Grieving about Quicken Bill Manager replacing Quicken Bill Pay

Randy Havenor

I am very disappointed about the functionality and extremely limited use of Quicken Bill Manager that is advertised as an improvement over Quicken Bill Pay. As a long-term user of Quicken Bill Pay, I am unable to see a real benefit to using the new system. In fact, my needs will not allow me to use the new system. Therefore, this will probably be the "improvement" that causes me to quit using Quicken. I purchased Quicken primarily to have Quicken Bill Pay tend to my bills with the automatic rules and minimal attention.

I have been using Quicken and Quicken Bill Pay for many, many years. Quicken Bill Pay's functionality and usefulness has been worth the subscription cost. I commonly make 25 to 30 payments per month through Quicken Bill Pay. The MAXIMUM of 12 electronic payments and 6 checks informed me that I must find another system. Additionally, I tend to my bills every two weeks, not daily. Any system, such as Quicken Bill Manager, that only allows "right now" payments is not for me. It is apparent that I must find another system of paying my bills while tracking my finances; a system that meets my needs.

My hope, albeit not a real expectation, is that Quicken increase the functionality and capacity of Quicken Bill Manager before they terminate use of Quicken Bill Pay. I am a highly loyal customer that would like to continue to buy this product; but it has to work for me. As advertised Quicken Bill Manager does not meet my needs, and my needs are not that demanding.

jlmillermd

I agree. I've used Quicken since the DOS Days, and Quicken Bill Manager is not ready for prime time, and has added a tremendous amount of confusion compared to Quicken Bill Pay. Trying to find help for the new app is frustrating. It feels like we're going backwards. Like Randy, I'm seriously considering finding a more user-friendly software. Is there a way to give QBM 1 star?

Wedtwuk

I had a chat with Quicken support this morning. I too have used Bill Pay very happily for many years. Replacing it with Bill Manager is a disaster for many reasons. Firstly, it is limited to only six ACH type payments and six checks per MONTH. I use many more that that. The other problem is that the payments must be in real time. There is no scheduling ability nor the ability to enter recurring payments. I'm not sure what prompted Quicken to abandon Bill Pay but I think it will cost them many customers.

On a positive note the Quicken support person said that as a result of the Covid-19 virus that they were extending the life of Bill Pay through the end of August 2020. Hopefully before then Quicken will realize their mistake and take positive action to keep Bill Pay.

jlmillermd

Does anyone know how to revert to Bill Pay after updating to Quicken Bill Manager?

hrosenharry

I did the setup today. I agree, this is not ready to be deployed. The functionality should be the same or better that bill pay. The most egregious loss of functionality is that you have to REMEMBER to pay the bill. In BIll Pay, you pay the bill, set the date you want it paid, it is transmitted, and then you don't need to worry about it again. I typically pay a week before the due date.

However, with the new bill manager, I will have to go back in and pay it on the date I want - can't preset the date. So, it is a throwback to before all of the bill papers that came before. Your average bank site is better that this.

I think all of my institutions are still there. So you could use the "send" option when you pay a bill - not using bill manager - and when you update, it probably will go to bill payer as usual. That is good until they turn it off on Aug 31. But we should all complain that they should not switch over until they have the functionality improved.

NotACPA

The decision to end Quicken BillPay, a service that's actually offered by Metavante, was made by Metavante, not Quicken.

You can try to sign up with Metavante directly ... but it won't be accessible thru Quicken.

SO, your choices (in no particular order) are:

1. Quicken Bill Manager,
2. Metavante account, that's not accessible thru Quicken
3. BillPay from another provider (I use my bank's billpay service, and download those into Q)
4. No Billlpay service at all.

Barryng

Quicken Bill Manager is certainly not, as advertised, an improvement over Quicken Bill Pay. I have used Quicken for the past 20 years for two accounts. Bill Pay was well designed quickly allowing entries directly into the check register from an On Line Payee list. I could set up multiple payments in advance when convenient and then simply "Update" once to send them at the appropriate time. The new, and certainly not better Bill Manager, allows only "right now" payments. This means each check must be processed one by one only on the day I am ready to send it. Additionally, and I can no longer depend on the date as being the date the check will be received. The Bill Pay system was intuitive and easy to use. The new Bill Manager system is terrible. Worse, there does not appear to be any software out there that is a good replacement for it. Quicken Bill Pay was not broken and it did not need fixing.

Since it exactly applies to me and I cannot say it any better, quoting the first post above "My hope, albeit not a real expectation, is that Quicken increase the functionality and capacity of Quicken Bill Manager before they terminate use of Quicken Bill Pay. I am a highly loyal customer that would like to continue to buy this product; but it has to work for me. As advertised Quicken Bill Manager does not meet my needs, and my needs are not that demanding."

A very disappointing end to 20 years of using a mostly excellent product.

Ps56k2

As some of us have mentioned - you might take a look at your own bank, and see if they offer an online bill payment feature - I happen to use Chase and it works great.

What bank do you use ? 

There are hundreds that support bill payment,
AND also support a direct connection with Quicken. 
Enter the transactions into Quicken, perform the usual One Step Update,
and the transactions are uploaded into the bank bill payments.
Take a look - .... Tools --> Account List -
and see if your bank is listed as - Direct Connect - and has Bill Payment avail -

Barryng

Quicken phone support told me today one step update button would no longer work as each check will set to be paid as soon as it is entered from the dialog under the "Bills & Income" tab (the one test check I just sent bore this out). They also told me that all my "On Line Payees" must be manually transferred, one by one from Bill pay to Bill Manager even though it appears to be the same software (its a computer - why cant it do that all at once?). I also found I cannot pre-enter multiple payees to be sent their checks when I am ready to send them by just using the "One Step Update Button" (I do this once a month with eight payees).

Again, the Quicken software presented essentially the same check register as it had since I started using Quicken in January, 2000. Using the check register to enter bills to paid by Quicken or just entering manual entries for direct deposits, etc. worked very well and was very intuitive. It was not broken so it is beyond any possible logic why Quicken would make such radical changes that just make interfacing with it much harder, time consuming, and less intuitive. After 20 years it makes me angry to see something that worked so well changed for no obvious reason. I also do not appreciate now having to find a new way of paying bills after 20 years of an excellent system. Changing the name from Bill Pay to Bill Manager I am sure was driven by legitimate business/contractual reasons but that doesn't explain why the software interface is now so much more time consuming and annoying to use.

I find it desirable to have the Quicken Check Register and account data all stored on my computer, not on someone's cloud. I can quickly print any report needed, have full control and accountability for backing up my data, and do not have to worry about using a bank or some other cloud based service to be hacked. Just using the mouse I can very quickly review/find any check going back 20 years or print any report needed for my accountant in just minutes. ps56k, you are right, I am going to start using the banks but they will not be able to provide the same convenience, ease of use, security, etc. that Quicken did until now.

Chris_QPW

"I find it desirable to have the Quicken Check Register and account data all stored on my computer, not on someone's cloud."

Since this thread is about bill paying it sounds like you have been working under a false sense of security.

There isn't any bill paying system that isn't "cloud" based, and that includes Quicken Bill Pay.

Not to say that Quicken Bill Pay isn't secure, but there isn't any reason to believe it was any more secure than Quicken Bill Manager is.  And it if I had to pick a bill system that is the "most secure" it would certainly be the one at my financial institution, not some third party service.

Barryng

Quicken Bill Pay "cloud" only knows about the checks I ask it to mail and the associated bank data. There is no reason I can think of why it should have any other knowledge of my banking including manually written checks, deposits, transfers, etc. The data base of everything in my register is stored only on my internal and external storage devices.

I understand things change over the years. But, what I perceive here, are normal business changes (Intuit spinoffs, Metavante, etc.) that resulted in unnecessary and much less friendly/useful changes to the software interface. No matter what goes on under the hood the software interface can be anything the software publisher wants it to be so why cannot it not be just as friendly as it previously was? I think Quicken will still do what I need but in a manner that makes it so unfriendly to use it has become unacceptable.

Chris_QPW

How do you think it knows how to send those checks?

Quicken Bill Pay works mainly with ACH transfers.  Which means it has your account number and is authorized to send transfers for you. If someone was able to hack the Quicken Bill Pay servers they could send out transfers as they saw fit.

Chris_QPW

As for the design of Quicken Bill Manager, I have worked on enough projects in my 40 years of programming to know exactly how they got themselves into this "corner/process".  Online Bills came in years ago and when it was put in they decided that the focus of that view would be the bill with the reminders as the secondary "linking".  When they needed switch bill paying systems they naturally went to the same service provider for that, and tied it into the same system.

I certainly don't agree with all the decisions they have made over the years, and certainly not in this area.  But it is their product, not mine, and what's more they aren't always wrong (in my opinion) in not doing what at least some customers are requesting.

For instance they aren't wrong in not creating a method for converting over all the bills from Quicken Bill Pay to Quicken Bill Manager.  First off it would have taken a lot of time, time that they really needed to get Quicken Bill Manager even working to the level it does now.  Second off it would most likely have resulted in a series of bugs when "most, but not all" converted correctly.  And last, it would have all been done for a system that basically is thrown away after it is used.

Pitchwedge

Understand all of above posts. I started 6 weeks to 2 months ago to transition to Bill Manager, linked with payees, sent some Check Pays, etc. It just was too cumbersome and fraught with delays in payment (Check Pay) and errors in communications with vendors, etc. I gave up. I posted what I thought was a lot of constructive comments with the flaws and provided very specifics of the issues I was encountering. Never received any comment from Quicken moderators, our thread was declared "off subject and rant," and I cannot find it. I also am a 20 year customer and Bill Pay worked flawlessly for me. I have to keep the annual subscription; have too much invested in it for planning, portfolio tracking, etc. Using my bank bill pay and it works just fine. Really sad that the new owners (H.I.G. Capital) have impaired such a great product. Wishful thinking but would hope they could come to terms with the 3rd party that provided Bill Pay and continue it. Unfortunately Quicken is a small blip in their huge portfolio and doubt anything like that will happen!

Chris_QPW

Frankly before they even as they released the first cut I knew that it was going to be pretty bad.  Why?  Because it was based on the "Online Bills".

Online Bills has years of history, including time where it was corrupting data files.  And at the best of times some bills weren't updating, or other kinds of problems like doing "strange" things to the reminders they were linked to.  Not to mention that from day one if you linked a reminder with an online bill all estimating was turned off.  And some bills would give zero for the estimate when in "Awaiting Next Bill" state.

I think for the most part people just gave up on Online Bills more than anything really getting fixed.  And then we have Quicken Bill Manager based on that.  How could it possibly be reliably?

I don't use a bill pay service, instead I have all my bills paid with automatic payments (biller pulls funds from my credit card), which has worked for me over 25 years.  But if I did, from what I have seen on here I would never trust Quicken Bill Manager.

Dave Hutchison

> @Chris_QPW said:
> I don't use a bill pay service, instead I have all my bills paid with automatic payments (biller pulls funds from my credit card), which has worked for me over 25 years

Virtually if not all, mortgage payments can not be made by credit card unless you use a third-party vendor. For example, one charges 2.8% that is popular and only works with Discovery and Mastercard, not VISA. There are other vendors that will not accept credit cards since it is costly for them via the merchant fees.

I would love to pay my mortgage via cc for reward points, although unless paid off quickly, would reduce your FICO scores due to utilization rates.

While not trying to defend Quicken too much, remember it was their Bill Pay provider that cut them off. It would be interesting if they just dumped them to concentrate on their other larger businesses or if 1) raise their fee which new Quicken powers refused to pay or, maybe, just a cost-cutting move by new Quicken owners.

Like many here, I have used Quicken for 20+ years and rely on it for business, integration with Turbo Tax etc. and will continue to use it. However, while I have a CPA nerd background. I gave up on the new Bill Manager and actually found it very easy to use my Banks service, which uses direct connect with Quicken (MidFirst a smaller bank).

Regardless, getting mad at Quicken folks will likely not solve their problem of why they changed. "It is what it is," unfortunately

Chris_QPW

I actually used the "short version" of what I do.  I use the credit card when I can, but there are a few payments that I do have to use my checking account, but the procedure is the same.  And on a very rare occurrence I might write a check.  Actually recently I did use the my financial institution's bill paying service to pay for a yearly Earthquake insurance bill.  But it is extremely rare for me.

And yeah I totally agree that I treat it as "what it is" even though I certainly disagree with how Quicken Inc does things from time to time, for the most part they do a good job and it is their product not mine, and I don't see anyway that it is going to change.  People just have to figure out what works best for them with the new situation.  No matter what we might want the world isn't going to allow you to do the same thing forever.

Good Ol Dan

After like 25+ years of using Quicken, a few years ago I changed my primary banking to an institution that does not support Quicken Bill Pay. I considered (for a second or two) using Quicken's own bill paying service after I (needlessly) purchased the "Premier" edition of Quicken for that feature... but ultimately decided it was just not worth it. The new bank has an excellent and efficient bill paying system, although I do now have to create both a transaction in Quicken and a bill pay transaction at the bank... no big deal. I can schedule a bill payment at any time in the future on the bank's system, no problem. The bank system also remembers the payment info, etc. I enter the bank's confirmation number into the Quicken "Memo" field for each payment..

Besides cutting loose from Quicken's sketchy bill pay, this also allows me to easily "shadow" Quicken in [removed], which I have also done for the past few years. [removed - no soliciting] with double entry, etc., and I've been doing this to keep an option open and protect my data just in case Quicken decides to make another significant product change that I just couldn't live with.

I'll probably renew my Quicken subscription again this year, but will "downgrade" to the "Deluxe" version since that's all I need... especially without bill pay.

HerrS

I wish I had seen this thread a few months ago before I started to get "dinged" with late payment charges due to my erroneous thinking that Bill Manager was the functional equivalent of Online Bill Pay - which it most certainly is not.

I can agree with most people on this thread that the new version is a Kludge and should be entered into the Worst Intuit Programming Mistake of All Time contest, but it's really worse than even that.

Sure, you can schedule payments through bank bill pay services, but what is really annoyingly missing is the "IF, THEN, ELSE" part of Online Bill Pay. This is where you could say the following; IF the bill is more/less than _______, THEN pay ______, OR ELSE pay __________. This made the monthly bills totally automatic when you might be paying down a credit card for more than the recommended minimum payment or were scheduling regular recurring amounts to pay off a 0% balance amount over the 6-12 interest-free time span. All I can see that bank bill pay does is allows you to enter specific amounts prior to the due/send date but you must do that on a routine regular monthly style basis or else problems arise - nothing automatic about it, it must be monitored weekly/monthly/daily to avoid errors and omissions.

On Online Bill Pay I could quickly see the queue of pending bills with attached View Bill windows and adjust or reschedule future payments - not an option I can see in Bill Manager, not even an obvious date of payment queue window.

All in all, after well over 20+ years of using Quicken from DOS days - I'm looking for a different check register program - since without a functioning Bill Pay/Manager module that's all Quicken actually is now.

Ps56k2

Good Ol Dan said:

After like 25+ years of using Quicken, a few years ago I changed my primary banking to an institution that does not support Quicken Bill Pay..

Just wondering what specific bank ?

imamuch

I concur with several of the comments above regarding the move to Quicken Bill Manager. I have been using Quicken for almost 30 years, so the Company has locked me in to continued use due to the availability of my transactional and balance history. Prio to the pending move to Bill Manager, such a lock-in has not been at issue. I have found that Bill Pay is a significant step down from Quicken Bill Pay, and it's mostly not due to my current level of comfort with BIll Pay. I won't get into the details here, but suffice that as an experienced user, I will be moving to paying bills through my banks and avoid using Bill Manager. [removed - violation of Community Guidelines]

Sue C

I am also highly disappointed, and am a very long time Quicken user. I have already moved my repeating payments to my bank, and as someone noted, will need to look into other check register programs. I'm actually a Mac user, but have a Windows machine for the sole purpose of running Quicken for Windows (the Mac version was always too limited). Maybe it's time to switch it all up, now that core functionality is missing.

chcook

[Removed-Inaccurate/Disruptive]