Schedule Quicken Bill Manager Payment from Calendar

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: quicken bill manager: periodic and automatic bill payments?.

kantarjiev

I'm waiting for/hoping that the Calendar will be extended so that the "online payment" option goes to the new Bill Manager's payment method. Right now, I don't see any way to pay my regular payments from Calendar and I'm confused about how I'm supposed to convert (e.g.) my mortgage payment.

kantarjiev

The release notes seem to indicate that some changed were made to Calendar, but I really can't see what they are. I don't understand how we're meant to use this new scheduled payment feature.

kantarjiev

I don't understand why scheduling payment from Calendar can't be made to work here. It has a "online payment" drop-down selection - it isn't clear if that means the old or new system, but I'm guessing it is only doing the old system and will stop working. This is a disaster, since some of my monthly (e.g. mortgage) payments are to be scheduled soon ...

PeterK

Agreed.
I used to be able to pay a bill just by clicking on the reminder that shows up at the bottom of the register. But now it warns me that this just enters it in the register, but doesn't actually pay it. Have we totally lost this functionality? I need to go to the Bills & Income section to pay?

rccampbell

For years, I have used a combination of the “Bill Pay” system, the Quicken Calendar, and Scheduled Transactions in Quicken to manage my bills.

The Calendar was at the center of this. It allowed me to:
• Project my checking account balance into the future using information from Scheduled Transactions (i.e. Paycheck deposits, bill payments)
• Identify upcoming bills and when they are due (again, based on information from Scheduled Transactions)

For a given bill (ex. a credit card), my practice would be to:
• create an Online Payee for the vendor
• create a Scheduled Transaction for the bill (with payment directed to the Online Payee, in the case of credit card payments the “Category” would be the corresponding credit card account in Quicken, with the appropriate payment frequency (monthly, etc.)).

Once all this was set up, it was very easy to monitor the Calendar for upcoming payments and “execute” them from within the Calendar. When I would execute a credit card payment from within the Calendar, the following would happen:
• The transaction would be created in my check register, ready to be uploaded for payment via Bill Pay
• A corresponding transaction would be created in the credit card account (a transaction showing a payment had been made from the checking account; this was essentially a “transfer” in Quicken from the checking account to the credit card account)
• The entry in the calendar would be changed from indicating an upcoming payment to indicating a payment had been made
• In Scheduled Transactions, the next occurrence of the transaction would be updated to indicate next month

All of this would happen by simply executing the transaction from within Calendar. It worked very well.

This no longer works with Bill Manager.

With Bill Manager, the “linkage” between Scheduled Transactions and online bill payments seems to be lost.

Now, I set up an “Online Bill”, enter my (credit card account) credentials and allow Quicken to establish a QuickPay item in Bills & Income. I can send the vendor a payment from here, but there is no linkage to Scheduled Transactions (and the resulting transactions that are displayed in Calendar).

In order for me to monitor upcoming bills and to project my checking account balance, I must now create “dummy” Scheduled Transactions. These dummy transactions appear on my calendar and permit me to see upcoming bills and project my checking account balance into the future. However, when it is time to pay a bill, I must go to Bills & Income and execute the transaction from there. I then must go back to Calendar and tell it to “Ignore” the subject payment (if I execute the transaction in the Calendar, I will wind up with TWO credit card payment entries in my check register).

This practice of creating dummy Scheduled Transactions and then ignoring them as they come due is wasted effort.

I have been a loyal Quicken user for almost 30 years now (since the DOS days). I STRONGLY encourage you to improve the work processes I described above.

Thank you for your attention.

rccampbell

UPDATE: Forget Bill Manager.

I'm just going online to my bank and paying bills from there. It's easy and it's free (I've never tried their bill payment feature prior to now). I gave up on Quicken's Bill Manager after I tried using it to send a QuickPay payment to my credit card for $2k. Quicken would not let me do it. It gave me a message saying the amount had to be between $10 and $1,406.

Using my bank's bill payment feature also eliminates the confusion I mentioned in my previous post that involved creating "dummy" Scheduled Transactions. Now, those are no longer dummy transactions, I actually use them to make the appropriate entries in my checking and credit card registers in Quicken.

I've now removed all my entries in Bill Manager. I never did feel comfortable providing Quicken with my username and password for my credit card accounts, car payment account, etc. I've since changed all my passwords at the vendors for each of those accounts as well.

tpherson

I find the transition from Quicken BillPay to Bill Manager to be awful. Can't tell you how much time i have wasted on this. probably spent more time trying to convert than I spent all of last year paying my regular bills.

I don't understand why you can't pay your bills from the calendar using either the Online Bills and QuickPay or with CheckPay. Now, the reminder in the calendar is useless.

Process has become very cumbersome, 2 and three steps to do what used to be able to be done in one step directly from the Calendar in QuickBooks. Have used Quicken for over 25 years, this is a real step backwards.

I hope Quicken is listening!!!!

tpherson

Also, why is all the Quicken BillPay stuff still in the software if it is no longer works? For example, if I go to write and print checks, Quicken BillPay is an option (which does not work), but you can't use CheckPay? this is just plain horrible implementation. It is confusing and not at all user friendly.

Checkpay should have just replaced BillPay and the functionality within the software should have been basically seamless. to some extent, it would have been just as easy to switch software and start over.

Kayla_Peacock

I would like to see an option for adding a new transaction (in my case, I'd like to be able to add it directly from the calendar because that it what I use to monitor cashflow) rather than adding it to as a bill in Bills & Income. There are transactions that I like to plan for that are not necessarily 'bills'.

jrich75

Isn't this just a Bill & Income Reminder?  I have reminders set up for transfers and income as well as routine bill payments.  Can you clarify?

UKR

Working with the full Calendar view in Quicken for Windows, you can easily add one-time transactions (in addition to recurring reminders).

Right-click on a day box within the Calendar. Select "Add income" or "Add expense" from the popup