Quicken Throttling Transactions from Charles Schwab

George Friedman

It is clear to me that since Quicken changed the transaction download methods around 11/19/2021, that transaction updates are being throttled, delayed by Quicken. I know that because I have multiple Quicken files. If I do the same transaction under the same or different Quicken ID in multiple Schwab accounts covered by multiple Quicken FILES, I can see and document this effect. For example, if I do the same transaction in multiple Schwab accounts from multiple Quicken FILES, I see this effect. For example I do the transaction when the stock market opens and then do an Update Transaction from within Quicken in one of the Quicken files and keep repeating the Update Transaction command frequently, I might not get the stock transaction update in one Quicken FILE for many hours. If I don't request an Update Transaction in another Quicken FILE for an hour, I get the update immediately. I have ten Quicken Files spread out over multiple Quicken IDs. I originally tried to use multiple Quicken IDs because Quicken didn't support LPOAs until much later. Quicken also early on after 11/19/2021 did not allow me to use multiple Schwab IDs within a single Quicken File so I had to merge certain accounts from one Quicken FILE into another Quicken FILE. Since companies like Charles Schwab don't support download of transactions for many years back, this resulted in a loss of history for many accounts, particularly the grandchildren's' Coverdell Education Accounts which obviously exist since birth and until the funds are consumed when they go on to various college degrees. Has anyone else noticed this behavior and what do you think about it?

Tom Young

"Back in the day" of Direct Connect you could perform a transaction at Schwab, open your Quicken file, click on "update transactions", and the transaction was downloaded.  That happened in near real time because Schwab coded each transaction as it happened and sent that coded transaction to a server they maintained.  Quicken would then log into that server when you asked to update transactions.

Those days are gone.  With EWC/EWC+ Intuit (Quicken's aggregator) polls Schwab to get the needed information and it's clear that the polling isn't happening every single second of every single day.  I've seen claims that each time you ask to download from Schwab that kicks off a new inquiry by Intuit, but it's simply not true.