Bank of America (and other banks) discontinuing Direct Connect

Heather R.

Help! I'm trying to get info as to how to work around the issue of my bills paid online through Bank of America not downloading to Quicken until they get paid/posted in the future. This requires me to manually enter these bills into Quicken in order to keep an accurate picture of my bank balance. Extra time and work that I didn't need to do before the change to Express Web Connect. It kind of defeats the purpose of financial software when it becomes inefficient! Anyone have any insight into this?

Greg_the_Geek

BoA made the change to EWC+ so you need to complain to them.

UKR

To minimize said "extra work" I recommend you logon directly to each of the billers websites and authorize them to direct debit (aka PAC Draft, Autopay, APS, etc.) the next and all future payments from your checking account or a credit card. The biller will do all the work for you to make an electronic debit on the due date and you don't have to worry about being late.

In Quicken unlink the bill and just record a scheduled reminder which does not execute as an online payment into your account register on or before the Due Date and before you download transactions from the bank or credit card containing the payment transaction. That will allow Quicken to match your register transaction to the downloaded data and not cause any further issues.

Heather R.

> @Greg_the_Geek said:
> BoA made the change to EWC+ so you need to complain to them.

Unfortunately I've talked to the bank and Quicken and there's only finger-pointing from one to the other. My bank is saying the "new" owners of Quicken (not so new from what I can see) changed the agreements and they are no longer in place. Seeing that there seem to be many banks involved in dropping the direct connect I suspicion this is a $$$ issue (as it usually is). Nonetheless, I appreciate you taking the time to comment!

Heather R.

> @UKR said:
> To minimize said "extra work" I recommend you logon directly to each of the billers
> websites and authorize them to direct debit (aka PAC Draft, Autopay, APS, etc.)
> the next and all future payments from your checking account or a credit card.
> The biller will do all the work for you to make an electronic debit on the due
> date and you don't have to worry about being late. In Quicken unlink
> the bill and just record a scheduled reminder which does not execute as an
> online payment into your account register on or before the Due Date and before
> you download transactions from the bank or credit card containing the payment
> transaction. That will allow Quicken to match your register transaction to the
> downloaded data and not cause any further issues.

Thank you for your suggestions/ideas. I'm sure I'll adapt to the change and at least you've provided me with a few ideas as to how to best work around this situation. Thank you very much for your time in responding to my question!

Greg_the_Geek

FWIW, the customer support people at BoA have no idea what they're talking about. They don't even know the difference between DC and EWC+. Financial Instutions drive the methods that are used to connect to them, not Quicken. The EWC+ connection method is supposed to be more secure, but it's only a one way connection from the FI to Quicken and uses a token instead of your password.