Schwab - STARTER version must use "Bank" entry to access banking-only checking accts

DonutDollars

Trying to get my Schwab accounts to work again.
disconnected my account.
made sure no passwords were saved.
Try to add the account, Online Services, Set up Now...
Charles Schwab Bank -Web Connect
"Sorry. We encountered and error. (It's not your fault.)"

I've been getting this for a week.
I'm on R39.23, Windows 10

DonutDollars

Ok... so apparently you now need to have the "Deluxe" version of quicken to connect to Schwab Bank accounts, if you have unconnected Schwab Investment accounts.

Explanation:
Note that if you have BOTH Schwab INVESTMENT and BANK accounts, Schwab does not allow you to login through the schwabbank.com website. You are forced to login through the schwab.com website.
Until recently, you could use the STARTER version of quicken to download the Schwab BANK Accounts. But that no longer works if you have Schwab Investment accounts, even if you only want to download the Bank accounts!
If you have Schwab Investment Accounts, you MUST use the DELUXE edition of quicken to download your Schwab BANK Accounts.

Ps56k2

DonutDollars said:  If you have Schwab Investment Accounts, you MUST use the DELUXE edition of quicken to download your Schwab BANK Accounts.

yes - anything tagged as "investments" requires the Quicken Deluxe version - (or higher) - just NOT Starter -

The Schwab Bank High Yield Investor Checking® account is linked to a Schwab One® brokerage account** so you can easily manage both accounts with a single login.

[EDIT] - also updated topic title to better reflect the actual Q&A - along with Deluxe (or higher) -

Chris_QPW

Frankly you have been treading on "unknown/shaky" ground for quite some time.

In the Starter edition if you tried creating an investment account you would see that you can't do it.
Investment accounts have never been "supported" in the Starter edition.

In versions of Quicken 2017 and below if you tried to open a data file that had investment accounts in it in the Starter edition it would not let you in.

In Quicken Subscription they changed that to a policy of letting you open a data file that already had investment accounts in it, but they should have all gone read-only.  The fact that you have been able to use them at all (make entries) let alone download transactions it actual a bug in that what they wanted "account becomes read-only" is evidentially not working as intended.

NotACPA

Investment accounts REQUIRE Deluxe OR HIGHER.  Not just Deluxe.  As noted above, Starter Edition has never supported investment accounts.

DonutDollars

You guys have to read more carefully...
This is a Schwab BANK CHECKING account. However, schwab only lets you access it through your investment login (SODA API), if you also happen to have an investment account.
However, if you have a Schwab Bank Checking account and no investment accounts, you access it through schwabbank.com which is still OFX.
Quicken used to handle this fine, as it should. It's the banking account is not an investment account. I think they lost track of this detail in the SODA change.

DonutDollars

> @Ps56k2 said:
> yes - anything tagged as "investments" requires the Quicken Deluxe version - (or higher) - just NOT Starter -
> The Schwab Bank High Yield Investor Checking® account is linked to a Schwab One® brokerage account** so you can easily manage both accounts with a single login.[EDIT] - also updated topic title to better reflect the actual Q&A - along with Deluxe (or higher) -

Not quite. It IS possible to have a Schwab Banking account and no Schwab investing accounts, and it looks like Starter will work fine for that. Starter was showing access to "schwabbank.com".
Please fix the thread title accordingly.

Chris_QPW

Yes, I missed that this is a checking account.

Is there any error code reported?

Chris_QPW

BTW in general it isn't possible for an investment firm to have "checking accounts" (by law).  That is why you will see all of the firms with "two financial institutions", like Chase and JP Morgan, Bank of America and Mogan Stanley, E-Trade and E-Trade Bank.

So, it is very confusing when there is only one name for Schwab that is both an investment firm and a bank.

DonutDollars

I looked at the connection log, and that helped me figure out the problem. I could see that Quicken Starter was trying it to use OFX, and I know they "upgraded" to SODA. That made me suspect a problem with Starter.
Then I noticed I was trying to add the account for "Charles Schwab Bank -Web Connect" that showed "www.schwabbank.com" as the web address. I never use that portal and it doesn't work for my Schwab Bank Accounts! (It does work for Schwab *banking only* customers.)
And then I noticed that Quicken Starter wasn't even showing me an option for investment accounts!
Now, I didn't want to connect to my investment accounts, but I noticed Quicken didn't list it as an option. Only Schwab Bank and Mortgage were listed.
And then I went Ah Hah! Even though I only want to access my Bank Checking Account, I need to connect through the investment portal with SODA, so I need the Quicken Deluxe addition!

Here is an example of the fail with starter:
20220403 14:53:03: Marketing session sending to: https://ofx1.dev.ebt.schwab.com/webconnect_index.ini
20220403 14:53:03: QFN: Beginning get from https://ofx1.dev.ebt.schwab.com/webconnect_index.ini
20220403 14:53:23: ***QFN kQFFinished: returns 67186402
20220403 14:53:23: Your Internet connection or the server has timed out. Try again now, or wait and try later.

I bought Deluxe but there was a strange thing... Deluxe doesn't even give you a selection for the bank as an account type! You can only select account types: brokerage, IRA or 529. I selected brokerage, and it worked with my Bank Checking account anyway!

So, bugs for Quicken to fix:
1) Starter should allow users to connect to their bank accounts with SODA by logging in through the investment side, schwab.com. They should also retain the way for Banking only Schwab customers to login to schwabbank.com with OFX. (Obviously, they can still prevent Starter clients from connecting to the Schwab investment accounts.)

2) Deluxe should allow users to go through the Investment side SODA connection and choose the Schwab bank account types: "checking", etc.

NotACPA

SODA isn't a connection type that's known to Q. Is it an acronym?  If so,  for what?  For connection types, Q only recognizes (on  the QWin side) Express Web Connect, Direct Connect and  Web Connect.

A Google search for SODA returned  www.sodapdf.com ... but Q can't use PDF files for transaction download.

DonutDollars

SODA is what Schwab calls their new API. (Securing Outbound Data for Aggregators). I may be using it incorrectly when I called it a connection type. But my understanding is all the changes to Quicken's Schwab connection have been adapting to this new SODA API.

Chris_QPW

When talking about "connection types" is how Quicken is connecting to either the financial institution (Direct Connect/Web Connect) or how it is connecting Quicken server (Express Web Connect or Express Web Connect +), which in turn connects to the Intuit server, which in turn connects to the financial institution through whatever "API or such" that the financial institution and Intuit have agreed to.

Quicken's side of the Schwab connection is called Express Web Connect + and is somewhat different from Express Web Connect, but they (Quicken Inc and Intuit) don't tell exactly what is different.

As you can see from the above description, this doesn't sound like a "simple" "change Quicken" kind of request.

EDIT:  Just to be clear, it might involve all three parties to change things.

DonutDollars

I've never been able to get a Quicken support person to explain to me exactly how the connection works. I see posts like yours mentioning different connection types but no details. The "+" connection type is never mentioned in Windows Quicken and isn't mentioned in the Quicken FAQ. (https://www.quicken.com/support/how-quicken-connects-your-bank)
There is a light description here:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/19996473#Comment_19996473

Schwab says the connection to them is via the SODA API. Maybe Quicken calls it something else.
I note that the new Schwab connections don't even show up in the connection log! Do they show somewhere else?

I'm pretty sure most of the first tier Quicken people have no idea how the connection works. They certainly didn't understand the error.

I'm network savvy enough to understand this stuff. Heck, I used to use Yodlee a decade ago. I just wish Quicken would have a couple white papers or something describing how the darn thing really works.
I mean, support should have been able to tell me I needed Deluxe during the first 5 minutes of my first phone call. This shouldn't be so hard to figure out.

Chris_QPW

The + was first introduced for Capitol One, but only for banking accounts.
Schwab is the first financial institution using Express Web Connect +.

The flow for both Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect + is:
Quicken -> Quicken servers/Quicken Cloud dataset (better known as "sync") -> Intuit server -> financial institution's website.

Why they had to change Quicken for Express Web Connect + is a bit of a mystery to me, maybe because Intuit wanted to change how they pass the information back given they were already forced to change to the new API on their side to the financial institution.

Note that in the beginning most likely Express Web Connect was exactly like it sound "Express" Web Connect, as in go to the financial institution's website and download a QFX file.  But that morphed into connecting various ways and having to convert the data given, and that was based on "agreements" with the financial institutions.

Backup a bit.  Until the beginning of last year the Quicken server wasn't in the middle of this flow.

So, before when the Quicken server wasn't in the middle the logging went to the OFX log.
But once the Quicken server was inserted into the flow the logging is now in the Cloud Sync Log.  Express Web Connect (and +) are using the same syncing system as "Sync to Mobile/Web" which in reality is "Sync to Quicken Cloud dataset" and the Mobile/Web are just GUIs into that data.

Now what are you going to find in that Quicken Cloud Sync log?
First off unlike the nice OFX log that pretty much was just the conversation in OFX protocol, the "sync log" is Quicken developers logging whatever they like about that conversation.  No standard, and quite hard to read.  What's more the conversation is between Quicken and Quicken's server, not what is going on with Intuit and the financial institution.

BTW as far as the article of "how it Quicken connects" it is at best "approximately right", but certainly not 100% correct.  And it hasn't been updated in years.

Chris_QPW

Actually, now that I think about it, I have an idea of why Quicken had to change for going to Express Web Connect + for Schwab.  Sync to Mobile/Web/dataset only supports the number of shares/price and cash amount.  For the dataset to hold the information coming from in and sync it to Quicken would have required changing it to also store and sync the investment transactions.

DonutDollars

I don't have web or mobile enabled. Primarily because I don't want my stuff accessible through quicken's outside interfaces.
So I never thought there would be anything in the Cloud Sync Log!
See... this is why it would be helpful for Quicken to explain how stuff works.

Now I'm wondering if Quicken does pulls from Schwab at some interval whether I want it or not? I mean, if I don't use quicken for a month, is it still downloading from Schwab nightly or something? That would be VERY uncool. I certainly am not explicitly authorizing that! It should only pull when I request it. Especially as I have NOT enabled web/mobile.

Ps56k2

DonutDollars said:  It IS possible to have a Schwab Banking account and no Schwab investing accounts, and it looks like Starter will work fine for that. Starter was showing access to "schwabbank.com".
Please fix the thread title accordingly.

SO - its been an interesting discussion.... (not sure why forum is double spacing my lines)
To clarify - you are using STARTER
and can access your Schwab banking-only accounts with a changed Quicken Account setup ?
Guessing - "Charles Schwab Bank-Web Connect" - but if you try with the other entry it will fail due to the "investment" -
SO - if you have Quicken Starter, and the Schwab banking-only accounts - you need to use the "bank" entry for things to work.
68824    68824    68824    Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.    https://www.schwab.com/
866-855-9102    https://www.schwab.com/    ACTIVE  
BANKING,CREDIT,ACCOUNTINFO,INVESTMENT,401K&EXP-WEB-CONNECT

03793    03793    03793    Charles Schwab Bank-Web Connect    https://www.schwabbank.com/
888-403-9000    https://www.schwabbank.com/    ACTIVE
BANKING&WEB-CONNECT
BANKING,CREDIT,ACCOUNTINFO&EXP-WEB-CONNECT

54969    54969    54969    Charles Schwab Bank Mortgage    http://www.schwabbankmortgage.com
1-866-266-4756    https://rocketaccount.com    ACTIVE
BANKING,CREDIT,ACCOUNTINFO&EXP-WEB-CONNECT

Chris_QPW

DonutDollars said:

Now I'm wondering if Quicken does pulls from Schwab at some interval whether I want it or not? I mean, if I don't use quicken for a month, is it still downloading from Schwab nightly or something? That would be VERY uncool. I certainly am not explicitly authorizing that! It should only pull when I request it. Especially as I have NOT enabled web/mobile.

The answer is most likely yes, it will be pulling data nightly.

If you look back on that article about Express Web Connect you will notice that it started out its life by pulling the data nightly and storing it on the Intuit server to be picked up.  Even though over the years it has been getting more "interactive" that mode still exists.  So, people using Express Web Connect (and +) should expect that at a minimum the Intuit server will be doing that.  But if you when you realize that starting last year Express Web Connect got the Quicken server put into the flow, one should expect that it is also doing the same.  I wouldn't expect it to treat it any different than when the data is stored for Mobile/Web access.  I could be wrong about this, but I believe the only difference between the Sync to Mobile/Web as far as the recent far as the recent transactions are concerned would be some kind of flag not to make the transactions visible to the Mobile/Web apps.
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7882641/qcs-express-web-connect-is-cloud-sync

DonutDollars

> @Ps56k2 said:
> SO - its been an interesting discussion.... (not sure why forum is double spacing my lines)
>
> To clarify - you are using STARTER
> and can access your Schwab banking-only accounts with a changed Quicken Account setup ?
> Guessing - "Charles Schwab Bank-Web Connect" - but if you try with the other entry it will fail due to the "investment" -
> SO - if you have Quicken Starter, and the Schwab banking-only accounts - you need to use the "bank" entry for things to work.

 
Only if you do NOT have investment accounts. Schwab ONLY allows banking ONLY customers to use the schwabbank.com site.