EWC+ and Quicken Bill Manager bug?

Inman Lanier

My wife and I have spent hours with Quicken script readers and Chase Bank clueless folks with regard the change to EWC+. It has been inconsistent, enabling/disabling and an overall mess. We are hoping that we're now finally correctly configured (more than 1 ticket opened to assist).

The latest is that Citi Card credit cards (which we've experienced to be spotty and likely untimely on transaction downloads) - have issues with EWC+. Now we have a situation where bill manager has NOT updated the 'bill' with Citi for our next month statements. I took it upon myself to download the statement, reconcile it - then schedule a Quick Pay for November 9 (due Nov 11). QUICKEN WILL NOT LET ME! Because it has not yet seen the current 'bill' - it locks me out of any future payments. When playing with it one time, it defaulted to last month's (Sep bill due Oct) full balance that was already paid and cleared my account.

[Removed - Disruptive/Speculation]; until it sees another bill it defaults to the last bill due date and locks you out of scheduling payments beyond that date (or today - whichever is later). I should be able to schedule a Quick Pay irrespective of if Quicken knows what the next statement is or is not.

We were unable to get the Quicken overseas script readers to identify this as a bug. They tried to tell us the issue is with Citi Card - Citi card will not allow us to pay in the future. [Removed - Disruptive] - no financial institution will restrict you on when you schedule to give them money.

HOW DO WE GET THIS IDENTIFIED AS A PROBLEM?!?!?!

Chris_QPW

Inman Lanier said:

HOW DO WE GET THIS IDENTIFIED AS A PROBLEM?!?!?!

It sounds like you have done all the proper things to bring it to Quicken Inc's attention.
There is submitting the logs through Help -> Report a problem, but Quicken support certainly should have already gotten those from you and that system is more geared to trying to accumulate data on ongoing problems that a lot of people have.

One of the big problems with Quicken Bill Manager is that is a third-party service.
So, Quicken uses an API to talk to the third-party service which is one actually trying to schedule the payment.  As such the problem can be in Quicken (the program), at the third-party, or maybe even be something in the what the financial institution will allow.

Inman Lanier

This is very poor programming. We were unable get the offshore support reps to acknowledge it's a problem. I'm hoping there are some Quicken employees that may monitor this. I'd be more than happy to work with them to resolve it. What a shame - another outsourced mess. We are so doomed these days with 3rd party garbage. [Removed - Speculation]

Inman Lanier

Boy - someone on here really loves my frank comments. I keep getting redacted. Do we have cancel culture on this page?

It would be the professional thing to do to actually give feedback as to what in the world I said to cause redaction. Anyone paying attention here? If you want a change in behavior on my part - the only way I know to change is for you to respectfully give me the feedback. At this time I disrespect the silent redaction. If you have the power and guts to do it - then send me a note. That should go with the territory.

UKR

If your bank recently required you to reauthorize your account and/or your bank has changed from "Direct Connect" to either "Express Web Connect" or "Express Web Connect+" you can no longer use Online Bill Pay direct to the bank or Quicken Bill Manager's Quick Pay function. Several banks no longer support this function through Quicken, more banks to convert soon.

Alternatives:

1. Use Quicken Bill Manager's Check Pay
2. Logon to the bank's website and make your bill pay payments from the bank. In parallel to that, in Quicken use a regular Scheduled Reminder to record your payment.
3. Logon to the biller's website and set up their Autopay, APS, Direct debit, etc. to make the current payment and/or all future payments on Due Date directly from your checking account. In parallel to that, in Quicken use a regular Scheduled Reminder to record your payment.
4. Write (or print with Quicken) a paper check and mail it to the biller, making sure to mail payment early enough (around 10 days before due date) to allow time for delivery and processing.

I've been using a variation of method #3 for decades, since before the Internet and dial-up were even invented. It's easy to get used to this process. And I have yet to miss a single payment.

Inman Lanier

UKR - I think you missed my point. First off - I'm using Bill Manager, not Bill Pay. Secondly, you'll note the title of the post - EWC+ (the abbreviation) and Bill Manager. I'm not sure how you may have concluded I was speaking of Bill Pay (direct connect). I'm fully aware of how to setup - I'm simply trying to point out THERE ARE ISSUES.

Back to my post...

As an update to my post, we actually have 2 different Citi Cards (one is Costco). The latter lags behind the first one. By the time we got the 2nd paper bill in the mail - BOTH of the 'BILLS' in Quicken were still 'awaiting next bill' (meaning Quicken had still NOT seen either bill, despite the fact that they were online for well over 1 week. Notwithstanding that fact, fortunately for the 2nd account didn't revert a few days ago as the latest date I could schedule payment. This time it DID let me schedule a date out in the future before my bill would be late.

The fact that both of these accounts still show 'awaiting next bill' validates that the software is buggy. At least for now, however we got 1 of the payments scheduled via Quick Pay (the 2nd one). The first one I did via my bank (and I logged a manual future entry in my ledger).

Chris_QPW

All I can say about "Quicken Bill Manager" is that I believe "Online Bills" which uses the same third-party service/API came out in Quicken 2015, and I tried to use it for years.  A few years ago, I gave up on it.
And given that is the "base system" for Quicken Bill Manager and paying bills I wouldn't use it for paying my bills.

What I noted in the years I tried to use Online Bills were that some bills would setup, but never download a bill.  Some would have to be constantly reset.  One of the most aggravating parts of it was that they took away the estimating functions and the best case would be that you are using the last bill as a prediction of future ones.  But on some of the bills what would happen is right after the statement came in the bill would go into "Awaiting next bill" and Quicken would "view that" as "zero" for predicting the next bill!
I think this has to do with how the biller posts this on their site.  As in, some have it up all the time, and some post it for a bit and then hide it.  One has to realized that there isn't any standard for getting bills from all billers. As such, they have to be doing "screen scraping" of these websites, and you are seeing the results.  Along with any bugs that Quicken has with implementing the API.

Besides the problems with the system, I also realized that I was hoping for it to do something that it will never be able to do.  It picks up the statement balances, well that isn't what we pay on our most active credit card.  It is almost always less, because we have returns in between the statement balance and when the payments are made.

All of this really was mostly academic to me because I have always setup my billers to pay the bill automatically usually from my credit card (which is in turn setup to automatically be paid from my checking account), and then just a few like my utilities directly from my checking account.  So, cashflow is quite simple, mostly just make sure there is enough in the checking account when the credit cards come due.  And for that I have email notices for the statements and their balances.