new Quicken Bill Pay Manager limit on payments

wthommes

I was using Quicken Bill Pay for close to two years now and I am making often at least twice the number of payments that will be allowed with the new Bill Pay starting in May. This makes Quicken for the Mac (I am using the premier version) unusable. The bill paying is an essential task for which am using Quicken. Is there any chance that The limit of payments will be increased by the time Quicken Bill Pay is discontinued? With Quicken Bill Pay I just got charged for the payments that surpassed the initial amount allowed. Why can't that be done with the new arrangement?

smayer97

Well, the reason Quicken is making this change, which has not been communicated clearly, is that apparently Metavante, the supplier of the original service, is discontinuing the service (though the reason why has not been disclosed) and so Quicken is developing a replacement. It seems they decided to release the new service well in advance of all the features being available but also long before the old service ends, presumably to give customers time to adapt and make the transition.

Note that Quicken is working to implement additional functionality but no time frame is given.

smayer97

In case you missed the updated announcement:

Update 3/20/20: Quicken Bill Pay Now Discontinues on 8/31/20: Introducing Quicken Bill Manager!

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @wthommes

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to post your question.

If you haven't done so already, please take a moment to review the announcement and information available here.

I hope this helps to clarify!

wthommes

I have read the announcement. That is why I got alarmed as to the limited amount of payments possible.
This is the paragraph I am referring to:
"There is no current way to add more payments to your total monthly payments, but we are working to provide this option. If you reach your payment 'limit' for the month, you will see a message that you can't make more payments."

jacobs

@wthommes  It appears that Quicken management is not yet prepared to say much more than they have in that announcement. They are aware some users -- they say it's a small percentage of Quicken Bill Pay customers -- send more payments than they have initially enabled, and that there may be a way to purchase additional payments, like with Quicken Bill Pay, in the future. But they're not saying yes, it will definitely happen, and certainly not saying when. They'd likely need to build new ecommerce/billing functionality, so I wouldn't expect it by the time Quicken Bill Pay is terminated.

So if I were in your shoes, I'd be using the next two months to explore what alternatives you mighy want to choose. Does your bank offer any free (or paid) bill payment service? Can you pay some of the bills you currently pay via Quicken Bill Pay on service providers websites, to cut down on the number of bill payment transactions you need from Quicken? Can you print and mail your own checks for some payments, again to cut down on the number of bill payment transactions you need from Quicken? I know these aren't your desired ways of doing things, but unless Quicken does a significant about-face on the limits, you need to develop a plan that will get your bills paid starting in June.

wthommes

thanks Jacobs
I used my bank bill pay, which is free, but the data it imports in
to Quicken is very useless. I have to reenter the payees, categories and tags after importing which kind of defeats the advantage of using Quicken.
Looks like I have no choice but wait. I am very disappointed. After years of using Quicken since the nineties, and sticking to it even through their dramatic changes and problems with the new version. Maybe it is time to finally give up on them.

jacobs

I wonder if any of the past problems you had with importing the transactions from your bank would work better now that you can create renaming rules for Payees and QuickFill rules for categories?

I agree that it's disappointing they would roll out the new bill pay solution -- which they've apparently been working on for much of the past year -- without functionality for scheduling future transactions and without any solution for users who pay more bills online than the limits they've set. Instead of having users cheering this more customer-friendly approach than the service run by Metavante, they came up short and left at least some of thier customer base frustrated. It may be that they thought they'd have more time and Metavante pushed them to launch sooner than they thought they'd need to. 

smayer97

[removed - violation of community guidelines]

Elizabeth Weinberger

 I too make more payments than the new allotted amount
 (Removed-Rant/Off-Topic)

Elizabeth Weinberger

By the way, the alert notice only partially displays on my screen, and you can't enlarge the box it is printed in. I am using a Lenovo laptap with the latest version of Windows. Did anyone check it out before sending it out?

smayer97

Well, the reason Quicken is making this change, which has not been communicated clearly, is that apparently Metavante, the supplier of the original service, is discontinuing the service (though the reason why has not been disclosed) and so Quicken is developing a replacement. It seems they decided to release the new service well in advance of all the features being available but also long before the old service ends, presumably to give customers time to adapt and make the transition.

Note that Quicken is working to implement additional functionality but no time frame is given.

smayer97

In case you missed the updated announcement:

Update 3/20/20: Quicken Bill Pay Now Discontinues on 8/31/20: Introducing Quicken Bill Manager!

Dave in SF

I'm very, very happy about the 90 day extension of the "old" Quicken Bill Pay Service. Thank you, Quicken and Metavante! That helps a lot during this stressful time.

My hope (please, please, please!) is that Quicken can use this time to implement payment scheduling using the new Quicken Bill Manager so that it will actually be useful at the point we are compelled to switch to it. The current functionality, with no ability to schedule payments, makes it completely useless to me.

magoodm

wthommes
I too was a Quicken Bill Pay user for many years and frequently went over the limit. A couple of years ago I started using my bank's (Chase) bill pay service. Chase is linked to my Quicken account so I do the same thing I did with Quicken Bill Pay - I initiate the payment in Quicken, it sends it to Chase and Chase pays it. If your bank offers bill pay and it will connect with Quicken you might give it a try. I'm really glad I left QBP.