Scheduled payments not showing up on my Chase Checking Account

Bhom Tell

Quicken used to download my scheduled payments. Why won't it work after the updates? Did they eliminate that feature?

Boatnmaniac

Downloading scheduled payments requires Direct Connect with Bank Bill Pay.  Chase eliminated Direct Connect so Bank Bill Pay and downloading scheduled transactions have ended.

Chase now uses EWC+ which will download the scheduled payments only after they have been paid and are being processed as Pending or Posted transactions.

If you wish for scheduled payments to show up in your Chase account register before that time you will need to manually enter them into the account register.  If they are repeating payments then you might want to consider setting up Bill Reminders to make this manual entry process simpler.

Boatnmaniac

I don't know of any DC user who is happy with DC being eliminated and replaced by EWC+.  But it wasn't Quicken's decision.  A large consortium of some of the largest financial institutions in the country decided they wanted a more standardized method of downloading data that could be used with most if not all 3rd party softwares.  The result of this consortium's effort is FDX.  EWC+ is Quicken's and Intuit's (Quicken's aggregator) response to FDX. 

They also wanted to reduce costs (they have to pay for DC but EWC+ does not cost them anything).

And they wanted to improve upon security which EWC+ does do by using tokens provided by the financial institutions instead of UserIDs and PWs.  It is at least this item which is being considered an improvement. And financial institutions consider any outside intrusion into their system (like DC) a security risk to them so I'm sure for them they find EWC+ a big security improvement.

We've been told EWC+ is also faster.  But faster than what?  Faster than EWC?  Maybe.  Faster than DC?  Not at all...at least not yet.

Some members of the consortium (Schwab, PayPal, Chase, Bank of America) have now implemented or started implementing this new protocol and have told Quicken (and I'm assuming others) that they need to comply or their customers will no longer be able to download anything into the software.  So, what was Quicken supposed to do?  I think most of us would rather have some reduced functionality rather than no functionality...which would have been the alternative.

There will be more financial institutions dropping DC and EWC for this new EWC+ connection.  I do not know who or when but we should probably anticipate that the pace of financial institutions converting to EWC+ will being to increase pretty soon.

Boatnmaniac

Downloading scheduled payments requires Direct Connect with Bank Bill Pay.  Chase eliminated Direct Connect so Bank Bill Pay and downloading scheduled transactions have ended.

Chase now uses EWC+ which will download the scheduled payments only after they have been paid and are being processed as Pending or Posted transactions.

If you wish for scheduled payments to show up in your Chase account register before that time you will need to manually enter them into the account register.  If they are repeating payments then you might want to consider setting up Bill Reminders to make this manual entry process simpler.

Bhom Tell

So, that feature, which was valuable to a customer to forecast cash flow in the past is gone now. Not happy about that feature being eliminated from the services provided. If I were Quicken, I would not think that this was an improvement.

Boatnmaniac

I don't know of any DC user who is happy with DC being eliminated and replaced by EWC+.  But it wasn't Quicken's decision.  A large consortium of some of the largest financial institutions in the country decided they wanted a more standardized method of downloading data that could be used with most if not all 3rd party softwares.  The result of this consortium's effort is FDX.  EWC+ is Quicken's and Intuit's (Quicken's aggregator) response to FDX. 

They also wanted to reduce costs (they have to pay for DC but EWC+ does not cost them anything).

And they wanted to improve upon security which EWC+ does do by using tokens provided by the financial institutions instead of UserIDs and PWs.  It is at least this item which is being considered an improvement. And financial institutions consider any outside intrusion into their system (like DC) a security risk to them so I'm sure for them they find EWC+ a big security improvement.

We've been told EWC+ is also faster.  But faster than what?  Faster than EWC?  Maybe.  Faster than DC?  Not at all...at least not yet.

Some members of the consortium (Schwab, PayPal, Chase, Bank of America) have now implemented or started implementing this new protocol and have told Quicken (and I'm assuming others) that they need to comply or their customers will no longer be able to download anything into the software.  So, what was Quicken supposed to do?  I think most of us would rather have some reduced functionality rather than no functionality...which would have been the alternative.

There will be more financial institutions dropping DC and EWC for this new EWC+ connection.  I do not know who or when but we should probably anticipate that the pace of financial institutions converting to EWC+ will being to increase pretty soon.

Bhom Tell

Thank you for the explanation. I see it as a restriction to what was a great tool for cash flow planning. The strong-arm tactics that the banks are using is concerning to me also. They had no input by the customers of their services. It is sad what is happening to the USA, very sad.

Boatnmaniac

Bhom Tell said:

So, that feature, which was valuable to a customer to forecast cash flow in the past is gone now. Not happy about that feature being eliminated from the services provided. If I were Quicken, I would not think that this was an improvement.

BTW, using Bill Reminders and entering the manual transactions for scheduled bill payments works very well in forecasting cash flow even months in advance. 

I changed how I manage payment of my bills several years ago so that now I have only 2 (sometime 3-4) Bank Bill Pays scheduled for each month. All the rest of my bills I have set up in my online biller accounts to automatically debit my checking account on the due date.  Then I have repeating Bill and Income Reminders set up in Quicken which I edit as needed to change the dollar amount and then I enter them up to 1 month prior to the due date.

Not only do Reminders show up in the Account Registers after they are entered but the Account Registers can be set to show Reminders in them for up to 12 months in advance.  When they are shown there the Balance column will take them into account so you can easily see the cash flow impact.

And by setting up the Account Register to include the Status column the status of those Reminders will be shown (i.e., Upcoming, Due, Uncleared, Overdue).

I find this to be incredibly helpful for projecting and managing cash flow because it includes so much more than just the scheduled Bill Pays and it can be set up to look out quite a ways.

Following is an example from a test file of what an Account Register looks like once it is set up.

• Left Column:  This is the Status column which shows the status of Reminders and manually entered transactions that have not yet cleared/posted at the Financial Institution.  If no status is shown it means that it has been processed and is now Cleared or Reconciled.
  
• In this example, the last 6 rows in the register are the Reminders.  The top 3 of these are for the current date and earlier.  The bottom 3 of these are in the future.  (Disregard the dates shown.  This pic is not a real-time example.  It was taken in a test that was done in July 2021.)
• The Balance column does account for these Reminders....this is the Cash Flow projection that I find so helpful.
  

If you would like more information or have questions, let me know and I'll be happy to be of assistance.

Boatnmaniac

Bhom Tell said:

Thank you for the explanation. I see it as a restriction to what was a great tool for cash flow planning. The strong-arm tactics that the banks are using is concerning to me also. They had no input by the customers of their services. It is sad what is happening to the USA, very sad.

It's not happening to just Financial Institutions (FIs) in the USA. It is happening globally. 

If you look at the tools and reporting features that banks, credit card companies and investment brokers have added to their websites over the last 10 years or so it is pretty clear that it has been their intent for a very long time to "rope" customers into staying put with them so that it is not so simple to jump ship to a competitor simply because one bank has slightly better/worse interest rates, fees, benefits, perks, etc..  Most of these FIs now offer the means to do much of the complete financial portfolio consolidation and reporting that 3rd party softwares have historically offered.  And also most provide free bill pay, bill management (due dates, automatic payments, etc.) and at least a high level of categorizing and budgeting.  3rd party softwares, especially like Quicken, still have some significant advantages over the FIs with regard to the level of detail in reporting, cash flow management, budgeting, tax planning, lifetime planning, retention of historical data regardless of how often we switch FIs and accounts, and in protecting our financial privacy (I don't want Citi to know what my financials are for Chase, Wells Fargo, PNC, Fidelity, etc., and vice versa...Quicken greatly helps us in this regard). 

But IMO the FIs will continue striving to chip away at their disadvantages to close the gaps with the 3rd party softwares.  Businesses like Quicken need to work hard to retain their competitive advantage over the FIs in financial planning and reporting.  If they do not do that or do not succeed they will eventually go out of business and then that would surely be a sad day for all of us who prefer that no single FI has access to nor controls our complete financial portfolio.

Bhom Tell

:( As I said, the trends I see happening in the global communities, especially in the USA, are very concerning to me and I hope others. I will fight to stop the great reset. Take care.