Updating/downloading from financial institutions

vkss03

I thought our automatic updating was fairly quick and would update within a day or so of transactions. Something is wrong or I'm mistaken concerning the updating schedule.
Two items: First: most of my updates are more that a week old. Ex: today is 12/19 and the latest update is 11/30 followed by 12/15. This brings up my second question...Aren't all our line items transferred in the Auto Download from a given financial location?

And when I decided to manually update, none of the missing items appeared.
What's going on or what am I missing?

Frankx

Hi @vkaa03

It sounds like you may be new to Quicken, so welcome to the club!

The timing of downloads has to do with a couple of factors.  One is the method that you connect with your financial institution, and the other is the financial institution's policy on providing data.  If you connect using the "Direct Connect" method, there is a direct connection to your bank, broker, etc. and you will usually be able to get yesterday's transactions today.  The other two methods - Express Web Connect and Web Connect - are different.  Express Web Connect has an aggregator in between you and your financial institution, so you may not always get yesterday's transactions today, but usually will get them no later than 2 days later.  Web Connect is a process where you go to the financial institution's website and download a file that you then upload into Quicken.  Here too, the timing varies by how often your financial institution makes the data available on their website, but it also is usually within 2 days of the transaction date.

The fact that "Most of your updates are more than a week old, could have a number of causes, but a week is an unusually long time for most providers to send data, so something seems wrong.  But on the other questions about "all of our line items transferred" - please keep in mind that only "items" (actually transactions) that have actually "hit" your account will be transferred.  So if you sent a check to pay a bill and the vendor deposited it a week later in his/her bank but it doesn't get to your bank until the next day - you are looking at 8 or nine days after you sent the check before it is downloaded.  ACH transactions typically are processed very quickly.

I am not sure of exactly what you mean by "manually update" so you might have to provide more information for me to answer that part.

Frankx

Frankx

Hi @vkaa03

It sounds like you may be new to Quicken, so welcome to the club!

The timing of downloads has to do with a couple of factors.  One is the method that you connect with your financial institution, and the other is the financial institution's policy on providing data.  If you connect using the "Direct Connect" method, there is a direct connection to your bank, broker, etc. and you will usually be able to get yesterday's transactions today.  The other two methods - Express Web Connect and Web Connect - are different.  Express Web Connect has an aggregator in between you and your financial institution, so you may not always get yesterday's transactions today, but usually will get them no later than 2 days later.  Web Connect is a process where you go to the financial institution's website and download a file that you then upload into Quicken.  Here too, the timing varies by how often your financial institution makes the data available on their website, but it also is usually within 2 days of the transaction date.

The fact that "Most of your updates are more than a week old, could have a number of causes, but a week is an unusually long time for most providers to send data, so something seems wrong.  But on the other questions about "all of our line items transferred" - please keep in mind that only "items" (actually transactions) that have actually "hit" your account will be transferred.  So if you sent a check to pay a bill and the vendor deposited it a week later in his/her bank but it doesn't get to your bank until the next day - you are looking at 8 or nine days after you sent the check before it is downloaded.  ACH transactions typically are processed very quickly.

I am not sure of exactly what you mean by "manually update" so you might have to provide more information for me to answer that part.

Frankx

vkss03

Thank you for your information. Would you explain how to know what form of connection to the institution is being used by my Quicken application. We have a fast "radio link" broadband which connects through a current router. Quicken software calls it a "One step update" and I've opted for "automatic" updates that seem often to occur in the background. It is true that we're in a rural area, but the population is quite technically astute so the local ISPs are of fairly high level. If any of that applies.

I do understand that the items have to be downloaded by the institution before I see them in the on-line account register and I'm not speaking of these, but comparing the on-line listed transactions in my accounts with those listed on today's Quicken accounts.

I used "manually update" to differentiate between the automatically downloaded items found in any account with those that come over when I request an update when Quicken is open and I'm working with the program --- usually reconciling accounts.

Frankx

Hi again @vkss03,

You asked how to find the type of connection that Quicken is using to download data from your financial institutions.  One way to see this information for all of your connected accounts on one screen is to click on "Tools" > "Account List".  In the window that opens you will see all of your accounts and the column titled "Transaction Download" displays the connection method for each of your connected accounts. 

Frankx