken Inc pays Intuit for online services like Express Web Connect and for "keep the channels open, and supplying the URLs and such for connecting" for Direct Connect and and Web Connect. As far as I know, Intuit still gets revenue from charging the financial institutions.
From what I heard Intuit could do it because they were had all the customers. Microsoft didn't do anything like this because they were playing catch up.
End result?
MS Money was dropped because it wasn't profitable enough for Microsoft.
Thank you for your e-mail. In regards to your inquiry, we apologize for any inconvenience however our new website is not compatible with quicken. Your online account will provide the option to download the last 6 months of your statements in a .csv file format. To download your statements using this format, please click on the “Transactions” tab on the top of your page. You can then choose the statement you wish to view by clicking on "Select Dates". Next choose the desired format by clicking the "Print" icon located on the top of the page. Should you have any additional questions or concerns you can e-mail or contact us through your online account. This service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your convenience. Response time for any question or concern is 24 hours. Sincerely, President's Choice Financial MasterCard
I expect this will get updated and fixed in time but may move to another CC. Looking at options, Scotia Momentum has 4% on grocery purchases, Annual fee is waived. May check back in a year to see if update has happened and make a decision to reinstate PC.
You would have to ask PC Financial. Quicken (or Intuit the service provider in the case of downloading) can not decide for a FI if they want to be a participating Quicken partner.
If you can get a QIF or CSV file from them, you could use ImportQIF to import the transactions: Edit QIF - with ImportQIF
I'm new to Quicken in 2018 this has me reconsidering my PC MC and Quicken. I feel Quicken could make it easier to import CSV files in these extreme cases where CC companies/banks don't offer Quicken Support. As for PC, it's a great card so a bit stuck on what to do. There are spreadsheets programs like Tiller that download account info NP like direct web connect. I feel PC and Quicken are a both to blame here as one is held hostage to the other to make these transaction importing work. Neither really seem to care to fix this anytime soon.
You would have to ask PC Financial. Quicken (or Intuit the service provider in the case of downloading) can not decide for a FI if they want to be a participating Quicken partner.
If you can get a QIF or CSV file from them, you could use ImportQIF to import the transactions: Edit QIF - with ImportQIF
Rob, Quicken supports more than 14,000 financial institutions with three different connection methods that have proven to be workable. There ware significant limitations with CSV, and the support burden when users get in trouble would fall squarely on Quicken because users would scream about duplicate transactions and messed up data. So while, yes, you can say both Quicken and PC Financial are to blame for not having a solution, I don't think you should expect to see Quicken change what works for thousands of banks because PC financial chose to eliminate a connection method that worked.
QMac 2007 & QMac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
You would have to ask PC Financial. Quicken (or Intuit the service provider in the case of downloading) can not decide for a FI if they want to be a participating Quicken partner.
If you can get a QIF or CSV file from them, you could use ImportQIF to import the transactions: Edit QIF - with ImportQIF
jacobs, speaking as a former software engineering manager for a large software products vendor, I agree with your comment to Rob concerning the limitations and support burden that CSV import would be. Indeed, even QIF import creates a similar burden, especially with duplicate transactions. Hence QFX.
I also agree that this isn't really Quicken's problem to address -- except, perhaps, they could consider supporting OFX. Since OFX is similar to QFX, I'm not sure what the technical issues would be. Presumably QFX provides for transmitting certain information that the OFX designers felt was either unsafe to transfer or was too proprietary to Quicken. In any event, it seems to me that with some user intervention and good UI design they could probably make OFX import nearly as easy as QFX. And certainly easier and more accurate than QIF. And vastly easier and more accurate than CSV.
The real culprit here is PC Financial, in choosing to eliminate an important feature which its user base has relied on for years -- and doing so without a proper depreciation period.
When I ran the engineering of a major software product, we had clear deprecation rules that ensured that if we planned to take a feature away, we did it in stages. First, we'd update the software to include a warning when the feature was used, to say it was going to go away soon. Then, we'd make it less accessible so that you'd have to look hard to find it, our turn on a switch to enable it. That would come with more warnings. After than, we'd take it away. This might take two or three releases.
What PC Financial did was unconscionable, from a user perspective. They simply dropped the feature with no prior notice, apparently without consulting the user base about the impact of such a move, and then didn't even bother to include a topic about it in the FAQ. Not providing prior notice is bad. Not providing post-facto notice is even worse! It leaves everyone to waste their time looking around for something that isn't there. And it wastes their precious support resources answering questions from users! (Don't get me started on how ridiculous it was that the support team never seemed to have a proper or consistent answer!!!)
It seems to me the PC Financial management team was too focused on a better look and feel for their web site, and wasn't paying enough attention to what might be lost or troublesome in the transition from old to new. I hope they've learned a lesson from that.
Incidentally, Rogers Bank used what appeared to me to be the same web technology as PC Mastercard (albeit with a different skin). However, they choose to support OFX rather than QFX. CIBC used to host PC Mastercard, and maybe hosts Rogers Bank. I'm waiting to see if the Roger's Bank website changes too.
You would have to ask PC Financial. Quicken (or Intuit the service provider in the case of downloading) can not decide for a FI if they want to be a participating Quicken partner.
If you can get a QIF or CSV file from them, you could use ImportQIF to import the transactions: Edit QIF - with ImportQIF
If PC is so cheap that can not support QFX file there is alternative - OFX - open financial exchange, basically same stuff, but without custom quicken twiks.
Anyway, point is that PC screed up. Lets demand to restore it back - share this Twitter
Seems like President's Choice program isn't supported in Quicken. For starters, adding PC Financial takes you to Simplii which is incorrect based on the shown url (www.pcfinancial.ca). It's their PC Mastercard on www.pcfinancial.ca I'm trying to access. If this were corrected properly, I was hoping for direct web connect to PC Mastercard statements. This is especially crucial since there website doesn't support QIF files downloads, This eliminates PC's popular Mastercard users from using Quicken at all. I expect this may cause some to leave Quicken and others to leave PC. Not sure how this is resolved but an urgent solution is required.
Thank you for your e-mail. In regards to your inquiry, we apologize for any inconvenience however our new website is not compatible with quicken. Your online account will provide the option to download the last 6 months of your statements in a .csv file format. To download your statements using this format, please click on the “Transactions” tab on the top of your page. You can then choose the statement you wish to view by clicking on "Select Dates". Next choose the desired format by clicking the "Print" icon located on the top of the page. Should you have any additional questions or concerns you can e-mail or contact us through your online account. This service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your convenience. Response time for any question or concern is 24 hours. Sincerely, President's Choice Financial MasterCard
Note Scotiabank is VISA vs PC MC... so be sure it is accepted where you do groceries (it is not at No Frills).
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Thank you for your e-mail. In regards to your inquiry, we apologize for any inconvenience however our new website is not compatible with quicken. Your online account will provide the option to download the last 6 months of your statements in a .csv file format. To download your statements using this format, please click on the “Transactions” tab on the top of your page. You can then choose the statement you wish to view by clicking on "Select Dates". Next choose the desired format by clicking the "Print" icon located on the top of the page. Should you have any additional questions or concerns you can e-mail or contact us through your online account. This service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your convenience. Response time for any question or concern is 24 hours. Sincerely, President's Choice Financial MasterCard
Scotiabank does offer VISA, Mastercard, and AMEX. The Scotiabank Momentum card is a Mastercard.
Thank you for your e-mail. In regards to your inquiry, we apologize for any inconvenience however our new website is not compatible with quicken. Your online account will provide the option to download the last 6 months of your statements in a .csv file format. To download your statements using this format, please click on the “Transactions” tab on the top of your page. You can then choose the statement you wish to view by clicking on "Select Dates". Next choose the desired format by clicking the "Print" icon located on the top of the page. Should you have any additional questions or concerns you can e-mail or contact us through your online account. This service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your convenience. Response time for any question or concern is 24 hours. Sincerely, President's Choice Financial MasterCard
Yes BUT the Momentum card offering 4% is the INFINITE card which is only VISA according to their site.
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I finally broke down and signed up for the overpriced subscription of Quicken. Now I find out that two of the primary credit cards I use cannot download into Quicken! If you are going to try and collect fees on both ends of the transactions - that is fine for you, but when I cannot get the services I am paying for we have a problem. I am not sure why PC Financial and Rogers Bank will not support Quicken downloads - is it cost, choice, or technology? But if you want to keep me in the subscription trap you have to make sure I can use your software. At least Rogers Bank is offering OFX (PC only offers CSV), but if Quicken will not allow me to import it, it is not of much use. I know there are third-party work-arounds, but I do not have time for that dance. Regards, Ken
Hi Ken, I feel your pain and had to make a decision. I decided to keep Quicken and buy a 3rd party excel to QFX converter from Propersoft. Unfortunately, it cost money but does work well and it seems easy to use. After a year of Quicken, things were running smoothly until PC Financial killed the QFX export. I’m on the fence to change my PC credit card, drop Quicken for something like TillerHQ or wait for a fix. For me, the quick solution was the converter which may also come in handy for other financial institutions that may kill the QFX format. Follow the PC Mastercard threads and complain loud ... perhaps they will offer this feature again in the future.
Hi Ken, I feel your pain and had to make a decision. I decided to keep Quicken and buy a 3rd party excel to QFX converter from Propersoft. Unfortunately, it cost money but does work well and it seems easy to use. After a year of Quicken, things were running smoothly until PC Financial killed the QFX export. I’m on the fence to change my PC credit card, drop Quicken for something like TillerHQ or wait for a fix. For me, the quick solution was the converter which may also come in handy for other financial institutions that may kill the QFX format. Follow the PC Mastercard threads and complain loud ... perhaps they will offer this feature again in the future.
This has nothing to do with Quicken. PC MasterCard "improved" their website, & in doing so, decided in their infinite wisdom to drop support for Quicken. There was a great gnashing of teeth in various forums when this happened, and many, me included, went to another card. In my case, Costco Capital One. Then late last December, I actually received a phone call from PC MasterCard, saying in so many words, that after considerable 'input' from customers, they were restoring support for Quicken, and this would happen early in 2019, likely around the first of April I believe. I don't understand why so long, but...... However, I will stay with Capital One because of the cash back. I still have the PC card which I use to spend my points.
Comments
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If you never manually entered any transaction, importing by QIF would be much more reliable than manual entry. It wouldn't make typing errors.
But even with doing only imports through QIF there are some "best practices". One of the main things that would be needed is a "system" to prevent duplicates. The primary way that is done usually is just limit the exporting of the data to a given date range and don't overlap them. Of course that has the problem of what if transactions come in after the time you export on a given day.
The other ways that this can be handled is by "matching" and by handling the problem in the convert itself.
For the subscription version of Quicken, matching is out, because Quicken Inc took that feature away:
https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/qif-importing-into-quicken-windows-2018-is-broke...
The matching in Quicken was never that good, but it was good enough when everything was exactly like it would be in overlapping transactions.
With that feature gone then it would have to be done outside of Quicken, with creating an unique Id for each transaction, and remembering which transactions have already been imported, and ignoring them.
Or just keeping an eye out for them, and deleting them. I really don't see the big risk in this as long as you are reconciling.
Once you bring in manual entry it gets much more problematic.
As mentioned above with older versions of Quicken you had a chance at matching, that is gone with the subscription version of Quicken, so anyone doing a lot of manual entry is really not going to want to import QIF files.
On the subject of creating QFX files instead of QIF files. There are in my opinion two stumbling blocks.
The first is the online balance. Unless the data you are getting happens to have the running balance, you have no way to know what the online balance is, and you have to set it to zero. This isn't going to play well with any automatic reconciling. And if you are just creating a new account Quicken will put in a balance adjustment to zero the register.
The second part is that the QFX file has the financial institution's identifier in it.
Using one that isn't "your financial institution" is a bit unethical.
Then again I see practices by both Intuit and Quicken Inc that I would call a bit unethical. For instance the removal of the QIF functionality. For instance taking up of about 25% of your GUI space if you let your subscription lapse.
And let's face it QFX can only be used with a currently supported version of Quicken. So Quicken Inc certainly doesn't loose customers just because they use say a CSV to QFX converter. It is only Intuit that might be affected. But most likely only in the sense that this feature forces customers to go to financial institutions that are willing to pay Intuit.
Dear Customer Service Rep,
You have changed your website. It is very clear and easy to read but the only transaction download that one can do is in a CSV file format. That is not recognized by Intuit Quicken. Do you plan to add that to the file formats of downloads. Your old website had that capability. This is major blow and will probably mean we won’t use your credit card very much in the future as our alternative card from another institution does have that functionality and integrates seamlessly ( as did your old site)
I received this in reply
That is indicative that thone side of the operation has no idea what the other side is saying;
Thank you for your email. In regards to your concern, we apologize for any issues you are experiencing with your online profile. Our new site is still undergoing maintenance at this time and some features and services may experience intermittent issues or outages during these updates. This is a known issue that has been escalated to the appropriate department to be rectified, we will still be supporting the Quicken software and it will become available to use again as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience and frustration caused. Should you have any additional questions or concerns you can e-mail or contact us through your online account. This service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your convenience. Response time for any question or concern is 24 hours.
Sincerely, Shawn
President's Choice Financial MasterCard
PC Financial
Time will tell
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(Canadian Q user since '92, STILL using QM2007)
So, they just need to return converter to OFX format.
Keep demanding!!
#PCFinancialUglyWebSite
https://twitter.com/basilio100/status/1068509826685313024
The history is this Intuit, Microsoft, CheckFree got with the "financial institutions" and created the OFX standard to replace the QIF format because the QIF format was never a standard and was only designed as a support tool for Quicken even though others picked it up and used it. And of course to address some of the problems with the QIF format like the lack of an unique Id.
After that standard was created, Intuit immediately added some fields to it and called it QFX. The main purpose of those fields are for Quicken to check if the financial institution is a "participating partner", and reject the import if they aren't.
And Intuit charges for Direct Connect support (Quicken to QFX server), and Web Connect (importing a QFX files, which is actually just the "response" part of the messages that Direct Connect would send).
Note that Quicken Inc pays Intuit for online services like Express Web Connect and for "keep the channels open, and supplying the URLs and such for connecting" for Direct Connect and and Web Connect. As far as I know, Intuit still gets revenue from charging the financial institutions.
From what I heard Intuit could do it because they were had all the customers. Microsoft didn't do anything like this because they were playing catch up.
End result?
MS Money was dropped because it wasn't profitable enough for Microsoft.
I also agree that this isn't really Quicken's problem to address -- except, perhaps, they could consider supporting OFX. Since OFX is similar to QFX, I'm not sure what the technical issues would be. Presumably QFX provides for transmitting certain information that the OFX designers felt was either unsafe to transfer or was too proprietary to Quicken. In any event, it seems to me that with some user intervention and good UI design they could probably make OFX import nearly as easy as QFX. And certainly easier and more accurate than QIF. And vastly easier and more accurate than CSV.
The real culprit here is PC Financial, in choosing to eliminate an important feature which its user base has relied on for years -- and doing so without a proper depreciation period.
When I ran the engineering of a major software product, we had clear deprecation rules that ensured that if we planned to take a feature away, we did it in stages. First, we'd update the software to include a warning when the feature was used, to say it was going to go away soon. Then, we'd make it less accessible so that you'd have to look hard to find it, our turn on a switch to enable it. That would come with more warnings. After than, we'd take it away. This might take two or three releases.
What PC Financial did was unconscionable, from a user perspective. They simply dropped the feature with no prior notice, apparently without consulting the user base about the impact of such a move, and then didn't even bother to include a topic about it in the FAQ. Not providing prior notice is bad. Not providing post-facto notice is even worse! It leaves everyone to waste their time looking around for something that isn't there. And it wastes their precious support resources answering questions from users! (Don't get me started on how ridiculous it was that the support team never seemed to have a proper or consistent answer!!!)
It seems to me the PC Financial management team was too focused on a better look and feel for their web site, and wasn't paying enough attention to what might be lost or troublesome in the transition from old to new. I hope they've learned a lesson from that.
Incidentally, Rogers Bank used what appeared to me to be the same web technology as PC Mastercard (albeit with a different skin). However, they choose to support OFX rather than QFX. CIBC used to host PC Mastercard, and maybe hosts Rogers Bank. I'm waiting to see if the Roger's Bank website changes too.
Anyway, point is that PC screed up.
Lets demand to restore it back - share this Twitter
#PCFinancialUglyWebSite
Seems like President's Choice program isn't supported in Quicken. For starters, adding PC Financial takes you to Simplii which is incorrect based on the shown url (www.pcfinancial.ca). It's their PC Mastercard on www.pcfinancial.ca I'm trying to access. If this were corrected properly, I was hoping for direct web connect to PC Mastercard statements. This is especially crucial since there website doesn't support QIF files downloads, This eliminates PC's popular Mastercard users from using Quicken at all. I expect this may cause some to leave Quicken and others to leave PC. Not sure how this is resolved but an urgent solution is required.
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COMPLETE list of Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac to VOTE onObject to Quicken's business model, using up 25% of your screen? Add your vote here:
Quicken should eliminate the LARGE Ad space when a subscription expires
(Canadian Q user since '92, STILL using QM2007)
Consider also Laurentian Bank Dollar cards... one version is 3% on recurring, 2% gas and groceries, 1% all else. Annual fee only $65.
(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)
- Where to find a Help Guide for Quicken for Mac?
- Quicken Mac FAQ list
- Quicken Windows FAQ list
- Help Guide and FAQs for Quicken Mobile
COMPLETE list of Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac to VOTE onObject to Quicken's business model, using up 25% of your screen? Add your vote here:
Quicken should eliminate the LARGE Ad space when a subscription expires
(Canadian Q user since '92, STILL using QM2007)
(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)
- Where to find a Help Guide for Quicken for Mac?
- Quicken Mac FAQ list
- Quicken Windows FAQ list
- Help Guide and FAQs for Quicken Mobile
COMPLETE list of Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac to VOTE onObject to Quicken's business model, using up 25% of your screen? Add your vote here:
Quicken should eliminate the LARGE Ad space when a subscription expires
(Canadian Q user since '92, STILL using QM2007)
I finally broke down and signed up for the overpriced subscription of Quicken. Now I find out that two of the primary credit cards I use cannot download into Quicken!
If you are going to try and collect fees on both ends of the transactions - that is fine for you, but when I cannot get the services I am paying for we have a problem.
I am not sure why PC Financial and Rogers Bank will not support Quicken downloads - is it cost, choice, or technology? But if you want to keep me in the subscription trap you have to make sure I can use your software.
At least Rogers Bank is offering OFX (PC only offers CSV), but if Quicken will not allow me to import it, it is not of much use. I know there are third-party work-arounds, but I do not have time for that dance.
Regards,
Ken
There was a great gnashing of teeth in various forums when this happened, and many, me included, went to another card. In my case, Costco Capital One.
Then late last December, I actually received a phone call from PC MasterCard, saying in so many words, that after considerable 'input' from customers, they were restoring support for Quicken, and this would happen early in 2019, likely around the first of April I believe. I don't understand why so long, but...... However, I will stay with Capital One because of the cash back. I still have the PC card which I use to spend my points.