Check # field has NO ENTRIES SINCE SEPTEMBER OF 2020

retird

I have 6 Bank accounts and have used Quicken for 20+ years. [removed - off-topic]

Since September of 2020 the Check # field has no entries. No check numbers populate, no transfers noted in the field, and etc. Have spent over 15 yours talking with Quicken Support, the Banks IT Quicken support and they both say it is not their problem.

[removed- off-topic/unhelpful/disruptive]

retird

Typo... Have spent over 15 hours with bank and Quicken with this issue.

retird

My bank uses Express Web Connect and not Direct Connect so I am told the data flow goes thru Intuit's server. [removed - off-topic]

UKR

retird said:

...
Since September of 2020 the Check # field has no entries. No check numbers populate, no transfers noted in the field, and etc. Have spent over 15 yours talking with Quicken Support, the Banks IT Quicken support and they both say it is not their problem.

...

As to the Check # field in your checking account ...
If the bank processes a paper check that you wrote, the downloaded transaction data should reflect the check number and, optionally, in the Payee Name "Check 1234".
If the bank receives an electronic debit from the payee because they converted the paper check to an electronic debit, the original paper check number is lost.

To avoid this issue, I recommend you manually record each paper check that you write in Quicken, when you write it, and record the check number together with Payee Name and Category information. When the check clears the bank Quicken will recognize the check transaction and match it to the already existing transaction.

As to other contents of the Check # field ...
They are entirely optional and up to the user.
Downloaded data from transfers or other transactions does not contain enough information that can be used to correctly identify a transfer and create a correctly linked transfer transaction between two account registers. My recommendation is to manually record transfer transactions on or before their Due Date. When the next download contains one or both sides of a transfer transaction, Quicken will be able to match the downloaded data to the existing, already correctly defined transfer transaction.

retird

THX for the comments. Prior to Sept. 2020 All checks transactions showed in the Check# field as did all transfers from 1 account to another. I had to make NO manual transaction myself.

UKR

Sometimes banks do change the content of their downloaded transactions or the format of their websites.
If you haven't done so already, I'd say it's time to call Quicken Support on the phone and request help.  Let them do a screen share session with you to review the situation on your computer, to analyze the contents of the downloaded transactions log file, to determine the nature of the problem and to figure out how to fix it.

Quicken Support:

• To contact Quicken Support, please use this link only:
  https://www.quicken.com/support#contact-support  and select Chat or Phone support.
  Support is only available during posted hours of operation
• The phone number can be found at the support website.
• To start Chat or see the support phone number, your browser must allow popup windows from https://www.quicken.com
  See https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7870684/faq-talk-to-support-does-not-respond#latest
• If you are eligible for Premium Support (purchased separately or included as part of your subscription to Quicken 2018+ Premier or HB&R) call the number that can be found at the top of your My Account page at https://www.quicken.com/my-account  (US) or https://www.quicken.com/canada/my-account (Canada) next to "Quicken Premium Support"  when you log in with your Quicken ID.
• Other links or phone numbers found elsewhere on the Internet, even in some posts or emails received from other Community members, may not be from Quicken or may not be up-to-date. Use those at your own risk.
• Unlike other so-called "Quicken support providers", the real Quicken Support is free for all currently supported versions.

retird

I have already spent over 15 hours between Quicken Support and the bank as I stated. Neither the bank nor Quicken say it is their problem...

retird

Screenshot (if you can see it) showing what is no longer populating in Check# field. Notice Dates of the transactions

retird

And another screenshot from a different account showing check numbers. Notice transaction date.

retird

Yet another screenshot from a 3rd account account showing transactions from 2016 

q_lurker

retird said:

THX for the comments. Prior to Sept. 2020 All checks transactions showed in the Check# field as did all transfers from 1 account to another. I had to make NO manual transaction myself.

@retird Attaching the screenshots you have is essentially worthless.  It tells us (fellow users) nothing relevant.  

The only way I can see you getting any resolution on this it for you to look at your OFX logs (Quicken Help).  Those should detail the information flowing from the financial institution (FI) to your Quicken file.  It is usually best to save that OFX log to a TXT file and then look at it with a text editor (notepad or similar. 

Within the OFX syntax, there are two possible fields that the FI and Quicken might use -- <CHECKNUM> and <REFNUM>.  You would need to find in the OFX log what the FI sent (search for the string CHECKNUM or REFNUM).  Maybe before Sept 2020, they used one and then switched to the other.  Maybe the used to send something and now don't.  Maybe Quicken used to process both, and now only processes one.  I don't know.

Without information as to what you see the FI sending, you are not going to get anywhere.

Good Luck.  

retird

Those OFX logs were collected by Quicken Support for their Escalation team... my screenshots show what went missing since Intuit sold Quicken and are very relevant. Funny that the bank says it is Quicken issue and Quicken says it is the bank's issue. [removed - rant/disruptive]

q_lurker

The reason your screenshots are essentially worthless especially to your fellow users on this site is that they only show what is there now. They provide NO evidence of how that info appeared or did not appear. 

I told you what I would be looking at - something in your hands rather than Quicken’s or the FI’s. If you don’t care to do that, that’s your choice. But continued rants here in response to someone offering a positive suggestion will get you nowhere (and possibly banned from this site). 

retird

Well yet another problem this morning.. Contacted Quicken Tech and they could not fix it and said I should report it, which I did.  Now my One Step Update settings which have been saved for years and years are not saved anymore and cannot be saved.  Case Number 8804709 and they took logs, etc.  Tech Support said this issue may be to be fixed with the next update.

Now I have 3 issues with Quicken. I'm not ranting only documenting issues I'm seeing and hopefully will get fixed. ...   Thanks for responding to my issue.

And my screenshots do show evidence of what appeared in 2017 and other earlier dates and what does not appear now.  My Quicken file goes back to 2016 and is a continuous file thru today.


[removed - off-topic/disruptive]

[posted edited for readability]

retird

OK I read your warning.

retird

I seek resolution for this issue. All the suggestions given here have been exhausted. From my many hours with Quicken Tech support and my bank it appears the issue only occurs with Express Web Connect and not Direct Connect. I have been told that Express Web Connect goes thru an Intuit server (third party server) whereas Direct Connect does not.

retird

I was shocked to find out from Quicken Support that they do not talk to the bank about issues and the bank said they do not talk to Quicken either. Neither said it was their issue. Quicken says the bank is not sending the data in the proper format and the bank says they are sending it in the proper format.

retird

Does everbody here that uses Express Web Connect have Check Numbers showing in the Quicken Check# field??

If so please state the financial institution (or message me) so I can open an account and see if I get Check Numbers from that bank. If so then my bank has the issue but if not then it narrows down to an Intuit Server or Quicken's issue. THX

retird

hum, nobody using Express Web Connect??????

Chris_QPW

retird said:

hum, nobody using Express Web Connect??????

I have banned that from my real data file, but decided to test this for you since I could setup my USAA account using Express Web Connect in a different data file.

In my real data file which is setup as Direct Connect:

OFX log for this:

                    <STMTTRN>

                        <TRNTYPE>CHECK

                        <DTPOSTED>20210802110000.000[-4:EDT]

                        <TRNAMT>-866.83

                        <FITID>202108020000002

                        <CHECKNUM>995017

                        <NAME>CHECK # 0000995017

                    </STMTTRN>

It is interesting that the actual downloaded payee is "CHECK # 0000995017", I have a renaming rule to change all checks to just Check so it isn't surprising that the final payee name is Check, but it is surprising that the renaming rule is changing the payee name before it is stored in the Downloaded payee field.

In the test data file with Express Web Connect:

And from the Cloud Sync file where this logged (and yes Express Web Connect is a cloud sync to the Quicken cloud dataset, which is the reason I won't have it in my real data file).
{"id":"INTUIT-10154981245508","postedOn":"2021-08-02","txnOn":"2021-08-02","payee":"CHECK # 0000995017","memo":"","amount":-866.8300,"inferredPayee":"CHECK # 0000995017","inferredCoa":{"type":"UNCATEGORIZED","id":"0"},"cpCategoryId":"2002"}

No where in this data is the check number separated out for Quicken to put in the check # field.

My conclusion is that either Express Web Connect is no longer able to allow for this because of no field for it, or whatever "agreed format" they are getting the data from these financial institutions doesn't pick it up.

EDIT on second thought the "field" for syncing the check number has to be there, because syncing to Mobile/Web has it and that is the same "dataset".

retird

THANK YOU for doing that.... my thoughts follow.

Express Web goes thru a 3rd party server (Intuit who used to own Quicken) so my thinking is the data flow thru the server and the current Quicken software are not capturing the Check Number field data in a format where it can populate the Check # field. Intuit no longer supports Quicken so there is nobody at Intuit to talk to and Quicken Support told me they do not talk to Intuit or the bank. Of the 3 transfer options that Quicken offers only Express Web Connect goes thru Intuit server. So without the bank, Intuit, and Quicken talking to each other how does the issue get fixed???

THX for this: My conclusion is that either Express Web Connect is no longer able to allow for this because of no field for it, or whatever "agreed format" they are getting the data from these financial institutions doesn't pick it up.

EDIT on second thought the "field" for syncing the check number has to be there, because syncing to Mobile/Web has it and that is the same "dataset".

retird

NOTED: My bank does not offer Direct Connect. My other Financial Institutions are Direct Connect which works perfect.

Chris_QPW

retird said:

Intuit no longer supports Quicken so there is nobody at Intuit to talk to and Quicken Support told me they do not talk to Intuit or the bank. Of the 3 transfer options that Quicken offers only Express Web Connect goes thru Intuit server. So without the bank, Intuit, and Quicken talking to each other how does the issue get fixed???

Yes, and no (no matter what support told you).

The connection flow for Express Web Connect use to be:
Quicken -> Intuit server -> financial institution's website

Since about the start of the year it has been:
Quicken -> QCS (Quicken Connection Services/dataset sync) -> Intuit server -> financial institution's website

Now since you are a customer of a customer (Quicken Inc pays Intuit for the service) you can't directly talk to Intuit.  But no matter what the Quicken Support said they definitely do talk to Intuit to get such problems resolved.  This is in fact what they mean when you see the moderators tell people that the Quicken Support people are suppose to "escalate" certain connect type problems.

But let me say right now that Intuit never seemed to care about the customers in this regard as far as I could tell.  Even when it was all under Intuit I know that the Quicken group had a hard time convincing the "connection group" to do anything.  It was always typical that they only seemed to respond to complains made by a great deal of people, and still took very long to get anything changed.  The "connection group" stayed with Intuit, as it is needed for QuickBooks, and of course they love the fact they can make money off of Quicken Inc because they are way too small of a company to do it their selves.

In general I would break "connection problems" down into two main groups.  One is the day to day trying to stay in sync with the website and the other would be the overall process.  An example of the latter is the generation of unique Ids for the transactions.  There have been two major flaws in that process from day one, and they have never fixed them.  One is the fact that they use a "seed" number that gets changed any time you reset or deactivate an account.  This is what causes the duplicate transactions because after a reset/deactivate all the unique Ids change.  The second problem is that if you have the exact same transaction on the same day it will ignore the second (or more) transaction.  They should have something that understands that if the download has the same transaction in it multiple times, it needs to have a different unique Id.  They assign the same one and Quicken ignores it.

The reason I bring this up is because if Intuit changed their process and no longer picks up the check number, there is little chance that anyone, including Quicken Inc, that will be able to convince that group to change.

On the other hand as you can see from the flows above Quicken Inc introduced a new "player" into the current flow, making it even harder to figure out what part of the process it is going bad.  But not this doesn't exactly line up with your finding of last September.  The change over to the new flow was in January of this year.

Chris_QPW

retird said:

NOTED: My bank does not offer Direct Connect. My other Financial Institutions are Direct Connect which works perfect.

Let me see:
Direct Connect:
Quicken -> Financial institution's OFX server (notice I didn't say website).  Using standardized protocol.

Express Web Connect:
Quicken -> QCS (Quicken Connection Services/dataset sync) -> Intuit server -> financial institution's website (communication usually subject to the same login process as the user with all the same security roadblocks, but a program has to navigate it.  And then the "agreed (maybe affected by changes in the website) format).

Communication flow if it fails for the customer.  It is possible for Quicken to cause problems, and it is possible for Intuit to have the wrong URL for the connection, but mostly problems are at the financial institution so it is mostly the customer contacting the financial institution directly.

Compare this to Express Web Connect.

Customer has to talk to Quicken Support, Quicken support has to determine if the problem is at Quicken/QCS or down the path (Intuit or beyond).  If Intuit and beyond they have to beg Intuit to look into it, and it might not be Intuit's problem, so they have to in turn convince the financial institution or the service provider for that financial institution that they have a problem and to fix it.

The more complicated the system, and the less standardized it is, they more likely that you will have problems.  And Express Web Connect shows all of these problems.  And note that because of security breaches the things that the financial institutions are putting in place make this more complicated and more error prone.  This is part of what I mean when I talk about one can't just keep doing what they have been doing for years and assume it will continue to work.  The world doesn't allow that.

retird

YEP... Good info.... Maybe my conversations with the bank manager will start a discussion about Direct Connect... who knows?

retird

Right Click the Payee Field from a transaction. The "Revert to" option in the Payee Field can then be clicked on to change the content of that field. The Revert option shows the check #. I have not found a way yet to make the Revert option the default in the Payee field. At least I could see the Check # that way but now I have to manually Revert each transation in multiple accounts...

Is this possible to set a default to show the Revert option info automatically in the Payee Field?

Chris_QPW

retird said:

Is this possible to set a default to show the Revert option info automatically in the Payee Field?

Select to show the Downloaded Payee column, that should be what it is reverting to.

retird

Yep talked to Quicken Support and they said no way to default the Revert info but no mention of using the Download Payee column... THX as that will work since all is gone in the Check # column...