Unclear about how Quicken Bill Manager works

Michael Saltz

I am unclear about how Quicken Bill Manager works. Every month I get payment notifications from several credit card companies. In one instance, the bank I use to pay all my credit cards issues two of them and they have the same login IDs and passwords. I've already set up all my accounts in the Bills & Payments section of Quicken and established whatever else Bill Manager asks for. But my question is, what actually happens when I'm notified that I have a Balance Due on my credit card? Do I have to order a payment, as I do now? Does Quicken automatically query the bank for any due balances? If so, what happens and how am I notified?

In other words, it's unclear to me what the process is.

Frankx

Hi @Michael Saltz,

Yes, it can be confusing and will probably take us sometime to get comfortable with the change.

However, the way is its supposed to work is as follows:

Under Bill Manager we can do everything in the Bill's dashboard which includes:
 -  downloading bills in Quicken
 -  tracking bills that are due
 -  paying bills from within Quicken.

With respect to the four questions you asked, I believe that the guidance located in this LINK should answer all those questions.  However, if you have any followup questions, feel free to ask.

Good luck!

Frankx

Michael Saltz

That doesn't quite answer it. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens.

jrich75

You might want to read through the following post and related discussion:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20105786#Comment_20105786

It provides some additional information on how Quick Pay actually functions. You say you have done everything Bill Manager asked for so if all your bills are set up for online bill retrieval, you will likely be using Quick Pay to make most payments.

The bills update process needs to initiated from within Quicken.  It can be included as part of One Step Update or it can be done from the Bills & Income tab. If there is a new balance due retrieved by a bills update, it should show up adjacent to the online biller in the Bills & Income tab. 
As far as making a payment, while Quicken is supposed to retrieve the balance due for an online biller, it does not currently have a way to pay it automatically.  You have to go into Quicken and initiate payment. After you initiate payment, there will be some status reports and ultimately, the Last Payment column in BIlls & Income should show the date of payment and the Current Bill column will show Awaiting Next Bill.

That is the way it is supposed to work.  Actually there are still quite a few bugs in the system.  Some online billers can't be set up so they have to be monitored by the user and paid by check or another method.  Sometimes bills are not retrieved or delayed and payments are missed if you don't realize it and make the required payment.  Sometimes the Quick Pay process goes awry (they are relying on the billers payment system) or the biller wants to charge for accepting payment this way.  You can see several of these issues if you search the community for Bill Manager posts. 

And that's just Quick Pay.  Check Pay can be used to pay billers that can't be set up for online bill retrieval.  For those, you would need to continue monitoring the accounts and initiating payments.