Important Bank of America clarification

bwentzel13

> @neilz said:
> So ... since I did the recommended 'switch' and followed directions to move to the Bill Manager, I find that all the bills I normally pay via Quicken to BoA, still show the "Online Bill Pay" and that I still need to send them to the bank.
>
Thanks for relaying your experience. What did you mean by "that I still need to send them to the bank."?

Frankx

Eli Sherer said:

So now the question is: Will this new Quicken+BoA change mean anything to me? 

Hi @""Eli Sherer"

Yes, it will mean that you will no longer be able to make payments from your BOA account in Quicken using the method you have been using for years (i.e. - "Bank Billpay").

Your options going forward will be:

1) pay your bills by going to the BOA website and making payments directly from there (followed by going into Quicken to record the entry - or waiting for the download from the bank (that includes the bill payment) and accepting the payment into your Quicken datafile.

2) Using Quicken Bill Manager (i.e. your "Billpay") to make payments.

Let me know if you have any followups.

Frankx

Quicken Kathryn

Hi all,

Just a clarifying note, as there have been a lot of questions about connectivity changes and Bill Pay in this thread and in our other Care channels.  

Please understand that these connectivity changes were not initiated by Quicken Inc., and that we do not benefit financially (nor are we harmed financially) by these changes.  Our continuing focus has been on providing reliable, secure connectivity and integrated Bill Pay capabilities to our users. 

For more information on these changes, please see the FAQ here.

bwentzel13

> @Quicken Kathryn said:
> Hi all,
>
>
> Just a clarifying note, as there have been a lot of questions about connectivity changes and Bill Pay in this thread and in our other Care channels.  
> Please understand that these connectivity changes were not initiated by Quicken Inc., and that we do not benefit financially (nor are we harmed financially) by these changes.  Our continuing focus has been on providing reliable, secure connectivity and integrated Bill Pay capabilities to our users. 
> For more information on these changes, please see the FAQ here.

Thanks for joining the conversation. While I appreciate the FAQ, what I would really benefit from is a detailed explanation of how our processes will change with the move from Bank Bill Pay (which I believe is synonymous with Direct Connect) to Quicken Bill Manager. I think there is also FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) by reports of people having troubles after going through the transitions. Under these circumstances folks like me will benefit from acknowledgement of those issues by Quicken and an understanding of what Quicken is doing to remediate/overcome them.

Thanks again for joining the conversation.

Eli Sherer

@Frankx said:
> Hi @""Eli Sherer"
>
> Yes, it will mean that you will no longer be able to make payments from your BOA account in Quicken using the method you have been using for years (i.e. - "Bank Billpay").

Ugh... not what I was hoping to hear, but if true... life goes on.

>
> Your options going forward will be:
>
> 1) pay your bills by going to the BOA website and making payments directly from there (followed by going into Quicken to record the entry - or waiting for the download from the bank (that includes the bill payment) and accepting the payment into your Quicken datafile.

This means basically going back 20+ years to the time when I wrote paper checks and waited for them to be cashed. Ugh again!

> 2) Using Quicken Bill Manager (i.e. your "Billpay") to make payments.

This is the part that is unclear. I started setting up Bill Manager to track my credit cards and make payments, but a) some of them do not appear separately (e.g. American Express shows as a single item, but I have more than one Amex card), and b) In fact, I have MANY credit cards under the same banner (Chase, Citi, Amex, ...) But the only ones that appear separately right now are the Chase bills.

Also, and I know this is not you... I have about 25 bills that are regularly paid by my own entries (others are auto-billed). Seems like a greater number than Quicken will allow, am I right?

That said, I am a Premier customer... so maybe I will take the time to make a phone call and see if I can get someone who can explain and walk me through it all.

Jon

Eli Sherer said:

Also, and I know this is not you... I have about 25 bills that are regularly paid by my own entries (others are auto-billed). Seems like a greater number than Quicken will allow, am I right? 

If you have bills that are automatically charged to your credit card or that you are otherwise initiating payment outside of Quicken, you can set those up as scheduled transactions & they don't count towards your Bill Pay limit (at least they don't in Quicken Mac). I have 21 scheduled transactions currently that are not in Bill Pay.

BK

Eli Sherer said:

...
This means basically going back 20+ years to the time when I wrote paper checks and waited for them to be cashed. Ugh again!

There is a better way: You now have the opportunity to bypass Quicken completely and instead setup and automate all your bill payments directly within your bank's website.  You will find out that you will have less to do and full confidence - and no changes to any program such as Quicken will ever affect that.

Steven Gelfond

Is this a money grab by Quicken or Bank of America? On the Bank of America site they appear to support this feature for QuickBooks.
https://www.bankofamerica.com/smallbusiness/online-banking/quickbooks/faqs/

And they charge $15/month for these QuickBooks users.
https://www.bankofamerica.com/smallbusiness/online-banking/account-management/

This gets real interesting because Quicken used to be owned by the same company that owns QuickBooks....Intuit.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/031215/quickbooks-vs-quicken.asp

I've been using Quicken for 30+ years and this might be the nail in the coffin. Bill Pay via Direct Connect through Bank of America made managing bills easy. What I don't under stand is if QuickBooks still can provide this feature, why can't Quicken?

Bill Maniscalco

Currently, it looks like Wells Fargo still supports bill payment via direct connect. I am considering moving to Wells unless there a likelihood they will also pull out like BoA. Does anyone know about Wells Fargo's plans?

Rocket J Squirrel

Yes, WF will drop DC.

https://financialdataexchange.org/FDX/FDX/The-Consortium/Members.aspx

Chris_QPW

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Yes, WF will drop DC.

https://financialdataexchange.org/FDX/FDX/The-Consortium/Members.aspx

Probably true, but not certain and no one knows the time frame.  I notice that USAA is also on the list, but have yet to change over.  All of the members in that first section have been supporting FDX for years, but it doesn't actually tell us the "when".

Here is an attempt by one user to get Quicken Inc to post some kind of schedule of when different financial institutions will do this:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20295288/#Comment_20295288

Personally I think that is a waste of time.  Quicken Inc (and Intuit before them) never post things like this.
It is probably a combination of not even knowing, and that it is the financial institution that is driving the schedules and as such it their desire to be the ones announcing any changes.

Jon

Steven Gelfond said:

Is this a money grab by Quicken or Bank of America? 

For Quicken & Intuit, I suspect this is mainly about moving banks away from EWC & screen-scraping - not a cash grab but a cost savings. I think they'd have been perfectly happy to move everybody to Direct Connect but obviously that hasn't happened & isn't going to. EWC+ might not be as good as Direct Connect but they still save money moving banks away from EWC.

As for Bank of America, I doubt anyone there is expecting Quicken users to switch to QuickBooks & then pay $10/month for DC; if they wanted to do a cash grab they'd have simply started charging Quicken users the same as QB customers. I can only assume they're motivated by security concerns, I can't see how EWC+ is much of a cost savings for them compared to DC. I have to wonder if there's any plans to move QB over to FDX; I'd love to be a fly on the wall if they try to take bill paying away from business customers.

Chris_QPW

@Jon That is an interesting observation about QuickBooks.

I would really think that it would be all or nothing.  In other words maintaining an OFX server for Direct Connect definitely is an extra expense to them they might want to get rid not only for the actual server/software, but for the support of it too.  But as long as they are supporting it, it would matter very little in the cost based on the "volume" unless there really big difference in the number of users.

And like you said you if it really was about cost they could have just started charging Quicken users.

My bet would be QuickBook users are going to face the same change in the not to distant future.

Chris_QPW

BTW I'm not a QuickBooks customer so I was wondering if anyone knows how they handle bill paying when the customer isn't using a financial institution that supports Direct Connect?
They would be in the same boat as the Quicken users that want that service.

Frankx

In my opinion, it is highly unlikely that any bank would keep Direct Connect for one consumer (e.g. a connection via Quickbooks) while removing it for another consumer (e.g. a Quicken user).  That makes no sense at all.  Banks don't make their money based on consumer download connection types.  

Frankx

Eli Sherer

I have a bit of news that may help those concerned about having to do double entries to track future payments!

I like many of you make multiple payments from my BofA account each month. Entering them for future dates in Quicken and having Bank Bill Pay is the way I have done things for years (decades actually). So when Quicken could not really answer my questions about how I should continue, (except to say that I should pay more for the privilege of having them make the payments for me), I called BofA and spoke first to someone in the "Payment Center" area, then to someone else in Online Support. I learned a bit from both, and hopefully, this will stay true as we close in on October 10th.

1. If you schedule a payment in Bank Of America Bill Pay (on their website or in the app, the next time you synchronize your account in Quicken the SCHEDULED payments SHOULD appear and download into Quicken! I proved this by scheduling a payment two weeks out and then sync'd my account in Quicken. When the download was complete, the scheduled payment showed up in the register set for that future date! I deleted the payment online (BankOfA site), and the scheduled payment updated in Quicken as **Void**!

2. Of course this does not solve having to go to the BandkOfA site to set up your payments... but if you haven't been to their Bill Pay tab online in a while, you will notice when you get there that ALL of the payees you have set up in Quicken are already there. In fact, when I tried to delete one of the older ones (a vendor I have not used in 5-7 years), I was not able to do it because it was "managed by a 3rd party" (meaning Quicken). So for this... there is a question of whether all these payees will still be there after October 10th, and how we will be able to manage them. But we can burn that bridge when we get to it.

3. As to the rumor that current Bank Bill Pay users will be grandfathered in (allowed to continue making payments through Quicken directly), the answer is unclear. The Online Services rep searched his notices and could not find anything to confirm or deny that we may be grandfathered in (nor could he speak to how this might happen, since the Handshake required for Direct Connect is the method by which the payment information is transferred).

Meanwhile, the Bank Of America website says:
" Please note: Quicken DirectConnect is no longer supported for new users. You can easily download information from Online Banking to Quicken using Web Connect."

The site then goes on with instructions on how to DOWNLOAD a file and then import it into Quicken...

But farther down the same page, there is this note:
"Web Connect allows you to automatically download your transactions from Online Banking, launch your Quicken software, and reconcile your transactions all in one easy step. With Web Connect, there is no more searching for downloads and importing Quicken Interchange Format (QIF) files, and no more duplicate transactions due to multiple QIF downloads." So it's not really clear.

Chris_QPW

@Eli Sherer #1 of your statements will not work if Direct Connect is removed.

It is Direct Connect/the OFX protocol that is doing this syncing.

With "bill pay" through Direct Connect/the financial institution Quicken is sending commands/exchanging information with the financial institution's bill payment system.  In some ways it is like Quicken is another GUI for the financial institution's bill payment system, with the extra features to reflect that information into Quicken in the form of bill payees and information on the transactions.

So, it doesn't matter if you create the payees or schedule payments in Quicken or at the financial institution's website, they will get synced to each other.

Once Direct Connect goes away this syncing also goes away.

After that point you will need to create reminders in Quicken to put transactions into your register and match them to the downloaded transactions.  You will not get any status on the bill paying in Quicken until the transaction clears the bank and is downloaded.  And then it will be in the form of the downloaded transaction, not the "Check #" status.

bwentzel13

While I would like to keep Direct Connect for BofA, I realize things change over time and I've accepted that. My frustration with this upcoming change is the lack of information from Quicken about how my processes will change. The only information I've received and been able to glean is the steps necessary activate with Quicken Bill Manager. Even the Quicken site is that is supposed to explain the change (https://www.quicken.com/support/managing-bank-bill-pay-and-transfers-after-direct-connect-discontinuation) is as clear as mud to me.

jl747

@Chris_QPW

@Frankx

Found this on QB Community

https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/bank-connectivity/refresh-connection-express-web-connect-online/L29kw7xd7_US_en_US?uid=l82b4xa5
Hope this helps

Chris_QPW

bwentzel13 said:

While I would like to keep Direct Connect for BofA, I realize things change over time and I've accepted that. My frustration with this upcoming change is the lack of information from Quicken about how my processes will change. The only information I've received and been able to glean is the steps necessary activate with Quicken Bill Manager. Even the Quicken site is that is supposed to explain the change (https://www.quicken.com/support/managing-bank-bill-pay-and-transfers-after-direct-connect-discontinuation) is as clear as mud to me.

This might help you to understand some of the differences:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7916268/my-explanation-of-the-different-term-services-that-quicken-has-provides-and-provided-in-the-past

Chris_QPW

jl747 said:

@Chris_QPW

@Frankx

Found this on QB Community

https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/bank-connectivity/refresh-connection-express-web-connect-online/L29kw7xd7_US_en_US?uid=l82b4xa5
Hope this helps

Thanks.  That is exactly what I would have expected, but is nice to see it confirmed.

bwentzel13

My thanks to all of you who are contributing and trying to help the community understand and cope with these changes. However, even with all this information I still have questions best framed with a few examples:

When I reconcile one of our credit card accounts I go through the following steps:

1. After reconciling the account in the register I press Done.
2. I'm presented with the Make Credit Card Payment screen; select Online Payment; then press Yes
3. I'm presented with the Write Checks screen; press Record Check; and then press Done.
4. That payment is later sent to BofA when I update the checking account through the register. I assume BofA does an ACH transfer to the credit card company.

Another example is an auto loan that I established a loan account for with regular payments when we purchased the car. I believe Quicken created a BofA scheduled payment as it is the only scheduled payment listed when I view my account information on BofA.

Lastly, there are the occasional payments I make to various. For these I:

1. Create an Online Payee if one doesn't already exist
2. Use the Write Checks screen to create the payments; press Record Check; and then press Done
3. That payment is later sent to BofA when I update the checking account through the register. It's unlikely BofA does an ACH transfer with most of these vendors so I assume they send checks

My question to all of you is how will these processes change? Thanks very much for your help.

ranlor79

[Removed - incorrect information]

rod1@

Can someone here please help me? I don't understand the phrase "you'll need to switch your connection method". I've never seen any specific instructions. What, exactly, do I need to do?

I do understand that *after* I do whatever it is I'm supposed to do, I'll need to go to BofA website to set up new payments. Yes, that's a pain in the caboose, but life moves on ...

Thanks!!!

Quicken Jared

rod1@ said:

Can someone here please help me? I don't understand the phrase "you'll need to switch your connection method". I've never seen any specific instructions. What, exactly, do I need to do?

I do understand that *after* I do whatever it is I'm supposed to do, I'll need to go to BofA website to set up new payments. Yes, that's a pain in the caboose, but life moves on ...

Thanks!!!

Hello @rod1@,      

I do apologize if the subject of changing or switching connection methods has not been covered in greater detail thus far. Thank you for seeking clarification about this matter.

In order to change your connection method, please save a backup by navigating to File > Copy or Backup File... in the upper menu at the top of the screen, then follow the instructions listed here.

I hope that is helpful, and let us know if you have other questions.

Thanks,

Quicken Jared 

beachmar

I keep getting emails from Quicken saying "URGENT" about BOA connection. Is there actually anything urgent? it would be SUPER if Q could send a clear email (not one trying to sell me the Q bill pay functionality) telling me what exactly is changing and WHO will notify me when I need to do something.

Jon

beachmar said:

what exactly is changing and WHO will notify me when I need to do something.

BoA is going to be discontinuing Direct Connect sometime fairly soon - either later this month or early next month. If you're not using Direct Connect to sync your BoA accounts, you don't need to do anything. If you are using Direct Connect with your BoA accounts, you'll need to switch them over to the new connection method (EWC+), and Quicken should (at some point) automatically prompt you to make that change when you sync your accounts. So you don't need to do anything yet.

One of the side effects of changing from Direct Connect to EWC+ is you won't be able to pay bills from within Quicken anymore using your BoA accounts - you'll either have to start logging into the BoA website to use their bill pay, or you can sign up for Quicken Bill Pay and set that up to draw money from your BoA checking account which would let you continue paying bills from within Quicken. You'll also have to use the BoA website to transfer money between accounts, you won't be able to do that from within Quicken anymore and there's no other alternative except to use the website for that.

SteveN

This hit my account with BofA (and I knew it would be coming). I didn't realize how much of a mess it would be. The synching is completely off. My checking account transactions are mixed in with my savings account transactions and it's completely impossible to reconcile this mess. I can't believe how poorly this has been executed. I'm guessing the way it can be fixed is to completely delete my years of data and saved attachments and then re-connect and start fresh. This is nuts. The only way I can get a clear sense for my balances is to go online to my BofA accounts. What's the point of having Quicken?

MaryEason

Oh no... I've been waiting to take the big step, hoping any 'bugs' would be taken care of, but now it sounds like Quicken will not be worth the expense and aggravation if they don't make a better effort at helping paid customers. Thanks for the info - I have 8 accts with BofA and am dreading this change. 

bwentzel13

My preliminary experience is that the switch was mostly painless. I say preliminary because I haven't exercised all the various processes that involve BofA (e.g., reconcile a credit card and pay with BofA). My first transaction download included two previously downloaded transactions, so I deleted them and moved on. The subsequent download went off without a hitch or error. I'm hopeful this trend continues.