Bank account loses Bill Pay option

mcasteel

I have been using Quicken with my Bank of America checking account to pay bills for years, entering the payment into Quicken and having it send it to the bank. This worked for years with Quicken 2007, now on Q Deluxe 2020 v5.18.2 the 'Bill Pay' option disappears from the Details menu on new transactions with regularity, leaving only 'Print Check'. Until I edit the account and do the Change Connection Type command, simply re-selecting 'Direct Connect' and entering bank login details. This lets me enter new transactions with the Bill Pay option which I can then send to the bank within Quicken. Come back a couple days later, and New Transactions no longer have the Bill Pay option, only Print Check. What's up? Something has been broken in a feature I use A LOT. Hmm, I haven't even quit Quicken, and the Bill Pay option has disappeared from Edit Details, just a few minutes after I re-connected the account and entered AND SENT a bill pay transaction. Do I have to re-connect the account for every bill to be paid? That would be bad news indeed.

Quicken Anja

Hello @mcasteel,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community to tell us about your issue, though I apologize that you are experiencing this.

Instead of using the Change Connection Type option, I recommend deactivating the account, removing your login saved login credentials from the Keychain Access app, and then reconnecting the account to prompt a clean reconnection.

To do so, please follow the troubleshooting instructions below:

1. Deactivate all accounts associated with this financial institution (if needed, please review this support article for instructions)
   
2. Quit Quicken
3. Open Finder and go to Applications > Utilities > Keychain Access app
4. On the left panel in the Keychain Access app, set the Keychains to Login and the Category to Passwords
5. Search for the financial institution's name (Bank of America) in the top-right search field and delete any items found showing "Quicken password for [your financial institution username] at [financial institution name] "
6. Quit the Keychain Access app and reopen Quicken
7. Go to Accounts > New and choose the appropriate account type for the accounts that you previously deactivated (if there are more than one account type then choose Checking)
   
8. At the bottom of the window showing the list of the financial institutions, click on the "My bank is not listed" question mark icon, then click Update List
9. Wait for the list to finish updating and " Updated: " displays the current date.
10. Click the Show List button to continue
11. Use the search field at the top of the list to find and select your financial institution and click the grey Options button on the bottom-right
12. Select Direct Connect and click Continue
13. Follow the prompts to sign in using your login credentials associated with the financial institution
14. If the accounts have been found successfully-- use the dropdown menus to link each account to the appropriate account in Quicken

I hope this helps resolve this issue for you! Please, check back to let us know how it goes and/or if you have any further questions/concerns.

mcasteel

Worked for one transaction, then 'Bill Pay' option disappeared from the Details menu just like before. Worse, having changed all my accounts (7, 3 CCs and 2 each Savings/Checking) to Direct Connect, the next day what I got on an account update was an alert saying "An error occurred during your online banking update. Bank of America - Quicken is not responding. Please try again later.
(unsupported URL)". Oddly, even when all appeared to be working (a couple weeks ago), the Account status window would pop up after nearly every account update listing a bunch of accounts saying 'Could not connect - unsupported URL' even though transactions appeared freshly downloaded in the transaction windows and the blue dots appeared next to the accounts where transactions appeared.

Now, I have returned all 6 'extra' accounts to Quicken Connect like they were a month ago, and reset my main checking account to Direct Connect so I could pay bills from it. Paid one bill, then the 'Bill Pay' option again disappeared from the Detail menu again on the next new transaction, immediately after. Something broke in Quicken, this has been working since I upgraded from Q2007 a year or two ago, now I have to re-establish Direct Connect after every bill I pay. What a pain!

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @mcasteel

Thank you for your response, although I apologize that this trouble continues to persist.

I have one last step to try, please navigate to File > Save a Backup prior to completing the steps.

This will involve creating a new checking account and moving the transactions to this new account and removing the previous account as it appears to not be working properly.

First, add a new account this can be done by selecting the (+) and then choosing "Checking."



Then set this account up for Direct Connect with your bank. This will download some already existing transactions. I would see if you are then able to pay more than one bill before moving on to the next steps.

Once this has been added, you'll need to compare transactions to be sure to highlight and move only the older transactions. Adding a new account typically downloads the last 90 days. 


Once the transactions are highlighted, you may drag and drop these into the new account. You should then have a working account with the previous history.

Please note, depending on the age and number of transactions, this move can take some time and it may appear that the program is not responding. Please allow some time for this move to finish if you experience this.

Please let me know how it goes!

-Quicken Tyka

mcasteel

Tried this. (1) removing Direct Connect download setting from original checking account, creating new test account, setting up for Direct Connect, I was able to create more than one transaction for bank payment...EXCEPT both test transactions (I used Pay Now) went into Waiting state and Quicken failed to record a bank acknowledgment of them. They were visible as pending payments at the bank. Unable to delete the transactions OR the test account due to 'pending' bank stuff, I had to discard the file and restore from backup, and delete the test bill pays at the bank's website since Quicken wouldn't delete or cancel them.

(2) In the restored file, I disconnected and reconnected the 'old' account, and found that I could enter more than one Bill Pay transaction in a row...UNTIL I did a 'update all online accounts' and said 'continue' to post the pending bill pay transactions. It then properly posted them, received the bank acknowledgment and gave them the fake check numbers (instead of leaving them 'waiting' like the transactions in the test account). BUT, a New Transaction subsequently was missing the Bill Pay option in Details, requiring another disconnect/reconnect for Direct Connect to reinstate the Bill Pay option.

AND, I keep getting 'invalid URL' errors listed in the Account Status window, even for the checking account which just posted two new bill payments.

I guess I have to start looking into alternatives to Quicken, since it has apparently been broken for a key feature I use all the time (mind you, I miss the ability to get a Balance Sheet report). This is my data file from 2002, though I have been using Quicken even longer, it's just that in 2002 I did an archive to cut the file down, which was an option in Quicken at the time.

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @mcasteel

Thank you for the response, although I am sorry to hear that the trouble continues to persist and you have not received a follow-up response.

If at any time you interested in pursuing this issue further would recommend contacting support directly for advanced troubleshooting steps.

https://www.quicken.com/support#contact-support

Quicken Care has the ability to initiate a screen share to view the issue in real-time to review and research this further.

Thank you,

-Quicken Tyka

jacobs

mcasteel said:

I miss the ability to get a Balance Sheet report

The Net Worth report is a balance sheet report by another name: it shows you the value of each of your accounts as of a specified date. 

(Sorry, can't help with the other issue. )