When will downloads in Windows return to a reasonable time?

MrZipp

Before the switch from Direct Connect, my numerous accounts would download around 7 am EDT in a minute. Now it takes 8 minutes and accounts like Schwab, US Bank, etc are often not complete. While this used to be a rare exception, it is now the normal.

Any hope to return Quicken Premier to a better service level?

MrZipp

Tom Young

Financial Institutions (FIs) must pay Quicken a fee if they want to use Direct Connect as the downloading method.  Accordingly many, many FIs are dropping Direct Connect and using EWC or EWC+ instead. 

I've simply stopped using any credit cards where the FI has switched to EWC but haven't felt up to trying to move all my Schwab accounts to a different brokerage firm. 

Like you, I've noticed that downloads from Schwab do seem to go on a lot longer than they used to and typically found each month since the switchover one or two transactions have been omitted. 

MrZipp

Thanks for the note, Tom. It's always about money and security. My real issue is the timing of the Web Connect and curious is Quicken is doing much to improve ( or bring back to what was normal ) a reasonable DL time and also an earlier time of the day to expect the info to be accurate. It is becoming a standard now, that the OL balance is not correct for a full day on US Bank. Since I use that Credit Card at least a half dozen times daily, it would be nice to balance to the OL total. It worked properly for many years.

Among other things at the new Quicken, I do hope the are trying to achieve the top in their products and support for those of us who are 25+ years users.

MrZipp

Tom Young

My understanding is that the typical EWC connection is made sometime overnight.  I have noticed with Schwab the polling seems to be more frequent, but even that has its built-in problems. 

A couple of days ago I sold a mutual fund and then in the early evening did an Update Transactions request out of the Account.  The "number of shares" figure returned to me from Schwab was a weird negative number that I absolutely knew was not correct.  Turns out that Schwab processes mutual fund shares differently than stock trades - it was described to me as a "manual" process by a Schwab rep - and posts some "intermediate" numbers into your account at Schwab while this process goes on.   Quicken picked up one of these intermediate numbers as the "number of shares per Schwab" and attempted to compare that (screwball) number to what my Quicken Schwab Account showed.

As I understand it Quicken has to write a "script" (program) to move around your account with the financial institution and try to grab numbers.  A small change of a screen on the part of the financial institution or a lack of understanding of a process on the part of Quicken (the Schwab incident) means that errors are almost guaranteed.

And, although Schwab touted the change as "more secure" I'm just not buying it.  With Direct Connect my password was stored on my computer and my computer dialed right into Schwab which presented the information in a well-formatted way.  Now my password isn't stored on my computer, there's 2 intermediaries between my computer and Schwab, and a script written by Quicken is expecting to find every piece of information in a specified spot. 

i don't think it's going to get a lot better anytime soon.

MrZipp

Sounds rather gruesome. I didn't know any of that. I have Schwab Mutuals as well, and, for the most part, they seem to be okay. I do have a managed account that seems to have quite a delay in info, and, as so, my Schwab link (now 7 accounts) often shows as failed, even though most of the info is correct.

When it was Direct, the info was, for the most part, up to date, and quick. I doubt it will ever be that way again.

MrZipp

Chris_QPW

For what it is worth.  Express Web Connect hasn't been "daily" for a very long time now.  It has been everything from real time to "daily".  It really just depends on what the financial institution wants.  This is especially true in the day of multiple authentication that has to be done real time.

The one part of "daily" that is still there is that the Intuit/Quicken servers still do a nightly retrieval of transactions.  Why they do it is a bit of mystery to me given all that has changed.  Maybe it is because there are some financial institutions that still use the old way.

BK

To compare notes, I have 13 connected FIs with approx 30 accounts, half of which are [unfortunately] EWC/EWC+ including multiple Schwabs and I still download all accounts successfully typically in about 30 seconds - for sure always under a minute.

I have noticed a few posts lately on this community about the slowness as well after a certain patch update, so perhaps this is due to some recent change/release?  I am still on a January release.  To be fair, I had to create a new data file in December due to some corruption, and then exported/imported all my old data to it, so my file size is 1/5 of what it used to be, but contains everything.

MrZipp

Nice info, BK. Just curious, if you're in Windows, about how large is your Quicken file?

MrZipp

Sherlock

Tom Young said:

Financial Institutions (FIs) must pay Quicken a fee if they want to use Direct Connect as the downloading method.  Accordingly many, many FIs are dropping Direct Connect and using EWC or EWC+ instead. 

I've simply stopped using any credit cards where the FI has switched to EWC but haven't felt up to trying to move all my Schwab accounts to a different brokerage firm. 

Like you, I've noticed that downloads from Schwab do seem to go on a lot longer than they used to and typically found each month since the switchover one or two transactions have been omitted. 

FIs do not pay Quicken.  They pay Intuit.  If you haven't already, you may want to review: https://www.intuit.com/partners/fdp/implementation-support/

Note: EWC and EWC+ cost FIs less but EWC and EWC+ are less secure and less reliable than Direct Connect.

BK

MrZipp said:

Nice info, BK. Just curious, if you're in Windows, about how large is your Quicken file?

@MrZipp

Yes, Win11.  My datafile went from 120MB to 22MB after the complete rebuild (Dec 21) and now it is 31MB and grows daily.  I had no attachments, so purely database optimization is my guess.  As an FYI even before, my update times were pretty decent - around 1-3 minutes.  I know Quicken made some improvements since then.  So I cannot conclude whether the improvement in my update times is due to my changes or Quicken - most likely both.

Chris_QPW

MrZipp said:

Nice info, BK. Just curious, if you're in Windows, about how large is your Quicken file?

MrZipp

Just so you know, I have yet to see a correlation with the size of a data file to performance.  Especially when you are talking about One Step Update.  It is what is in the data file that counts.

For an "8 minute" One Step Update that doesn't involve a ton of financial institutions/accounts I would look to one or more financial institutions getting "hung up" and timing out and then going on.

And I would note also that Direct Connect accounts are done in serial, and Express Web Connect accounts are downloaded in parallel.  So, for Express Web Connect only with a reasonable number of financial institutions/accounts I would expect the operation to be the time it takes for the longest one.  And yes, different financial institutions download at different speeds.

For the record my data file is 154MB (no attachments), but like I said that has no bearing on how fast downloading transactions take.

MrZipp

Thanks, BK - My data file is 140 MB. Curious how you reduced yours to much, but kept all data. My file has details for at least 15 years of about 10 bank accounts, 15 Credit cards, and 11 Investment accounts, of which some of each group are closed accounts and hidden. I have detailed transactions for each of the accounts. I don't want to lose any of that data. Actually, some of the investment records go back for an additional 10 years. I've always considered Quicken (Premier) to be my "pretty close to" correct history.

I was dismayed recently, when trying to work on a report problem, I talked to a support rep who quickly told me if my data file was over 5 years old, I should start over. Too bad if that's a Tech Support opinion in general.

Again, back to my original post, when Schwab was Direct, the dl time was always less that a minute. Now it is much longer and no equipment here has changed. I can live with it, but I also don't see any benefit to me as a user.

Chris, to you, thanks for your input. I'll check out your link shortly.

MrZipp

BK

@MrZipp

The experts who have commented here (I am not an expert) will tell you that their data file is same or maybe older than yours.  So what the rep said is as you diplomatically wrote, general.  My data is since 2012.  And as @Chris_QPW wrote size does not matter   My point was not about the size either, but it was about cleanup and optimization I did which resulted in the side effect of size reduction.  I did it via exporting my old data and then importing it into a new file in a lengthy, tested, mistakes, tested ... , prototyped and calculated process.  It was also out of desperation because my data and backups were corrupted - a unique situation.

But perhaps there is a better way for you:  What release version are you using now?  When did the slowness start?  Recently after a release update, which one?  Perhaps it is as simple as reverting back to an older version to see if that resolves it.

MrZipp

BK,  my problems started with the Schwab switchover late last Fall. I had to do quite a few updates so that would work right. Not much chance in going back. From then, as the DC switch to EWC, it has been slow. Again, surprising, as the touted parallel processing should speed things up (for some, I guess), but alas, not for. What I also miss is the ability to get very current transactions throughout the day, but not it's not possible.

I'm sure this train is moving forward, and this is a by-product of progress, but I will remain hopeful. It seems to me, as a long term IT person (Director, also had my own company), performance issues can pretty much be addressed by capacity increases.

As Customer Support is a factor of training and time available.

My Quicken isn't broken, and I really don't want to go through what you did to fix the corruption. Now that I remember, the Support Rep said to me that, most files over 5 years old are corrupted, and for that reason alone, I should rebuild.  Reminds me of an Orthopedic Surgeon years ago, that, after I twisted my knee and he say the X-rays, he looked at me walking and told me right off, the since I'm a bit bow-legged, I might as well go ahead and schedule knee replacements. He could do it so, and had just completed several. that morning! Needless to say, I didn't take his advice!

Thanks for your thoughts and insight from all of you!

MrZipp

BK

@MrZipp

Final suggestions:

Alternative-1: Temporarily disable (Deactivate) ALL of your Schwab accounts in your current data file.  Create a TEST file and add one Schwab at a time and evaluate the update speed.  As a techie you know where I am going with this ...

Alternative-2: Validate your data file and then create a Quicken copy (File > Copy & Backup > Create a copy) – let’s call it DataCopy1.  This will deactivate/disconnect ALL of your accounts.  Save a backup of this file (need it for the #3), let’s call it DataCopy2.  Now activate your Schwab accounts in DataCopy1 and see if the update speed improves.

Alternative-3: Purchase a new Q license and create a new Quicken ID with a new email address (you have a 30-day refund guarantee).  (a) Use the new TEST file you created in #1, log out and login with your new ID and evaluate.  (b) Use the saved version of your disconnected file you created in #2 (DataCopy2) and login with your new Q ID and connect your Schwab accounts to see if your update speed improves.

[Why am I asking you to deactivate your Schwab accounts in the suggestions above?  I recall reading that with the changes, one cannot have the same Schwab accounts in multiple data files.  Don't know if that is still the case, but just going along with it for the sake of this troubleshooting]

One of these three should hopefully provide enough data points to make some decisions.

FYI, my corruption happened when they migrated our accounts due to the changes in Schwab back in November.  And my backups failed too which was the main puzzle.  Long story short the Level2 tech supports told me that my Quicken ID was in an unstable state as a result, something they had never seen before, which forced me to setup a brand new Q ID - like I said it was a one-off unique situation.

Good luck.

TTSguy

I think something else which sometimes is the obvious, but we often take for granted, That is, keep your PC updated and clean. I run SFC /Scannow on a regular basis, I Trim and or Defrag and Optimize my drives on a regular basis, and above all I check windows update a couple time as day I also download those updates

 Many will disagree with me but I also have a subscription to Advanced System Care 15 Pro, that I will add I swear by. It has several checks that can speed up everything Downloads AND SSD HDD access times. I also use CClearer Pro, but the ASC finds all kind of things that CCleaner doesn't. I've NEVER had problem with it in the 10 years I've been using it.

I know, I know, It can shorten my SDD life with it, but my PC runs SOOOOO Well !

Good PC housekeeping can sometimes make a difference too!

MrZipp

Great advice, TTSguy! I also keep a active eye of all of  the equipment in the household, looking for any chance to keep things in good shape, though, you are at the top of the leader-board in your efforts!

I hope anyone who reads your post gets a case of 'proactive maintenance' religion for their own PCs!

MrZipp

BK, I appreciate your message about your experience, and the details of what you went through. Based on the time commitment, and the fact that my system is working fine, just slow on EWC, I'll likely not go through what you did.

I'm not sure if I could, actually, because when I connect to the Schwab account, all 7 accounts are automatically updated, and same for my local bank PNC - 2 accounts add and update.

I have a ton of backups available daily on at least a half dozen platforms, so I can go back to just about any instance. I was the target of Ransomware once, and improved my diligence - I didn't lose any data on any PCs, just had to spend time to reinstall and copy back. I did change my AV service though, as the one (unnammed) - was totally oblivious as the attack unfolded in front of me.

Sorry to get off target - thanks again for your ideas!

MrZipp