Quicken Bill Manager - vs any Bank Bill Payment Services

Boatnmaniac

@dan5 - Credit unions are great for low fees, low loan rates and paying a little more interest on savings but they generally do not offer 100% free bill pay (usually limit the amount of checks that are "free") and generally don't support DC.  I keep a small member account at one so I can get the low loan rates benefits when needed but I can't justify doing more business than that with them.

I also tend to stay away from the big 4 national banks (other than for credit cards) because of some bad experiences (including being nickel-and-dimed to death with fees) with a couple of them previously.  I've generally preferred to work with small/medium sized banks because of that.  But my bank was merged into PNC in Oct and so far, overall, I like them even though initially the merger did not go real well with regard to Quicken.  And with PNC's recent acquisitions they are now the 7th largest bank in the country so they are now in an elite group of banks in that regard.

Enough of that.  More info/comments regarding PNC that I picked up on during my bank's merger into PNC last Oct-Nov:

• PNC most definitely does support DC with Bank Bill Pay and it is free for consumer accounts.  I use it and it works well.
  
• For business accounts, PNC does charge $2.00/month for DC but they do not charge for DC Bank Bill Pay. 
  
• PNC has quite a few different set up links in Quicken.  For consumer accounts DC make sure you use the  PNC Bank - Direct Connect link.  PNC does require a unique login to be used...not the online account login.  You must request that from PNC and they will provide it to you.
• I'm not sure what you would need to use for business accounts but there is a PNC Bank - Business Banking link in Quicken so maybe that is the one to use.
  
• HELOC:  There were a couple of people during the merger in Oct/Nov who were having problems getting their HELOC accounts to download into Quicken.  I do not know if they got that issue resolved.  Some banks do not support downloading HELOC transactions into Quicken.  That would be a good question for you to ask PNC when you talk with them.
  

I hope you find this information helpful.  Hope it all goes well for you.

dan5

Hi @Boatnmaniac I am hoping you are still checking in.  I looked at PNC and it looked great so I signed up for the premium virtual wallet account.  I only opened a personal checking and figure if I can get direct connect bill pay working that I would open business accounts and HELOC.  So it took about two weeks for them to clear and make the funds available for the check I deposited to fund the account. It took about 5 days to set up EFT, but I finally was able to get money available in the account.

So about that time, I alw received my Quicken or Quickbooks PIN.  So I activated direct connect. During the process it made me change the pin.  Then I was able to download transactions via direct connect using that new PIN as the password. It would not let me send an online payment so I went to the online services tab and there was an option to activate bank bill pay and setup quicken bill manager.  I did not try quicken bill manager, but I did activate bank bill pay. It didn't reach out to the bank that I could see, it went real fast, no spinning progess bar.  

But now I could actualy enter a send online payment in the register.  I entered a payment to citi credit card. It asked me to adjust the date a couple days into the future so I clicked yes. and it adjusted it. But, when I go to update now, it returns an error. It gives two paths one is change password the other is troubleshoot. The troubleshoot path tells me my password is wrong.

I try to deactivate all 3 accounts and reactivate and go through the same process ending in error.

So what password do I use? I have tried everything
the PIN that got direct connect download to work
The PNC website password
The quicken.com password

I called PNC bank support, and got to the quicken CSR pretty quick, but she said that sounds like a Quicken problem and I need to sort it with them. She kindly transferred me. Quicken support spent an hour, but could not get it working and sent me back to the bank support. The Quicken rep said it authenticates against the banks API so they need to figure out what's blocking it. That sounds like the right answer based on what I know and this discussion. But, before I go around that painful circle again, I am hoping you might have figured it out.

Is the Direct Connect bank bill pay password the same as the Direct Connect Pin? Or is it a different password I need to get from the bank somehow? Any suggestions on getting to the right support person at PNC who can answer this question? Do I need to go into a branch or get a business account to get the right answer. Quicken needs to sort out how to manage these relationships with banks a bit better IMHO. Everytime I try Quicken support or bank support they point fingers at each other and its hard to get to the bottom.  I feel like I am almost onto a good bill payment solution via Quicken finally if I can get this sorted.

Thanks Dan

Boatnmaniac

Hi @dan5 - It sounds like you were following all the right steps and things were working well for you until after you tried to get the bill payment set up.  Did the problem happen 2 days ago?  Two days ago there was a Direct Connect connection issue with a few banks and, unfortunately, PNC was one of those affected.  Yesterday I was able to get PNC to start downloading, again, but I needed to Reset Account before it worked....I did not Deactivate it.

You mentioned that you got an error message. Was there an error code?  If so, what was it?

Would it be possible to take a picture of that error message and post it here?  Sometimes a picture can be worth a thousand words.

I'm wondering if maybe your PIN change did not take.  Have you tried to log back in using the PIN PNC sent you?  If that doesn't work, then try using the new PIN you selected.

Also, when you are trying to set up DC, did PNC send you a UserID and are you using that?  Or are you using your Social Security number for the UserID?  I first tried using my Social Security number because that is what Quicken's setup prompted me for but that did not work for me.  PNC had sent me a unique UserID and when I used that with the PW they sent me it then completed the set up process.

I am not sure what you mean by "Direct Connect bank bill pay password".  I have not ever needed to enter any password for bill pay at PNC (or any other bank).  You might want to log into your online account and see if your checking account has been enabled for bill pay.  I can't really remember where or how I did that but I think I went to the Bill Pay tab and then to Preferences and then I needed to wait until the next day before it was enabled.  

BTW, when DC is set up with PNC you never use your website login for anything related to Quicken.  It is only used to log into the website.

While the DC connection issue a couple of days ago was a Quicken issue, usually when there is a DC connection error it is the bank's problem, not Quicken's.  Unfortunately, it is not uncommon that bank Customer Service people do not know much about Quicken and instead of saying "I will get you someone who might be able to help" they instead point the finger at Quicken. When you talk with PNC, if the person is attempting to deflect and blame Quicken you might want to ask to speak to that person's supervisor or to someone who is more knowledgeable about setting up and using Quicken export account data.

dan5

@Boatnmaniac Thanks for the thoughtful and detailed repy. A few answers in case you have more ideas. The problem did happen several days ago about 2 from your post. Maybe I was unluck about the failure the first time I tried to sign up for bill pay. I had successfully done DC download, but it took so long for them to make my funds available, I couldn't do a payment until the money showed up, maybe it got caught up in the middle.

I deactivated adn tehn reset all of the virtual wallet accounts.  Then I re-added direct connect using the ping I changed the one in the letter to. it logged into PNC found my account, then said it downloaded transactions for the last 10 days, but there are only 3 that i did to fund the account and they had downloaded already so nothing new showed up.  AFter downloading to turn on bill pay I went to this screen.

At this point I cant enter a Send Online payment in the register because DC bill pay is not setup.


I clicked Check for bank bill pay link and got the following prompt and clicked activate now


So I clicked activate now because I am already enrolled. It moved very quickly back to the register, I don't think it woudl have done a transaction with the network that fast.  So I check account details online services and it looks like bill pay is activated.



OK so now it shows Bank Bill Pay as activated.  So I try to enter a bill payment. Note the online payee was sort of old, from before. So to rule that out before I tried to enter a payment I deleted that online payee.  I even ran a one step update in case something with the old payee needed to synch to some quicken server.

I entered the payment by hitting S adn it entered Send, typed the name, it asked me to setup the payee, I then entered the address again from my citi back credit card and approved it. Then It was in my register



So now there is a bunch of ways I can send it, I I clicked the gar above the register adn clicked update now. And it presented the update confirm on the bill pay from the register.


So now I click update now. It shows the progress screen and it gives me an error


So I now try update now button. It asks me to enter the password. So I got in the loops and try

The pin I changed in the direct connect setup process, the original pin I got in the latter from Quicken, the website password.


Each time I try I get the update success.  I think its just updating the password I saved in quicken, not doing anything on the network.


After I get this I click enter or done.  And I get this error message OL-307-A popup immediately.  It says it does not recognize account.


If I hit update it goes back and starts the loop again.

So if it doesn't recognize account, maybe your suggestion I am not signed up for bill pay.  Here is the excerpt of the letter minus my name and address I used when I selected I wanted to sign up for quicken bill pay when I opened the account.   I got one letter that had the PIN, I left it in the picture because it has been changed.  I got a second letter with these instructions also below. Confirming I am signed up for direct connect, and instructs me to use my customer id and PIN. The next paragraph says use my TIN (SSN) for the customer ID 

When i called PNC support they said there was not another ID. Thus I am stuck.  I will try PNC support again and try to nicely get to an expert again. I will also poke around for a different userid in my profile on the website, maybe I need to try adn enroll a second time, but that might screw up PNC even worse if there are two quicken accounts associated with my account.

Any other thoughts with all of that?

dan5

I see I forgot to upload the letters



[Edited Screenshot to Remove PIN] 

dan5

Also, I believe the PIN I am using is right because when I call PNC support adn navigate to quicken support, it asks me to enter my username and pin. I accidentally fat fingered the pin and it said it was wrong, when I entered again it put me on hold for 15 minutes now, so I think the username which is my TIN and PIN matches what their IVR thinks it is.