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Is Quicken not assigning transaction numbers to downloads from Bank of America?

boauser

Will payments made through Bank of America no longer be assigned transaction numbers when downloaded into Quicken?

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Boatnmaniac

Quicken never assigns transaction numbers to downloaded transactions. It is the financial institution that does that.

I do not have a BOA account so I cannot see what you are seeing but since the connection method has changed it is possible/probable that the data that is downloaded with EWC+ is somewhat different from what they used to download with DC.

What you might want to do is add some additional columns to your BOA register. You can do this by going to the upper right Gear icon > Register Columns > check the boxes for the following:

Downloaded Payee
Downloaded memo
Downloaded reference
Downloaded ID

See if any of these provides the type of transaction data that you are looking for. If one does, you might want to keep that column in your register and then uncheck the boxes for the others (it will help to keep the register from getting too "busy").

Another thing you might want to do: Go to the upper right Gear icon > Edit account details > Online Services tab > make sure the box for Don't Update Memo When Downloading is unchecked.

Did any of this help you get the information you are looking for?

boauser

I appreciate the speedy reply but after trying all the above, it still won't apply transaction numbers like check numbers to downloaded bills paid through Bank of America. When I had to switch from paying bills on-line through Quicken, I no longer receive transaction numbers for on-line payment through BofA.

Chris_QPW

That might be something that you have to take up with Bank of America. Ultimately it is them that decide what to put in the check number/reference number field that is sent to on to Quicken.

Then again, maybe the right place to start is with Quicken Support and see if they can track down why the information isn't there and start some inquiry to get it fixed.
Official Quicken® Support - Phone, Chat, or Community

boauser

I just got off the phone with Bank of America and was told they no longer provide transaction numbers for their on-line payments. So not only will it not appear on the Bank of America website, it won't appear on statements or anywhere else.

Boatnmaniac

boauser said:

I just got off the phone with Bank of America and was told they no longer provide transaction numbers for their on-line payments. So not only will it not appear on the Bank of America website, it won't appear on statements or anywhere else.

That certainly does seem odd. Every spending Financial Institution I have downloads a unique ID number for each transaction and that shows up in the Downloaded ID field. Hiding or unhiding that Downloaded ID column has no impact...that ID is always there and it is not editable by the user. I wonder why BOA would no longer download/provide that information.

boauser

It didn't make sense to me as I explained to him that it would be a burden to have to research each item by a date rather than a transaction number. He said he was sorry. Every time I asked a question, he was typing the entire time so I'm sure he was sending emails to someone else for answers so I'm not too confident he really knew what was going on. I'll probably call them again, but that conversation took 36 minutes.

Chris_QPW

I think there is some confusion here.

The Downloaded ID isn't a transaction number.

The Downloaded ID's purpose is to provide Quicken with a unique Id for that transaction so that if the same transaction is downloaded Quicken can compare the two Downloaded IDs and know that it already imported that transaction and not to import it again (preventing duplicate transactions).

The Downloaded ID would not show up anywhere on the financial institution's website.
There may or may not be a transaction number that is posted on the financial institution that is also sent to Quicken either in the payee/memo or check number fields.

And another person outside of this forum pointed out to me that the transaction number might in fact "made up number" for connecting Quicken's transaction to the bill payment on the financial institution's bill payment system. And is no longer used/synced because Express Web Connect + doesn't allow for syncing the bill pay information on the financial institution to Quicken.

battagja

After entering a scheduled payment in Bill Pay at BOA, the transaction does not download. You have to manually enter the transaction into Quicken with the future scheduled date, payee, amount, etc. BOA and Quicken should at least be able to improve functionality by which a payment scheduled in BOA bill payment can be downloaded into Quicken with the information required to populate the register.

Boatnmaniac

battagja said:

After entering a scheduled payment in Bill Pay at BOA, the transaction does not download. You have to manually enter the transaction into Quicken with the future scheduled date, payee, amount, etc. BOA and Quicken should at least be able to improve functionality by which a payment scheduled in BOA bill payment can be downloaded into Quicken with the information required to populate the register.

With DC the scheduled Bank Bill Pays are entered into the register by us, not by the bank. When we then Send the Bill Pay command to the bank during OSU the bank then confirms the schedule back to us. Going forward, when we do OSUs the bank, since the Bill Pays are linked to the schedule at the bank, is able to update the status of the Bill Pays in the account register in Quicken. That two way communication is what makes this all possible.

But with EWC, EWC+ and WC, are 1-way communications that are capable only of downloading actual posted transactions (although there is an effort to also download pending transactions)....but actual transactions all the same. Schedule bill pays are not transactions until after they are processed for payment and the payments then become transactions. Since they are not transactions before then they cannot be downloaded before then.

This is the same with all banks, not just with BOA. Maybe at some point in the future that might be able to be added as a feature of EWC, EWC+ and WC downloads but that would entail an effort that far exceeds just BOA and Quicken so it would be no small effort.

But I actually like the idea and I think it would be a great feature add. What you might want to do is suggest it as a Product Idea at Product Ideas - Quicken for Windows. After you post it and vote for it others will be able to view it and vote for it, too. The Quicken Team does review ideas posted here and will sometimes add them to their product development plan. There's no promises made but the more users who vote for an idea the more likely it is that at some time Quicken will act on it.

Chris_QPW

Boatnmaniac said:

But I actually like the idea and I think it would be a great feature add. What you might want to do is suggest it as a Product Idea at Product Ideas - Quicken for Windows. After you post it and vote for it others will be able to view it and vote for it, too. The Quicken Team does review ideas posted here and will sometimes add them to their product development plan. There's no promises made but the more users who vote for an idea the more likely it is that at some time Quicken will act on it.

I don't see how that would every work, as in Quicken Inc's opinion on such a subject would probably be just as ineffective as any given customer's opinion.

It would have to be approved by this consortium (which Quicken Inc isn't even big enough to be a "Sustaining member"):
https://financialdataexchange.org/FDX/FDX/The-Consortium/Members.aspx

And even if they were convinced to put it into the protocol it would have to be implemented by Intuit (their aggregator), Quicken Inc's servers (the Quicken Cloud dataset), and Quicken. And after all of that it would still be up to the individual financial institution to support it.

Boatnmaniac

Chris_QPW said:

Boatnmaniac said:

But I actually like the idea and I think it would be a great feature add. What you might want to do is suggest it as a Product Idea at Product Ideas - Quicken for Windows. After you post it and vote for it others will be able to view it and vote for it, too. The Quicken Team does review ideas posted here and will sometimes add them to their product development plan. There's no promises made but the more users who vote for an idea the more likely it is that at some time Quicken will act on it.

I don't see how that would every work, as in Quicken Inc's opinion on such a subject would probably be just as ineffective as any given customer's opinion.

It would have to be approved by this consortium (which Quicken Inc isn't even big enough to be a "Sustaining member"):
https://financialdataexchange.org/FDX/FDX/The-Consortium/Members.aspx

And even if they were convinced to put it into the protocol it would have to be implemented by Intuit (their aggregator), Quicken Inc's servers (the Quicken Cloud dataset), and Quicken. And after all of that it would still be up to the individual financial institution to support it.

And that is why I had also said it "...would entail an effort that far exceeds just BOA and Quicken so it would be no small effort." I agree that it would likely be a massive uphill effort but it won't hurt to put it out there as a Product Idea. If it is not put out there Quicken might not even think of it. I'm also guessing that downloading scheduled bill pays/transfers is something that would appeal to customers of other 3rd party financial softwares that will be or are already using FDX. So, who knows what might come of it? What I do know is that if it is not requested it will not be granted.

Quicken might think it is not something they can do anything about so they will then mark it as "Not Planned". But if one does not ask for something then nothing will ever happen. The worst that would come out of it would be that Quicken will say "No" and we will continue with the status quo.

hamby1984house

The other day there was a update to Quicken and it removed Bank of America from my logon account to download transactions. I tried to reset Bank of America account on Quicken and what I got was, I must share my data with Quicken as a third party. Is this correct or am I doing something wrong? Before the update there weren't any problems downloading transactions.

battagja

Thanks Boatnmaniac and Chris_QPW for the feedback. The idea is posted regarding the download of scheduled bill pays/transactions. We will see what transpires.

JohnA

I think you might mean check numbers, not transaction ids. I don't have direct experience with Bank of America, but I am familiar with bank online payments using Direct Connect. When you submitted a payment by choosing "Send online payment", after the payment was submitted to the bank it used to return a check number. This check number was used in statements (unless the payment was processed as an echeck). It was useful when trying to find out what happened to a payment as well as reconciliation. When Suntrust became Truist, I no longer get the check number, only "Sent" in the check number field. But for all payments processed as paper checks and not echecks, there is a check number. It can be retrieved by logging onto the website and knowing where to look for it. Since the check numbers are sequential and don't interfere with real paper checks, it can be easy to guess what they will be and confirm it from the website. The check number field can then be overridden by manually inserting it in the check number field. It does show up in the Truist statement so it's still useful. But it's too bad that the Quicken user has no idea what the check number is unless they check through the web. I liked the old behavior where all online payments were assigned check numbers and recorded in Quicken at the time of submission. Of course, only paper checks had check numbers on the statement but that was ok.

Rocket J Squirrel

B of A no longer assigns "check" numbers to online payments, full stop. Even their web site lacks the numbers. They were somewhat useful when I needed to search for a particular transaction, but no longer. Only real paper checks still have numbers.

JohnA

Rocket J Squirrel said:

B of A no longer assigns "check" numbers to online payments, full stop. Even their web site lacks the numbers. They were somewhat useful when I needed to search for a particular transaction, but no longer. Only real paper checks still have numbers.

OK, that's a shame. To clarify though, that's a B of A internal implementation though and not a Direct Connect feature. I'll keep that in mind if I ever have the choice of opening a B of A account.