Unable to download QFX? (Q Mac)

ACC

I just purchased Quicken-For-Mac. Downloaded YTD QFX file for a credit card. Imported it and it worked just fine. Deleted those transactions because I wanted to continue to test. Downloaded QFX just for Jan and again for Feb. Neither would load. I found this: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7905187/ongoing-4-5-22-qfx-web-connect-files-not-importing. Any suggestions? Without QFX this is useless to me. I'm not interested in any Direct Connection. Thanks

jacobs

Are you sure your initial QFX file didn't have any January and February transactions? If you imported them, then deleted them, they will not import again into the same Quicken data file. 

To test this, try creating a temporary test data file, and try importing the January-February QFX file. If it imports into the test file, but not your previous real file, that confirms those transactions were at one point imported into the file.

Boatnmaniac

jacobs said:

Are you sure your initial QFX file didn't have any January and February transactions? If you imported them, then deleted them, they will no import again into the same Quicken data file.

Is it that they will not import, again, into the same Quicken data file or is it that they will not import, again, into the same account?  In QW I have been able to deactivate an account (making sure to also remove the Financial Institution Information so the QFX import does not recognize the account) or delete the account that was previously used and then I was able to set up a new account and import it into that.

Another option to get previously imported data to import again is to restore an earlier backup file from before the original import.  In this case it might not be viable since @ACC might not yet have started making backups but it is something to keep in mind for the future.

ACC

Problem "solved"--sort of. I did not pay close enough to the message Quicken generated when I deleted the dowloaded transactions (downloaded earlier from a QFX file). The message, paraphrased, "If you delete these transactions, you will not be able to download them again." Why Quicken does it this way is strange to me, but I can work around it. Now I just need someone to explain why I can't download a QFX file from USAA.

jacobs

@ACCHere's why the no-repeat-downloads situation exists (and needs to exist)... Your financial institution doesn't keep track of what data you've downloaded. (That's why you can, for instance, create a test file and download the same transactions as your main file.) When Quicken connects to the financial institution, Quicken says "give me what you've got for this account" and the financial institution downloads whatever date range (typically 90 days) or transactions they provide. It's up to Quicken to determine which of those downloaded transactions are new and which already exist. Additionally, if you use Quicken Cloud services, that server is also downloading transactions in the background, and when you sync your desktop data file, the Quicken application needs to know which transactions have already been imported and which are new. This is why every transaction you download or import has a unique ID number from the financial institution — the FITID. In your Quicken data file, there's a table which contains a list of every FITID number you've ever downloaded; Quicken compares each downloaded transaction to that list; it discards transactions with an existing FITID number in the database and imports transactions with no matching FITID number. If this process weren't there, you'd end up with duplicate transactions every time you downloaded, and the process would be unworkable. 

So what of a user makes a mistake, like downloading transactions and inadvertently deleting them, and now you want to import them again. The problem is that there's no way for Quicken to know which duplicate transactions you want (the ones you deleted) and which you don't. You might say: well, if I delete a transaction, Quicken should delete that FITID number from its list, so I would be able to re-import it. But that means that every time you deleted a transaction intentionally, the next time you download transactions, it would download again! And so there would be no way to get rid of it, because you'd keep deleting it and it would keep coming back.

So that's why you can't re-import/download transactions you've deleted.

Boatnmaniac

ACC said:

Problem "solved"--sort of. I did not pay close enough to the message Quicken generated when I deleted the dowloaded transactions (downloaded earlier from a QFX file). The message, paraphrased, "If you delete these transactions, you will not be able to download them again." Why Quicken does it this way is strange to me, but I can work around it.

There is a really good reason why Quicken does not allow for previously downloaded transactions entered into registers to be entered into registers with future downloads.  It is to prevent entry of duplicate transactions into the registers with future downloads.  This is especially important with Direct Connect and Quicken Connect (Express Web Connect in Quicken for Windows) because the financial institutions define how many days/weeks/months of data they will download each time One Step Update is run.  If the typical download window is the last 60 days of transactions and if you run One Step Update ever day, you would otherwise have 59 days of duplicate transactions being entered into your register each day that would need to be manually deleted.  With Web Connect we can often control how many days are manually downloaded (not in all cases) but that same logic prevents the risk of duplicate transactions being entered into the register.

ACC said:

Now I just need someone to explain why I can't download a QFX file from USAA.

Each financial institution determines which Quicken connection method(s) they will support.  Some will support all 3 (Direct Connect, Quicken Connect, Web Connect) but others will support only 1 or 2 of these. 

It might be different for Quicken for Mac but for Quicken for Windows USAA has opted to not support Web Connect.  If it is the same for Quicken for Mac and if you do not want to use the Direct Connect and/or Quicken Connect connection methods, then your options are to manually enter transactions for USAA or to not include USAA in Quicken.

ACC

Well written. Thanks. As I said I can work around it.