How can I get BlackRock 529 CollegeAdvantage download to list securities in Quicken account?

M. T. Rivers

I recently connected my BlackRock 529 CollegeAdvantage education investment account to Quicken Premier for Mac. The process went fine and I was able to link the one (of two) accounts at BlackRock. However, when I looked at the Portfolio tab in Quicken, there are no holdings. I reset the connection and the process went the same way again - process to link was successful, but no securities listed in Quicken. BlackRock technical support declined to assist and referred me to Quicken Support. Any suggestions?

Quicken Jared

M. T. Rivers said:

I recently connected my BlackRock 529 CollegeAdvantage education investment account to Quicken Premier for Mac. The process went fine and I was able to link the one (of two) accounts at BlackRock. However, when I looked at the Portfolio tab in Quicken, there are no holdings. I reset the connection and the process went the same way again - process to link was successful, but no securities listed in Quicken. BlackRock technical support declined to assist and referred me to Quicken Support. Any suggestions?

Hello @M.T. Rivers,  

I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing this issue. I am glad that you chose to come to the Quicken Community to discuss this with us.

When you go into the Transactions or the Dashboard tab, is information appearing normally there?

I look forward to your response, if you have the chance to check back in with us. 

Thanks,

Quicken Jared 

M. T. Rivers

Transactions tab is greyed out and the Dashboard tab says there are 0 securities. There is a single security in the BlackRock account that is not displayed in Quicken.

jacobs

When you open Settings for this account, is the Investment Tracking Method set to Simple or Detailed? If Simple, change it to Detailed and see what data downloads going forward.

M. T. Rivers

Transactions tab is now accessible, but I chose Simple originally because during the set up process for this account it said that BlackRock did not support Detailed downloads.

M. T. Rivers

Doing an update with Detailed selected still shows 0 securities in Dashboard and there are no transactions.

jacobs

If it's correct that BlackRock doesn't support transaction downloading — and we've seen cases where that message comes up but is incorrect — then it just depends on what BlackRock provides to Quicken. In some cases, financial institutions provide only a balance and nothing more. 

M. T. Rivers

I would be fine with the balance only. Currently the balance in Quicken is showing zero though.

jacobs

Okay, we've gone beyond my area of expertise on this, I'm afraid. I suggest you find time to call Quicken Support and go through this with a representative who can see it on your screen and look at the connection logfiles. (The release notes for Quicken do state that these balance-only accounts are still considered a beta feature, so it may not yet be working right for all financial institutions.) Ideally, if a Quicken Support representative can verify the problem, they may be able to escalate it as an issue for their connectivity service provider. 

M. T. Rivers

Thanks Jacobs, I'll do that.

Quicken Jared

M. T. Rivers said:

I would be fine with the balance only. Currently the balance in Quicken is showing zero though.

@M.T. Rivers,   

I understand that this issue is frustrating, and I am sorry that it is still posing a problem at the moment.

To somewhat add to @jacobs' response, it may be helpful to go to Help > Report a Problem in the upper menu at the top of the screen while Quicken is open. You would then provide a screenshot of the issue as you see the problem occurring on your end of things and send a brief description from that by clicking Send to Quicken. Doing this will provide our support teams with much-needed information about the problem and help them get at a resolution much more expediently. 

Thanks,

Quicken Jared 

M. T. Rivers

@Jared thanks for the Report A Problem recommendation. I have done that and will place a call to Quicken Customer Care now.

M. T. Rivers

Quicken Customer Care was able to locate a statement online by BlackRock that they support Quicken account downloads to Quicken with the exception of 401K and 529 accounts. I was not provided with a link to that statement. My financial advisor and I both checked around a few BlackRock departments and have concluded that integration into Quicken is not offered as they do not want third parties having access to BlackRock 529 accounts. My advisor was told it is a security issue and BlackRock does not foresee implementing this feature in the future.

Quicken Jared

M. T. Rivers said:

Quicken Customer Care was able to locate a statement online by BlackRock that they support Quicken account downloads to Quicken with the exception of 401K and 529 accounts. I was not provided with a link to that statement. My financial advisor and I both checked around a few BlackRock departments and have concluded that integration into Quicken is not offered as they do not want third parties having access to BlackRock 529 accounts. My advisor was told it is a security issue and BlackRock does not foresee implementing this feature in the future.

@M.T. Rivers,

Thank you so much for checking back in with us and updating us on this turn of events. I really do appreciate this information; it will be helpful going forward. I apologize again that you experienced this trouble with securities downloading.

Feel free to reach out to the Quicken Community with any additional questions or concerns.

Thanks,

Quicken Jared