What are the changes between Quicken and Chase?

Ansar

I have multiple accounts at Chase both personal and business.
I use Quicken Home and Business to interface with Chase and other banks, Chase being the primary bank.

How will the Quicken changes with Chase impact my use of Quicken?

rpgarrett75703

In short, if you switch your online connections for your Chase accounts from Direct Connect to Express Web Connect+ you will lose the Chase Bill Pay feature where you can make a payment via Chase directly from within Quicken. Instead, you will have to use Chase's bill payment feature on the Chase website. You will also lose the ability to transfer funds between Chase accounts. The ability to download transactions from both Chase bank and credit card accounts remains although the communication mechanism between Quicken and Chase is now different. This only impacts Chase and should not impact other banks that may use Direct Connect for online services.

Ansar

Thanks much. Do I have to switch connections? Can I keep Direct Connect? I pay within Quicken and would like to keep it that way. If this new arrangement to kill direct connect is only with Chase and other banks still allow payments to be made from Quicken, I will have to change banks.

Jon

You don't have to change right this minute, but Direct Connect will stop working with Chase at some point (I don't know if they've announced a specific date but I would assume it's before the end of the year. Edit: the email they sent out in July announcing the Chase changes says you have to switch by September 26, so the cutoff is a lot sooner than I thought.). Schwab made this change earlier this year, Bank of America is also making the change currently; other banks will surely follow suit but nothing specific has been announced. So you can change to another bank that still supports Direct Connect & Bill Pay if you want, but it's a gamble.

Ansar

So this will effectively end bill pay initiated through Quicken, correct? If so, the Quicken register will have to be updated after the fact, when the bank downloads the transactions into Quicken after the payment clears. This is backwards from how you keep a check register....entering the category information after the bill is paid and forcing the use of bank websites to electronically pay bills. How will you know the correct account balance if you pay through the bank, but the check does not clear?

Jon

If you want to initiate bill pay through Quicken using your Chase accounts, you'll have to sign up for Quicken Bill Pay & set it up to draw money from your Chase account. I believe that will still work (at least I haven't seen anything to suggest that the EWC+ changes would affect it).

As for your question "How will you know the correct account balance if you pay through the bank, but the check does not clear?", you'll still be able to tell if a payment hasn't cleared. I don't think your register would look any different in that case whether you used Bill Pay or the bank's web site - either way the pending uncleared payment is shown in your register, right? (It's been a couple decades since I had an account that would support Direct Connect & Bill Pay.)

rpgarrett75703

Yes, you will lose Chase Bill Pay through Quicken. With Express Web Connect+ if you want Quicken to always reflect your latest bill pay transaction activity then when paying a bill, first enter a manual entry in your Quicken register for the payment. You can also enter information in the "Memo", "Category", and "Tag" fields for this transaction. Finally, go to the Chase website or Mobile app and pay the bill electronically. When the payment clears it will be downloaded into Quicken and matched to the manual entry you made. Unfortunately, moving to Express Web Connect+ will involve more steps when paying a bill electronically but the process I mentioned should work.

rpgarrett75703

Yes, you will lose Chase Bill Pay through Quicken. With Express Web Connect+ if you want Quicken to always reflect your latest bill pay transaction activity then when paying a bill, first enter a manual entry in your Quicken register for the payment. You can also enter information in the "Memo", "Category", and "Tag" fields for this transaction. Finally, go to the Chase website or Mobile app and pay the bill electronically. When the payment clears it will be downloaded into Quicken and matched to the manual entry you made. Unfortunately, moving to Express Web Connect+ will involve more steps when paying a bill electronically but the process I mentioned should work.

Ansar

Yes. Thanks. Thought of that. So much for technology. What now takes one step will take two steps. Enter in the Q Register. Go to the bank to pay. Maybe Chase will move to electronic register and I can move the history from Q to Chase? I have 20 years of history I do not want to lose.

Maybe, I'll go back to checks. I have stayed with Chase since 1982 since they were very accommodating with the interface using Q, If I have to use a bank website to pay, I will choose a different bank, especially if I have to abide the new process. Might as well bank where I want if everyone goes to this process,

The local Health provider in IL just dropped the ability to pay your invoices due by credit card from the invoice. If you want to pay electronically you must use their website which website is a joke.
Have a HSA debit card which I am supposed to use to pay Health expenses, but now I am going to ask them for checks from the HSA account and use them to pay.

The sad part for me is that I started using these technologies in the 80's...before the internet.
Bought stand alone program from Check Free systems, the back bone of bill pay. You entered your payees, dates and amounts of payment and MAIL THE FLOPPY DISC to Columbus, OH.
Check Free Systems, paid the 3/10 bills they could ACH or wire and wrote checks and mailed them for the other 7 payables
They then MAILED THE FLOPPY DISC back to you. All of this before the www.

Lots of these schemes are designed to put or transfer the work on or to you.

I run a manufacturing business. I get it that as a supplier we have to confirm to about 8 different invoicing schemes and customer payment processes.

Sorry, but I do object when I am the customer and payor and the vendors set up systems for their benefit
that puts the work on me and forces me how to pay them.

Chris_QPW

I have 132 accounts in my data file, mostly closed, for the very reason that I chased whatever financial institution would give me best Quicken interface experience.  But not only have I tired of that, and my finances have changed, and the world has changed, it might not be too long before there won't be any place to go to.

Already BofA has stated they are going to Express Web Connect + too.  And if you look at the members of this consortium you will see that all the major players are on board with it.  Note Express Web Connect + is what Quicken Inc is calling it when Intuit uses the FDX protocol to get the transactions.
https://financialdataexchange.org/FDX/FDX/The-Consortium/Members.aspx

And one of the "security cornerstones" of FDX is it is a "read-only" protocol.
So, if you block access to the financial institution's bill pay system that means the only other way to go at it is to try to schedule the payments from the other side (on the biller's website).  If one thought trying to connect to all the different non standardized financial institutions websites (Express Web Connect) is a nightmare (it is), then imagine what it is like to try the same thing with all the possible billers out there.
That is what the third party service Quicken Inc is using for Quicken Bill Manager is doing.

Ansar

Thanks much. I understand that lots. if not all. of the banks will go this way.

My reason for starting and staying with Chase is that they were Direct Connect and allowed Q users to initiate payments through Quicken. If they all are going to change, I will change away from Chase to a bank I would rather engage with anyway.

Chris_QPW

For what it worth, I don't think all financial institutions will go to the new system, but that really doesn't mean that they will use Direct Connect either.

In my opinion the whole reason that Express Web Connect/Express Web Connect +/aggregation exists at all is because our financial intuitions will not standardize this process.

When Intuit, Microsoft, Check Free, and "the financial institutions" got together and created the OFX standard, Quicken supported about 4,500 financial institutions, but there are more than 35,000 financial institutions in the US.  The last time I counted that number is now about 2,000.  Note that the credit unions were some of the first to stop using it.

And that is why aggregators were created.  Trying to negotiate something way to log in as the user and get the transactions.  This has now become how they do it.

I really don't expect this new protocol to have much better success in bring them all together.

But I do expect the choices for Direct Connect to go down.

Hopefully you will be able to find something that works for you.

Ansar

What happens if I do not activate the change from Q to Chase

Chris_QPW

Ansar said:

What happens if I do not activate the change from Q to Chase

After the cutoff date you will no longer be able to download transactions.

Web Connect (downloading and importing a QFX file from the Chase website should still be possible).

Any way you cut it, bill pay through Quicken/Direct Connect/Chase is going to go away.

For paying bills you have these choices.

1. Find another financial institution that still supports bill pay through Direct Connect.  You can look on entries on this list https://ofx-prod-filist.intuit.com/qw2800/data/fidir.txt that have PAYMENT&DIRECT.
2. Use Chase's bill payment system online, and have reminders/manual entries that you match to when the payment clears.  This really isn't as painful as it sounds since most of your payment should be ones that just repeat and so once the reminder is setup you really don't have to do anything else if you are making the same payment month after month.  For variable bills you might try linking your reminder to an Online Bill.  This lets the Online Bill change the amount and date of the reminder.  I have found Online Bills to be sort of frustrating because it works fine for some billers, is flaky for others, and still others never work.  But at least it isn't a flaky system for paying bills (See #4 below).
3. Go to all your biller sites and setup automatic payments.  This is what I have been doing for more than 25 years. It makes everything automatic.  Most I can pay with a credit card that pays me cash.  It also gives me 20 to 30 days to review any payment.  And it makes cash flow easier because instead of tracking all of the expenses individually for cash flow I mostly just have to make sure I have enough in the checking account to pay the credit card. And the credit cards are also setup for automatic payment from my checking account. I have few bills like utilities that have to come out of the checking account, but they are pretty minor in comparison.
4. Use Quicken Bill Manager, which is either QuickPay or CheckPay.  QuickPay is if they can do a ACH transfer, and CheckPay the third party service that does this sends a check. There is a limit to the number of "free" checks, and then you have to pay for them.  And note that Deluxe and below there are no "free" checks.  I think Quicken Inc is waving the fee for some of this for some time in response to these problems.  But note this system is where the "script" tries to log in as you into each biller's website and schedule a payment.  Whereas #3 above sounds the same there are two main differences.  One is that I setup to pay the full amount automatically when it is due, so I'm not in there scheduling every month.  The next is I'm a human that can read if there are fees or if the website changes and such.  They are using a "script" that won't be as flexible. I tried to use their Online Bills which works the same way, with the same third party service, for many years.  Some billers worked fine, some worked some times, but not others, and some never worked.  I do not recommend this service is you value you credit score at all.
5. Go with something other than Quicken. Note we can't discuss other services on here.

andyf123

I called Chase. Chase informed me that removing Bill Pay was a decision of Intuit without consultation with Chase and they are getting a ton of calls from upset customers. Chase said that "Intuit is working in overdrive" to drive long time customers away.

Ansar

Thanks Andyfl123. Interesting comments.

Not sure who is doing what to whom, but for me it is simple.
Unless and until I cannot find a bank that interfaces easily with Quicken via Direct Connect. I will move 13 accounts to that bank. Yes, its a bit of a pain, but it's one time pain and smooth sailing afterwards.
Currently it takes one step to get bills paid and about 20 minutes to reconcile 13 accounts after seamless downloads right after month end. With the new Q/Chase arrangement it takes mulitple steps and if you read some of the commentary on this blog, the new sync is a nightmare.

I am leaving Chase with a very good relationship since 1982, and will move 13 accounts to Wintrust in the Chicago, FL and soon to be other markets. I called WFC also on Friday and they believe they will keep Direct Connect for some time. Who knows. I would rather bank there anyway.

If I were WTF or any bank that is keeping Direct Connect, I would advertise that. Fast. They might get a few Chase and BofA customers to go their way.

Chris_QPW

andyf123 said:

I called Chase. Chase informed me that removing Bill Pay was a decision of Intuit without consultation with Chase and they are getting a ton of calls from upset customers. Chase said that "Intuit is working in overdrive" to drive long time customers away.

That is ridiculous!

There is no way that Intuit could force Chase to do this.
The conversion to Express Web Connect + requires Chase to put in a new protocol and systems for it to even work.  The new protocol between Intuit and Chase is called FDX.  And here is the information on that:
https://financialdataexchange.org/

And here is the member page:
https://financialdataexchange.org/FDX/FDX/The-Consortium/Members.aspx

Chris_QPW

And note even though it seems that Express Web Connect + is going to be where the financial institutions are going in the future, Direct Connect is far from dead at this point.

And here is Quicken Inc's take on this:
Quicken Connectivity Updates and Bill Pay

Chris_QPW

All this "blame game" is also ridiculous, the financial institution's are certainly the ones in the drivers seat as to if and when they want to do this.  But all the parties are "on board" with it.

Ansar

Chris_QPW, Thanks. Makes Sense, Ansar