Bills not showing due in Bills & Income Tab - Quicken 2020

Alex100

Problem: Occasionally, an online bill won't refresh (even though other bills are refreshing) and therefore won't show as "due" in the Bills & Income tab. This has happened a handful of times in the past few months, and on a couple of occasions it caused me to miss payments and get hit with late fees from the payee. I DO have all of my payees linked to a "reminder", and if I open the "Bill and Income Reminders" window (by clicking on the "manage manual bills and income" button) all my bills will show up correct with a red "Due" in the status column when those bills are due. However, if those bills are linked to an online biller, then they won't show as due if (for whatever reason) Quicken is unable to refresh that bill.

So really there are 2 problems I guess, the other one being that some bills just won't refresh with no warning at all. That problem could be mitigated if those bills showed as "Due" in the Bills & Income tab, since the linked reminder would know that a payments is within X days of being due and I could then try manually refreshing the bill - which usually works.

Am I doing something wrong? Should an online bill that's linked to a reminder be "doing something" to let me know that it's coming due? I don't want to have 2 windows open just to see when a bill is due.. Thanks for any help

Rich_M

I hate to throw shade on Quicken, but this is why I abandoned this feature all together when it first came out. 

From what you're saying it's still not dependable. 

I saved myself a lot of time and aggravation by just unlinking all my reminders. 

You can easily manage your bills with unlinked reminders. 

In my situation I didn't find this feature added much value. 

jrich75

I agree with @Rich_M, the biggest benefit from having unlinked reminders is not worrying about whether a bill is going to update.  I did discover one disadvantage of unlinked reminders.  With a recent update, Quicken added the ability to pay with Check Pay and/or Quick Pay using the reminder with an Enter dropdown menu. 

You can only get the QuickPay option by linking the reminder to the Online Bill.
I don't see this as a major issue since you can also use the bill itself to make the payment.  I do like the ability to use CheckPay when entering a payment reminder.

Rich_M

I hate to throw shade on Quicken, but this is why I abandoned this feature all together when it first came out. 

From what you're saying it's still not dependable. 

I saved myself a lot of time and aggravation by just unlinking all my reminders. 

You can easily manage your bills with unlinked reminders. 

In my situation I didn't find this feature added much value. 

Alex100

@Rich_M No it's definitely not dependable. But if I unlink my reminders from the bills, then how does that help me? When un-linked, can I still "QuickPay" (or checkpay) my bills from the Bills & Income tab?

jrich75

 I have also found that having unlinked reminders from bills works better for me.  When a bill doesn't comes in, I still have the reminder displaying in the Bills and Income Tab.  If the bill does come in, I can chose either the reminder or the bill to make payment and click Ignore for the other,  Here is a link to my post in a related discussion from a few months ago:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20093331#Comment_20093331

Quick

Rich_M

If you unlink your reminders, then you won't be wasting time trying to figure out why they don't refresh anymore, that's how I think it helps. As I said previously I can easily live without this feature. 

I don't use Quicken's payment features so I can't answer your question about that for sure, but I doubt unlinking your bills will affect your ability to make payments. 

Someone else will probably chime in about that for you. 

jrich75

I agree with @Rich_M, the biggest benefit from having unlinked reminders is not worrying about whether a bill is going to update.  I did discover one disadvantage of unlinked reminders.  With a recent update, Quicken added the ability to pay with Check Pay and/or Quick Pay using the reminder with an Enter dropdown menu. 

You can only get the QuickPay option by linking the reminder to the Online Bill.
I don't see this as a major issue since you can also use the bill itself to make the payment.  I do like the ability to use CheckPay when entering a payment reminder.

Alex100

@jrich75 @Rich_M Thanks to both of you for the idea to unlink the reminders. I see what you mean - the downside is the Bills & Income tab now shows each bill twice (once is the reminder with the correct due-date, and the other is the online payee which may or may not yet be updated with the amount due and due-date) So a little extra hassle, but this should prevent the problem I've been having where bills get missed due to them not updating.

As an aside.. Is there any way to get someone's attention at Quicken to fix stuff like this? I've spent more time than I care to admit calling tech support for a variety of issues, but I have absolutely zero faith that anything told to them gets passed on to anyone who can actually fix anything. It's like a big black hole, and you get the impression that no one really knows what's going on. Given that this is now a paid product, the process for this kind of thing should be better.

jrich75

Alex100 said:

Is there any way to get someone's attention at Quicken to fix stuff like this? 

There is the Report a Problem link on the Help menu.  It seem to get mixed results but it is a way to go on record regarding an observed issue.  I don't believe posting to the community gets much traction unless an @Quicken rep steps in to elevate the problem.  There is also Product Ideas under each platform category.  For windows
https://community.quicken.com/categories/product-ideas

Rich_M

@Alex100 I have used Quicken for decades and think it's a great product, however I stick with the core features that are time tested and working reliably. 

I look at the big picture, if new features are consuming my time figuring out why things don't work or God forbid calling support, I abandon them until they work it all out.

I can manage my finances quite efficiently without all this extra complexity. 

Alex100

> @Rich_M said:
> I look at the big picture, if new features are consuming my time figuring out why things don't work or God forbid calling support, I abandon them until they work it all out.
>

Of course you're right, but I think what irks me is the bill payment management feature is really how they're monetizing Quicken now, via a subscription. I'm fine with this (actually more than fine because my hope is it will lead to a better product) yet this is the core thing that fails the most for me, so I expect it to be better than it is. I think the direction they've gone with new system (QuickPay and CheckPay) is going to be better, but not until they smooth the rough edges and make it more reliable.

Rich_M

Agreed, until then I'm waiting. 

Rich_M

@Alex100 You said earlier "the downside is the Bills & Income tab now shows each bill twice (once is the reminder with the correct due-date, and the other is the online payee which may or may not yet be updated with the amount due and due-date)", that doesn't sound right to me.

You should be able to delete the unlinked reminders, having two is confusing. 

Alex100

@Rich_M Hmm, maybe I took a wrong turn somewhere, but I if delete the unlinked reminder, then I'm back to my original problem right? Then the Bills & Income screen only shows my "online bills", which occasionally don't get updated and therefore don't have a due-date or amount. (and then I miss paying them) By having both, I at least have my reminder visible to indicate that something is upcoming soon, even if the online bill isn't getting refreshed. (the downside being that once I pay the online bill, I then have to manually dismiss/ignore the reminder)

If I have that wrong please let me know, thanks!

Rich_M

My experience was with linked bills only, so unlinking them left me with the usual reminder that would still notify me a bill is coming due based on my frequency settings. 

You're also making payments through Quicken which is another feature that I'm not familiar with, because I don't use it. 

I think the reason you have two sets of reminders is because you allowed Quicken to create one, instead of linking to an existing reminder, when you originally set up the linked biller. 

What you're calling an online reminder is just a bill you pay through Quicken. 

I think Quicken should notify you it's due based on its frequency, regardless of it refreshing, this part I'm not familiar with.

I'm sure someone else will see this discussion and chime in with more help. 

I'm sure there is a solution. 

jrich75

@Rich_M is correct.  You should not be seeing two reminders but instead one reminder and a bill.  (Your reply said this so I'm not sure where 2 reminders came from). I have my bills set up showing By Date, 30 days, All Bills.  The reminder and the bill will only appear together (in close proximity) when the bill is actually due. Otherwise the bills that are not due appear at the bottom of the list.  When a bill is due, the process is to Ignore either the reminder or the bill so that it drops down the By Date list.  If Bills are set up to display differently, that may create some confusion.

Alex100

@Rich_M, @jrich75 I think we're on the same page, maybe I just didn't make myself very clear earlier. I do NOT have duplicate reminders, so when I said "duplicate" I really just meant that once the reminder is un-linked, I then have both the reminder AND the online bill. So visually I have double the "stuff" on the Bills & Income screen, which is annoying. Also annoying is having to manually dismiss the reminder after I pay the bill. That said, these annoyances are far better than missing a bill which is what was happening before.

I did report this via the built-in "Report a Problem" thing, and I may create a product/feature request too in the appropriate spot in Quicken Community. The interplay between reminders and bills doesn't really make sense to me in the context of this view (bills and income tab), since once you link them, the reminder is really meaningless - unless I'm missing something. The point of a reminder is to remind me that I have something due, but it's clearly overruled by the online bill that it's linked to which is a bad thing when that online bill isn't getting refreshed properly.

Alex100

Also, Quicken seems to use the terms "reminder" and "manual bill" interchangeably which might be adding to the confusion. (I call them reminders)

Rich_M

@Alex100, @jrich75 This sounds like it's making bill payments way more complex and time consuming than necessary.

I still make all my payments through my bank, it's much simpler and trouble free. 

I primarily use Quicken reminders for forecasting.

We already get enough reminders for bills due through email or text messages as it is. 

Is this the new bill manager feature they've been touting lately?

jrich75

Rich_M said:

Is this the new bill manager feature they've been touting lately?

Yes, this is the "new improved" Bill Manager & QuickPay.  Actually, I use my bank billpay system for making payments now.  I experimented with Bill Manager payments and ended up deciding they are more trouble than they are worth.  I continue to monitor a few online billers (4 of my 7 primary credit cards that will still work).  When my subscription expires I'll decide if there is any benefit to continuing Bill Manager payment capability.

johncros

I was still running on QWin 2017 until the very last minute this spring. Every so often, online "bill presentation" would fail but for us, it was working pretty well. There were of course times that you had to fight through it to get it working again. It has only been a couple of months on QWin2020 but the online bill-presentation seems less consistent than Q2017. We have both a Citi "Dbl Cash Back" and Costco VISA (both managed through CitiCards via a single signon and that almost never seems to work on QWin2020.
Now, I have moved to workaround mode. We have almost all our major monthly bills being automatically charged to our credit cards. It is just an issue them of paying off a couple (3) of credit cards every month. It is really only the electric utility that will not automatically charge a CC. I was able to have the CC companies adjust the statement closing dates (by adjusting the payment due date) so that the statements all close between the 22-28 of the month. Worst case, I pull up the CC apps on my phone and get the balances and due dates of the drafts.
It is a shame, the online bill presention could have been a really nice feature.

joebw43

Hey Guys, I too have been a Quicken user for a very long time (about 17 years I think) It originally was Intuit and everything seemed good. I think they dropped the ball a little when they separated and became their own division (company or whatever) and it seems they have been trying to recover ever since. I too have had the same problem that Alex100 has and I have had just about everyone else's issue that is in this thread, and I think that Quicken should have their act together better than they do. I also pay my bills with credit cards and only have a couple of accounts that I have to keep track of and actually pay online with, and I do them manually so I don't have the problem of not having my bills updated when they are suppose to be. I just set up the payment option with either my CC or my banking accounts for direct payments and I haven't missed a bill yet. That is how I did my work-a-round. However, I did not know about "unlinking" my reminders until now and I think I will give that a try. Thanks for the suggestions guys. Sorry for the long post but I usually don't reply to things so this is a rarity for me.