Quicken Mobile App - Paying Bills

gresco

I'm confused. I recently paid a couple of bills (i.e., added transactions) using the mobile app. They were never actually "paid" and I incurred late fees. I called Quicken Support and a supervisor told me you cannot pay bills using the mobile app. Is this true? If so, why? (That would sort of defeat the purpose of being able to pay bills on my cell phone while travelling.) Thanks.

Chris_QPW

@gresco Quicken Mobile and Quicken Web don't support paying bills. It isn't isn't "defeating the purpose" if it was never a feature.  The "purpose" of Quicken Mobile and Quicken Web are to "tracking" your transactions, not to pay your bills.

Maybe in the future they might put such a feature in place, but it doesn't exist now.
You entering a transaction into an account is just "manual entry" into that account, it doesn't affect "the real world".  You would only do such to reflect what was done in the real world.  As in you pay for something and you then record it in Quicken manually.  In most cases you wouldn't even need to do this since you probably use a credit card and that transaction would be downloaded at a later time.

gresco

The "real world" IS mobile computing in 2020. This makes no sense, why would anyone NOT build this feature in? Who would want to continually try to "manually" load transactions into the Mobile App (in order to keep it in sync) when it seems they HAVE to use their laptop/desktop to pay bills on Quicken anyway? That's totally impractical. Actually, it's unbelievable.

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @gresco

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to ask your question, although I apologize that the feature you are needing is not currently offered by the mobile app.

If you haven't done so already, please take a moment to add your vote to the ongoing Idea to add bill pay to the mobile app, available here.

Thank you,
-Quicken Tyka

Chris_QPW

@gresco Note there is nothing stopping you from using your financial institution's mobile app and paying your bills through their bill payment system.

gresco

Well, of course not. But, I thought I was paying for a cloud-based subscription that would have everything in one place for both simplicity and convenience. This truly makes no sense to me, so I assume it's because the banks are prohibiting Quicken from being able to do this. Like I said previously, I "thought" I was actually paying bills through the Quicken Mobile App only to find out the hard way that I incurred late fees because the Mobile App never even warned me that it was not doing so for me after I entered them into it. I see little to no need to further use this subscription product of yours if it is just tied to a laptop/desktop computer and not also my phone.

Chris_QPW

@gresco you are mistaken, Quicken Subscription isn't a "cloud-based subscription".

Subscription in this case only refers to how the user is paying for the product, and the fact that they get update to that product while the subscription is valid.

Quicken has always been and continues to be a Desktop application they happens to have  "companion" mobile and web apps to help when away from the Desktop for "a time".  It by no means is a "cloud based application".

The data synced to the "Quicken cloud account" is a small fraction of the data in the Quicken Desktop data file.

gresco

I really don't think this a missing feature on Quicken's part, but rather a prohibition by the banks of allowing you to do so. Otherwise, no developer would leave out such a vital function for "actually paying" bills in a Mobile App if that weren't the case.
No user wants to manually reconcile "multiple sets of book" to keep them in sync. That's as old-fashioned and inconvenient as it gets. Maybe your employer is not telling you this, but your customers, like me, have a right to know. That functionality was so obvious to me that I just assumed your Mobile App was actually paying bills.
So, if that's the case, that's a serious shortcoming in our mobile world that Quicken will likely never be able to fulfill because the banks probably want that functionality for themselves rather than let a company such as yours profit off of them.

Chris_QPW

Well I disagree, as a user that has been using Quicken since 1992, and following these forums for more than 10 years, and as a developer for about 40 years.

And you also seem to have the wrong impression of who you are talking to. I'm another user, not a Quicken Inc employee.

For a change the banks aren't the problem, at least no in the sense of try to block it.

Quicken has had bill paying in different forms for more than 20 years.
There is the one form that about 500 financial institutions support that is using Direct Connect through Quicken to the financial institution's bill paying system.

And then there is Quicken Bill Pay, which has been supported for almost the same amount of time.  It is where Quicken talks to a third party bill payment system.  Unfortunately that system is going away at the end of August.

And that is where Quicken Bill Manager comes in which is another bill paying through a third party bill paying system. Currently Quicken Inc has been struggling to get this one up and running trying to replace Quicken Bill Pay.

But the points here is first off these systems don't appear out of the blue.  They take a lot of time and work to develop and to get right.  And Quicken Inc's primary focus is on the Desktop app not the Mobile app.

And the other part of this that at least with the last two bill paying services the actual "interface" between the bill paying service and the financial institution is between that third party service and the financial institution. There isn't anything their for the financial institution to "block".

Quicken sends commands to the third party, which in turn deals with the "billers".
There isn't anything stopping Quicken Inc from using the same functions in a mobile/web application to do the same, EXCEPT for time, work, and money to do it.

Just because you made an assumption about what Quicken Mobile is, doesn't make it a reality.

Chris_QPW

Note that Quicken Mobile was added in 2013, and has never had a bill pay GUI.
And on these forums the request for paying bill through it over the years can be counted on one hand.

You may think it is "vital" and "impossible" that it doesn't exist, but the majority of Quicken users have never "missed it".

Chris_QPW

@Quicken_Tyka I tried your link, but it doesn't set to "null" and just comes back to this thread.

Here is the link to that idea for people to vote on:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7641643/bill-pay-through-mobile-app-4-legacy-votes

gresco

As the saying goes, this isn't rocket science, particularly for a company that is actually in this business. I, too, have been a 20-year or so user of Quicken. I just recently went through the whole BillPay issue, which is actually how I ended up with the subscription service because my previous desktop version was being discontinued.
I had always felt encumbered by having to rely on a desktop/laptop-based application, so I ended up being rather glad of the subscription cloud-based system. However, that was largely because I felt I would now be able to pay my bills when I was away from my computer and could have the convenience of doing so on my phone. Much to my chagrin, I now find that isn't the case.
BTW, to each his own, but it's curious to me why you're an apologist for Quicken, particularly around such a key missing function. I still believe it's probably some sort of prohibition on Quicken's part. (Possibly that's why Intuit sold it off since they could see it coming. Who knows.)

Quicken_Tyka

Hello all,

This thread has become argumentative and is now being closed.

The ability to pay bills via the mobile is currently not supported if you would like to see this in the future, please add your vote at the link below.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7641643/bill-pay-through-mobile-app-4-legacy-votes

Thank you,

-Quicken Tyka