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"Quicken is Still Connecting Your Biller" Error

jnprop

I am having fits with online bill manager lately. Its never been great, but it is now becoming almost useless. More online bills than not are returning this error which I have never seen before...... "Quicken is Still Connecting Your Biller" American Express is one biller that I never had any issues out of and it is now a top contender in having issues with. I have 3 Amex accounts, none will connect. They would connect when nothing else would in the past.

I've been experiencing this for several months now and it seems to be getting worse and involving even more and more online billers. I am a long time user and have probably 20+ online billers and 50+ total online & manual as I run a real estate business or try to with Quicken. I did note two announcements that spoke of this issue, one specifically posted by @Quicken Anja and another announcement about issues with American Express. Seems I spend more time troubleshooting and loading & reloading billers than I do actually getting real accounting work done. I am very frustrated with this!

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Bill Payments

Accounts

Online Bills

Bill Reminders

Bill Manager

Comments

UKR

About your Bill Manager issues

My 2cents' worth, if I may:

I don't use Bill Pay services or Bill Manager at all, neither the one from Quicken nor the one offered by my bank. Since time "B.I." (before the Internet was invented) I have set up almost all of my recurring payments as Direct Debit, PAC Draft, Autopay, APS, whatever the biller calls it. Using the biller's website, I authorized the biller to electronically debit each payment directly from my checking or credit card account on due date. Now I can sit back, relax and wait for it to happen. Instead of having to arm-wrestle Bill Manager into making payment on time I let the biller do all the work for me.

When I get notified of a new statement having arrived, usually by email, all I have to do in Quicken is to run a regular scheduled reminder to record the transaction. Haven't missed a payment in many years.

I recommend you do the same instead of fighting the Bill Manager windmill, missing payments and getting slapped with penalty interest rates or late fees.

jnprop

@UKR I hear you! And I'm getting close to this position. However, it "irks" the heck out of me that a feature is offered that is pretty much useless. And if the feature would work as its supposed to it would be great and is a good thing! But the headaches that one encounters to even try to use it are endless. Second, I have a tendency to want to monitor things in my business as the bills come in. If I put it all on autopay I will have a tendency to not keep up with it as well. Third, while I do have the cash reserves to let it ride like this (have been where I don't), many don't and could never let autopay completely run their bank account as they may have to pay one thing, wait till more money comes in to pay another, etc. But again, I here you and I may just have to get to this.

The other option is to just delete all Online Billers and keep everything manual like it was before Bill Manager was created and use that manual list to go to each respective companies website and make your payment. I've thought of that too.

For your auto pay bills, do you have the respective manual bill set to auto enter around the time the bill will be withdrawn from you account? I ask this because I have some bills that do not have the Online Billing option and I do have them set up to auto-pay through the company. Then, I have them set up to auto enter. Which is another problem I am having with Quicken in the past six months. I have reported this but nothing has changed. I have bills set to auto enter and they never get entered. And when this happens you can't enter the bill after the fact. You just have to skip it and enter it manually. This was a feature that worked when nothing else did. A very basic feature that has been around since the beginning of time but now does not work consistently. I've tried the suggested fixes but nothing changed for me. So as I ponder even putting my bills on auto pay and thus auto enter, I will encounter yet another useless feature of Quicken. I wish there were viable alternatives but their is not that I have seen. I like running my personal finances along with my Business finances in one program. I'm more aware of such a thing. Seems things like this are just not important and never get fixed.

ddeveaux

I'm very frustrated with the Bill Pay as well and echo everything @jnprop said. Manual paying or auto pay isn't related to the Bill pay feature, it's a solution to a different question. This used to work marginally and now totally abysmal. I too never use auto pay for a myriad of reasons and want to have more control. But again never mind the why don't use something else...I want them to fix this or stop offering it. Geico and T-Mobile have been in a "fix it" mode for months. Yes deleted and readded, etc. and nothing seems to work. Oh, the other thing that happens when try to delete some billers to see if can readd I get a message that "payments are in progress" so cannot delete the biller. There are no payments in progress.

Quicken quite often has major issues with it's service. Whether its bank accounts not syncing, bills not syncing and then if we get a response in these forums it's from "QuickenSallySuperUser" who offers completely worthless suggestions. I usually assume they get paid by the character regardless of how useful the response is. Yeah, can switch to someone else which obviously an option but here we are discussing Quicken not other options.

twarner1

I am also very frustrated with the Quicken online bills performance. The "still connecting to XXX" seemed to have started a year ago and has now progressed to many billers. I don't want to set up my credit cards for autopay since I don't like paying credit cards until I have checked validated all the charges. I feel if the bill gets payed automatically and I subsequently find a charge to dispute, then it will be harder to fight. I now set up reminders in Quicken and pay my credit card bills on the individual credit card websites after reconciling them.

I did like it when Quicken would show my current utility bill balance and provide me a link to the bill PDF. Now that is gone. My cable provider bill is available online and I get emails telling me so. However, Quicken gives me the "still connecting" until about a day or two before the bill is due. There is usually about a two week gap between when the bill is online available and when it populates in Quicken. All in all, I've given up on online bills in Quicken. I just don't trust it anymore. Not remembering which online bill is active and which isn't is very uncomfortable. Constant deleting and reconnecting online billers or "repairing" billers has become futile.

carlj07

I will second everyone's frustrations with Quicken Bill Pay/Quick Pay and I have experienced similar "quirks".

Here's a list of the issues I have experienced over time and ever since Quicken began Quick Pay:

-- For whatever reason, when a biller notifies me that a new bill is available and posted, Quicken is not able to download the PDF of that bill at that time. However, I can log onto the biller's website and view the bill there, that day. Depending on the biller, the actual downloading of the PDF bill may take days, weeks, or not happen at all (see next issue). Why is that?

-- Not downloading PDF statements at all.  For my cable provider, Cox, I am alerted every month via email from Cox that my new bill is available. Quicken will also notify me during the Update Biller process that a new bill from Cox is available, however, this may not occur until several days (sometimes up to a week) after the email is received from Cox. Even when I get the notice from Quicken that a new bill from Cox has arrived, and Quicken correctly displays the new amount due and due date, the PDF of the statement is not downloaded. Looking at the downloaded statements from Cox today (2-21-2023), the last bill that was downloaded was on 9-30-2022. I have done Review & Repair Online Billers (many times) and this does not fix the issue with Quicken not downloading statements from Cox since 9-30-2022.

-- I've had no issues with Quick Pay and my electric utility company, SRP, until this weekend. My last payment to SRP was made on 2-14-2023 and it was successfully scheduled with Quick Pay. A new statement for next month's bill from SRP has not been posted by SRP. After a 1-Step Update this weekend, I got the "Needs Attention" notice for SRP in the Bills & Income Tab:

I selected "Fix It" and got the following window after a lengthy wait:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/c9/j96y48lg8tib.png

I closed that window and waited 2 days and tried again. Same message(s). By chance, I then clicked on the Update All icon at the top right of the Bills & Income tab (next to the Gear icon) and that moved SRP to the bottom of the Biller list, deleting the Needs Attention/Fix It notice. It now says Awaiting Next bill.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/lq/nfbkjkmw2z55.png

Ever since I got the Needs Attention for SRP and chose Fix It, all the PDF statements that were stored for SRP have disappeared. Where did they go?

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/lz/dbblnv1ft49c.png

Selecting Review & Repair Online Billers does nothing to fix the issue. It says everything is in sync.

Bottom Line - I use this feature, Quick Pay, warily because I don't trust it to accurately perform 100% of the time, which is what one demands when it comes to paying bills, etc.
IMO: the pros - it is super convenient to not have to individually log onto every biller's website every month to pay that month's bill. The cons - the so-called quirks of Quick Pay I have experienced (above) seem to keep its functionality more in the "beta" mode until it is proven to work reliably 100% of the time.

Is Quicken addressing any of these issues to make Quick Pay much more trustworthy and reliable?

Terry

Amex has been available online for a week but quicken can't download it. Strangely enough when you try to schedule a payment the “use” amount in the payment box is the current correct amount. Where did they get that information? Of course when I try to schedule the payment I get the error message telling me that the “biller requires a date sometime in the past”. Really frustrating.

carlj07

These are things Quicken needs to take seriously and fix!!! Does Quicken still monitor this post?

The Quick Pay product is still flawed, or at the very least “quirky”! I have not experienced your issue with AMEX. However, I did have the EXACT problem with my USAA Visa credit card (so it's not just AMEX). I could NEVER schedule a payment in the future for my USAA Visa card - ever (same as your experience with AMEX)! And, on top of all that, I could never open the PDF of the downloaded USAA Visa statements - they were “there”, but I could not open them thru Quicken (the statements appeared in the downloaded statements window, but when I clicked on any one of them to open it, Quicken did nothing). I got so frustrated with the whole issue of trying to retrieve billing statements from USAA and pay them using Quick Pay that I finally just gave up using Quick Pay for USAA. I now go to the USAA website to schedule my payment and then manually record the payment into Quicken. If Quick Pay worked the way it's supposed to, then I wouldn't be having to do this multi-step process to pay a bill!

As I said in my previous post, I will continue to treat Quick Pay as a “beta” product. I watch scheduled payments thru Quick Pay like a hawk because, thru my experience using Quick Pay since its inception, it is not at all 100% trustworthy, which is very sad for a bill payment service where missed payments can cost you.