Does Direct Connection let me split American Express account?

PeterQ2012

For years my lament with American Express has been the fact that they cram all cardholders' transactions into the basic/primary cardholder's QFX file. For example, if I log into AmEx, the .qfx I download contains both my transactions and my wife's transactions. On the other hand, if we log into her AmEx account, the .qfx she downloads will have only her transactions, which is what we want.

We like to have our accounts split in Quicken so that we know whose transactions are whose, and she doesn't have to spend time categorizing my transactions, and I don't have to spend time categorizing hers. (For non-American Express cards, we just each use separate cards.)

I've overcome this so far with some tools to wrangle the .qfx and .csv that I can download from the AmEx web site that will result in a .qfx with just my transactions, but it's not exactly one-click.

By any chance, does using Express Web Connect or Direct Connect on newer versions of Quicken let me split out the accounts the way I want? More specifically, will it download our respective cards' transactions into their accounts?

Or will I have to continue importing my data by hand?

(I realize this is probably a limitation on AmEx's end, but I was hoping that perhaps EWC or Direct Connect might not have the same limitation that downloading .qfx files has...)

John_in_NC

The backend for both systems is the same.

Unfortunately, you likely will see the same undesired behavior on both platforms. 

John_in_NC

The backend for both systems is the same.

Unfortunately, you likely will see the same undesired behavior on both platforms. 

PeterQ2012

Thank you! I figured it was most likely the same, but thank you for confirming.

Interestingly, when their system wouldn't permit .qfx downloads last month unless you previewed their new web site, I found that the new web site would let you download a .qfx of just the currently displayed transactions, which you CAN filter by card. If that functionality continues through their release of the new web site, that'll remove one step from my process, but those newer .qfx files didn't have any memo field! (I hope they fix that.)

Tom Young

Your first paragraph suggests that you and your wife each have your own distinct American Express credit card accounts and both cards feed into one Quicken Account, but I take it that's not really the case?  Your situation really is the each of you have distinct cards - different numbers - but all transactions from both cards are considered one "account" by American Express?  The latter is how American Express functions for my wife and I.

If you do One Step Updates every day, where typically you receive a small number of transactions from one or two days ago, could you be making the distinction between "mine" and "wife's" transactions right then while everything's fresh in your mind?  That might be less work then what appears to be a "month end" effort on your part.

Ps56k2

PeterQ2012 said:
By any chance, does using Express Web Connect or Direct Connect on newer versions of Quicken let me split out the accounts the way I want? More specifically, will it download our respective cards' transactions into their accounts?

no difference -
it's merely a different conduit for downloading the exact same data from AX -