Automatically download and store monthly statements

solostorm

I download and store the statements for recurring items such as bank account statements, credit card statements, utility bill statements, investment account statements, etc.  I have a file tree on my hard drive where I store all of these for my records.  Doing this work takes considerable time.

Quicken could live up to its name by automatically downloading and storing these .pdf files for us.  

I would not want to store these documents within the Quicken file, but rather have Quicken download them and store them in a file outside of Quicken itself - so I can then migrate the .pdf's to the proper location in the file tree.

Please support this idea by voting for it.

Thanks,

Ps56k2

Interesting.... have never run across another user with a PRIVATE Profile -

Sherlock

You may want to consider using FileThis.

TTSguy

@Sherlock Great idea! Maybe Quicken could incorporate FileThis with this company's cooperation into Quicken much like Drop Box. I'd encourage you to write this up as an idea!  The attachments file in Quicken has not gotten much in the way of rave reviews

This is the type of thing that I'd like to think Quicken would be constantly looking into to improve it's product, even it's nothing more than a link in a context menu to get to it!

solostorm

I took a quick look at FileThis.  Will need to investigate further and would love to hear from others here who have direct experience.

Quick comments - the FileThis website looks modern and well put together - but it includes some dead links to apparently enhanced products.  Thier "blog" hasn't had new posts since 2015.  It appears that the company has been acquired by a larger firm. Reviews and articles about them are all several years old.  This creates concerns about if the product is being maintained and grown.....

As to Quicken coordinating - or buying and integrating....  great thought....

NotACPA

Can Q even write to a file other than a QDF?  This looks like a TREMENDOUS amount of work, to me.

Sherlock

TTSguy said:

@Sherlock Great idea! Maybe Quicken could incorporate FileThis with this company's cooperation into Quicken much like Drop Box. I'd encourage you to write this up as an idea!  The attachments file in Quicken has not gotten much in the way of rave reviews

This is the type of thing that I'd like to think Quicken would be constantly looking into to improve it's product, even it's nothing more than a link in a context menu to get to it!

You may want to consider voting for: 

Add Ability to Hyperlink to Evernote for Notes and Attachments (9 Legacy Votes)

There was a specific proposal to provide the desired functionality but a moderator chose to archive it in September of 2020 years ago due to inactivity:

Account monthly Statements should be downloadable from financial institutions (9 Legacy Votes)

I'll request that it be restored.

Note: Quicken has clearly opted to go with BillGo for pulling online bill statements.  These aggregation approaches all suffer from the same scalability issues.

Chris_QPW

Whereas I think having hyperlinks external documents is a good idea.  The idea to download statements sounds like a terrible one to me when one actually considers what they are talking about.

With the exception of Direct Connect, Quicken doesn’t directly communicate with any financial institutions.
I haven’t looked up if the Direct Connect protocol supports downloading statements, but nearly 100% no financial institutions support it.  And for every one they would have to be convinced to support it.  And there is only about 2000 or them anyways.

That leaves Express Web Connect and Quicken Bill Manager.

Express Web Connect is Intuit, and they are a hard enough time just logging in and getting the transactions.
Quicken Bill Manager uses another unknown third party and does retrieve biller statements (for some of them), but this is not for financial institutions, which is a whole other ball of wax.

These systems are complicated and fragile, and the result is constant problems, not a good basis for adding the downloading of statements.

solostorm

Actually Chris, as another commenter noted, the technology to do these downloads already exists.  A company called FileThis has a service that apparently has resolved the issues that you note.  However it appears that service has gone stagnant.  My guess is that they likely never got to the scale necessary to be profitable. 

Quicken on the other hand has a sizable installed user base, and is a known entity (brand name) to the institutions.  Quicken, either by building or buying the technology would have a sizable clientele to market the product to.

I would happily pay an additional subscription fee for this additional service.  Quicken would not need to include an expensive new service within the existing subscription.  Rather Quicken could sell it separately as an add on.  Some integration would be possible, but it would also work as a standalone service.

Everything would need to be built to the highest levels of security.  Involvement of the financial institutions may be less than you imply.  With user ID's and passwords, a script can be executed to log in to the FI's and extract the statements.  We already supply user ID's and PW's to Quicken and store those in the vault.  That's one place where integration may be valuable - change in only one place. 

Chris_QPW

Express Web Connect "technology" exists, that doesn't mean that it works without huge investment in trying to keep it working.

solostorm

That's why a separate subscription fee would be appropriate. 

Chris_QPW

Actually, I was thinking about Quicken trying to take this on, but that wouldn't be needed and that isn't their "style" anyways.  Maybe the idea post should be changed to "Quicken should partner with a service like FileThis or similar service to get documents".

I notice that they do mention doing this as a service for OEMs.

P.S. I also notice that that most of the links on that very simple website are dead, especially the ones for the developers.  So, if Quicken Inc wants to do this, they better act fact before they are gone.

solostorm

See my comment from the 19th above.  

"Quick comments - the FileThis website looks modern and well put together - but it includes some dead links to apparently enhanced products.  Thier "blog" hasn't had new posts since 2015.  It appears that the company has been acquired by a larger firm. Reviews and articles about them are all several years old.  This creates concerns about if the product is being maintained and grown....."

You reached the same conclusion I did.  There may be an opportunity for Quicken to acquire the technology...  I'd trust Eric and his experienced team to fix it and operate it right...

solostorm

At least Chris... please give the idea an upvote...  

Sherlock

It appears a moderator has restored the archived proposal I mentioned earlier.  If you would like Quicken to provide the functionality, I suggest you consider voting for: Account monthly Statements should be downloadable from financial institutions (9 Legacy Votes)

Chris_QPW

solostorm said:

At least Chris... please give the idea an upvote...  

I'm not sure, with 2 votes already does it really need my vote?  

Chris_QPW

It might be unarchived, but you can't vote on it, it gives an error.

solostorm

Hey Chris-  I see that you also develop conversion software.  There are several of us who wish to be able to bring Quickbooks online payroll data into Quicken - but QOP only exports in IIF format.  Seems similar to QIF (which works from the prior QB product).  Can you offer any assistance?

solostorm

and you are right.  whatever the moderator did does seem to be preventing people from voting....

Sherlock

Chris_QPW said:

It might be unarchived, but you can't vote on it, it gives an error.

solostorm said:

and you are right.  whatever the moderator did does seem to be preventing people from voting....

We are able to vote on it but there is an error posted prior to reload of the counter.   If you refresh the page, the counter appears to have been incremented or decremented as expected.

solostorm

Actually it appears to be broken.  I think I actually might have removed a vote UP.

a message appears that reads "Argument 1 passed to UserModel::eventFromRow() must be of the type array, boolean given, called in /var/www/frontend- 119b0de0d74c85/applications/dashboard/models/class.usermodel.php on line 6243"

Sherlock

solostorm said:

Actually it appears to be broken.  I think I actually might have removed a vote UP.

a message appears that reads "Argument 1 passed to UserModel::eventFromRow() must be of the type array, boolean given, called in /var/www/frontend- 119b0de0d74c85/applications/dashboard/models/class.usermodel.php on line 6243"

When we vote for an idea we have already voted for, our vote is removed.  If we vote for the idea that we have not voted for or for which our vote has been removed, our vote is added.