Quick Pay: Is it worth the price of upgrading from Deluxe to Premier?

Lysander Spooner

Do you use Quick Pay, if so is the feature worth the upgrade price over Deluxe?

In doing a cost/benefit analysis, I am not sure why I would pay for this if:

1. I get free bill pay from my FI.
2. I can schedule a payment on most bank / credit card websites for free.

Other than a small convience in making immediate payments what advantage does Quick Pay have?

From my understanding the current release of Quick Pay only offers immediate payment, there is no ability to schecule future payments. I can do this on the creditor website directly.

smayer97

As an alternative, I always set up my credit cards with pre-authorized payment so that the total balance is paid off on the due date (credit cards also allow PAP of minimum balance; few allow setting up fixed amounts) then I set up a scheduled transaction in Quicken and all I have to do is enter the amount of the transfer payment.  No need for Quick Pay (not available in Canada anyway) and no need to worry about outages.

Lysander Spooner

jacobs said:

You would use QuickPay if you want to pay all/many of your bills in one place at one time. I have always paid all my credit card bills by logging onto each provider's website and initiating a transaction. I don't find it a huge bother, and I do it while reconciling each account in Quicken...

Whether it's worth the time to set up, and deal with the periodic outages with various financial institutions, and the higher cost of Premier over Deluxe, is an equation each user needs to calculate for themselves. If your bank gives you a roughly equivalent service for free, then you probably don't need to do it in Quicken, unless Quicken is faster or easier.

Yes, that is what I do too. So I conclude - for me - the upgrade is not worth it. Since I find:

1. No problem paying at provider's website
2. Free Bill Pay from my FI for all other transactions

Ps56k2

Does your current FI offer online bill payment ? 
I happen to have Chase,
and they allow me to connect Quicken to their online bill paying....  
Running Deluxe R25.10

Lysander Spooner

@ps56k

Yes, my FI supports Quicken Bill Pay via Direct Connect. I have that setup. 
I assume that feature continues to work in Deluxe.

However, I often make payments directly on the payee website. I then enter the transactions manually in Quicken. Not really a big deal. Since the Quick Pay feature does not have scheduled payments it is really not of interest to me.

For example, every so often I will buy an appliance at Home Depot that has a 12 month zero interest same as cash deal. I can go on the HD website and schedule a series of payments to ensure I don't void the deal and then in Quicken set up a schedulded transaction for the number payments required. After that it is all automatic. Then all I have to do is download the transaction data and reconcile my accounts.

It is free transaction processing and does not require that I pay Quicken for the pleasure of paying.

Ps56k2

Just curious - why do you make a payment on the payee website vs making the online payment entry in Quicken... which in my case would then get "Sent" to Chase, which in turn would be paid via their Chase Online Bill Payment.

I basically enter ALL my bill payments into the Quicken world, which then does a "Send" to Chase.... all FREE - and using Quicken Deluxe -

Lysander Spooner

I guess it is out of habit. I gain some level of comfort knowing the transactions are actually scheduled at the payee's website. They do an ACH debit exactly when instructed. Maybe it is somewhat irrational, but hey, it works for me.

jacobs

Lysander Spooner said:

Do you use Quick Pay, if so is the feature worth the upgrade price over Deluxe? I am not sure why I would pay for this if:

1. I get free bill pay from my FI.
2. I can schedule a payment on most bank / credit card websites for free.

Other than a small convience in making immediate payments what advantage does Quick Pay have?

From my understanding the current release of Quick Pay only offers immediate payment, there is no ability to schecule future payments. I can do this on the creditor website directly.

You would use QuickPay if you want to pay all/many of your bills in one place at one time. I have always paid all my credit card bills by logging onto each provider's website and initiating a transaction. I don't find it a huge bother, and I do it while reconciling each account in Quicken, but when I think about it, it's a lot of logging on, with different ways to make the payment on each site. (And then I still go to Quicken and record the transfer transaction of the payment I just made.) If I switched to doing those payments in Quicken, I could pay multiple bills without the separate logins, and without entering it manually in Quicken after making the payment elsewhere. So I definitely see the appeal, and am thinking about whether I want o change my approach.

Whether it's worth the time to set up, and deal with the periodic outages with various financial institutions, and the higher cost of Premier over Deluxe, is an equation each user needs to calculate for themselves. If your bank gives you a roughly equivalent service for free, then you probably don't need to do it in Quicken, unless Quicken is faster or easier.

As for not being able to schedule transactions in the future, I think that's a significant limitation for many people at the moment, but Marcus has stated that this functionality will be coming sometime in the month ahead. So getting started with it now might make sense knowing the functionality of scheduling is coming later this year.

smayer97

As an alternative, I always set up my credit cards with pre-authorized payment so that the total balance is paid off on the due date (credit cards also allow PAP of minimum balance; few allow setting up fixed amounts) then I set up a scheduled transaction in Quicken and all I have to do is enter the amount of the transfer payment.  No need for Quick Pay (not available in Canada anyway) and no need to worry about outages.

Lysander Spooner

jacobs said:

You would use QuickPay if you want to pay all/many of your bills in one place at one time. I have always paid all my credit card bills by logging onto each provider's website and initiating a transaction. I don't find it a huge bother, and I do it while reconciling each account in Quicken...

Whether it's worth the time to set up, and deal with the periodic outages with various financial institutions, and the higher cost of Premier over Deluxe, is an equation each user needs to calculate for themselves. If your bank gives you a roughly equivalent service for free, then you probably don't need to do it in Quicken, unless Quicken is faster or easier.

Yes, that is what I do too. So I conclude - for me - the upgrade is not worth it. Since I find:

1. No problem paying at provider's website
2. Free Bill Pay from my FI for all other transactions