Quick Pay simply never seems to work
Has Quick Pay ever worked for anyone?
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[Removed - Rant]0
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Quick Pay seems to have worked for many, for a long a time, until the banks started to convert to a new "improved security" method ...
If your bank recently required you to reauthorize your checking 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. The bank no longer supports this function through Quicken.
You have these alternatives:
- Use Quicken Bill Manager's Check Pay making sure to submit payment early enough (at least 3 weeks before due date) to allow time for delivery and processing.
- Logon to the bank's website and schedule your bill pay payments from the bank. In parallel to that, in Quicken use a regular Scheduled Reminder to record your payment. Repeat every time another payment is due.
- Logon to the biller's website once and set up their Autopay, APS, Direct debit, etc. to make the current payment and 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 payments before they come due.
- Write (or print with Quicken) a paper check and mail it to the biller, making sure to mail payment early enough (about 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.
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> @UKR said:
> Quick Pay seems to have worked for many, for a long a time, until the banks started to convert to a new "improved security" method ...If your bank
> recently required you to reauthorize your checking 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. The
> bank no longer supports this function through Quicken.
>
> You have these
> alternatives:
>
> * Use Quicken Bill Manager's
> Check Pay making sure to submit payment early enough (at least 3 weeks before due date) to allow time
> for delivery and processing.
> * Logon to the bank's website
> and schedule your bill pay payments from the bank. In parallel to that, in
> Quicken use a regular Scheduled Reminder to record your payment. Repeat
> every time another payment is due.
> * Logon to the biller's website
> once and set up their Autopay, APS, Direct debit, etc. to make the current
> payment and 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 payments before they come due.
> * Write (or print with Quicken)
> a paper check and mail it to the biller, making sure to mail payment early
> enough (about 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.
Thank you, that is helpful. At least I know I am not doing anything wrong. I've been paying this bill through the website for decades, so no big deal for me to keep doing that. Just thought QuickPay sounded cool...0 -
It was cool ... and then the banks started throwing monkey wrenches into the works ... :-(JasonPerrone said:...
Thank you, that is helpful. At least I know I am not doing anything wrong. I've been paying this bill through the website for decades, so no big deal for me to keep doing that. Just thought QuickPay sounded cool...
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There seems to be a disconnect between what @JasonPerrone posted and what @UKR posted.
QuickPay isn't Bill pay through your financial institution. QuickPay is part of "Quicken Bill Manager".
It is Bill pay through our financial institution that requires Direct Connect and has goes away when a financial institution chooses to drop Direct Connect for Express Web Connect. Note this is a "push system" as in payments are sent from your financial institution to the biller.
QuickPay on the other hand is a third-party service that Quicken connects to "try" to make payments from the biller's website. This is a "pull system" where the payment is scheduled at the biller's website.
Note that CheckPay is when the third-party service sends a physical check.
Judging by my experience with Online Bills from the same service, and the comments on here, none of it is very reliable.
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7916268/my-explanation-of-the-different-term-services-that-quicken-has-provides-and-provided-in-the-past
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Been working on setting up quick pay and have not yet got it to work. This is months of trying. Looking to new software to replace quicken0
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Before you jump ship please read my earliest comment in this discussion. Forget fighting the Bill Manager windmill and start using one of the listed alternatives (I recommend #3). Once set up you'll see how well it works over time.vgalewv@ said:Been working on setting up quick pay and have not yet got it to work. This is months of trying. Looking to new software to replace quicken
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Quick pay and check pay are both big disappointments. Checks through CheckPay are consistently late, QuickPay payments seem to just disappear and there is no way to cancel 'processing' QuickPay payments. I have several late charges where I never had any before. Quicken used to do such a great job paying bills through B of A, once that changed neither Quick Pay nor Check Pay are reliable means of paying bills. IMO, Quicken needs to fix this or at least acknowledge its not working as designed.4
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I can't even get my bills to come in. I have tried, unsuccessfully for over 2 months just to get two of my utility bills to come in.1
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There is certainly a market for another provider to offer the features that Quicken has advertised and that actually works on a consistent basis.0
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Well I went into Quicken yesterday and was greeted by the message that Citi bank and BofA bills were going to now update along with everything else in one step update. Sounded good till you read the note at the bottom which says "as a result QuickPay will no longer be available for these billers". That's one way to solve the issues... just remove the features! lol0
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Jason, I was the same message today, and that pretty much makes Bill Manager completely useless for me now. During the last several months, billers seem to be gradually cancelling their agreements with Quicken for the Bill Manager and Quick Pay service. When I first started using Bill Manager, I would pay about a dozen billers. That number has steadily declined during the last several months, and now with this latest announcement from Citibank and BofA, that brings my billers that work to exactly zero. Great service Quicken. Can't you at least acknowledge that Bill Manager and QuickPay are finished?0
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> @UKR said:
> Quick Pay seems to have worked for many, for a long a time, until the banks started to convert to a new "improved security" method ...If your bank
> recently required you to reauthorize your checking 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. The
> bank no longer supports this function through Quicken.
>
> You have these
> alternatives:
>
> * Use Quicken Bill Manager's
> Check Pay making sure to submit payment early enough (at least 3 weeks before due date) to allow time
> for delivery and processing.
> * Logon to the bank's website
> and schedule your bill pay payments from the bank. In parallel to that, in
> Quicken use a regular Scheduled Reminder to record your payment. Repeat
> every time another payment is due.
> * Logon to the biller's website
> once and set up their Autopay, APS, Direct debit, etc. to make the current
> payment and 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 payments before they come due.
> * Write (or print with Quicken)
> a paper check and mail it to the biller, making sure to mail payment early
> enough (about 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.
So with option 2 or 3, when I do an online update to my checking account register, will the downloaded transactions match up with the scheduled reminder in the register such that if I accept the downloaded transaction it will bet entered in the register in place of the scheduled reminder and marked as cleared? If it doesn't do that, do I now have two copies of the same transaction in the register--the reminder and the downloaded transaction from the my bank?0 -
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Online bills from the third-party service was in Quicken long before Quicken Bill Pay was dropped and Quicken Inc decided to try use bill pay (Quicken Bill Manager) through the same third-party. I think Online Bills was introduced in Quicken 2015. I tired to use the Oline Bills for three years. Between the fact that some billers never worked (my water bill), some did work reliable, and some had to be constantly reset, there was also the fact that when Quicken Inc implement it and the linking to the reminders they remove any kind of estimating. In end I gave up on it. This was few years before they add bill payment. Since the ability to pay a bill with “Quick Pay” is based on getting the bill, this never seemed like a good idea to me, and I never set it up.
Fundamentally the third-party service has the same problem Express Web Connect has with downloading transactions. There isn't any industry standard on how to do this. It is little surprise that Citibank and BOA just announced that they are going to “change”, but that Quick Pay is going away.
The change from Express Web Connect to Express Web Connect + that the financial institutions are changing to is basically a change between Intuit (Quicken Inc's aggregator) for “an aggreed method" to a standard called FDX. We know that that standard can download transactions and the online balance. It doesn't a lot of imagination that this what they are going to for the bill presentment too. But there is catch. Express Web Connect/Express Web Connect + are “two way” like Direct Connect, as in there isn't anything in the protocol to change anything on the financial institution's website (no paying bills or doing transfers). This was probably intentional for more security.
So, you will get a better bill presentment for these financial institutions, but lose the bill payment. I would also note that we are talking about financial institutions going to this new FDX standard, but certainly not all of your “billers” so it is still going to be a mix bag as far as bill present (and bill payment) go.
So with option 2 or 3, when I do an online update to my checking account register, will the downloaded transactions match up with the scheduled reminder in the register such that if I accept the downloaded transaction it will bet entered in the register in place of the scheduled reminder and marked as cleared? If it doesn't do that, do I now have two copies of the same transaction in the register--the reminder and the downloaded transaction from the my bank?
This is standard Quicken matching to existing transactions in the register. Quicken mostly matches based on the transaction amounts. When a downloaded transaction is matched to an existing one in the register they will be merged where you keep the category/tag from the pre-entered transaction, and the transaction is marked cleared at that time.
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Thanks Chris_QPW for the reponse on option 2 or 3. Sounds like my credit card bill reminders may or may not match with transactions downloaded into my register because they vary quite substantianlly month to month. I plan to convert all of my smaller monthly bills-utilities, phone, internet service, and those that are fixed amounts like mortgage payments to autopay, and then for the credit car billers I will have to pay each one on the bank's website manually and just do some mental math to estimate the cash flow requirements in my checking account to make sure I'm covered. A little annoying, but not terrible I suppose. I would just prefer to have a simple at a glance, complete list of scheduled transactions at the bottom of the register for this purpose, but looks like that's not going to happen.
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Here is what I currrently do. Note that my main concern is cash flow.
First off, every bill that I allows for automatic payment is setup that way. And if possible to be paid by a credit card (which happens to pay me cash back). If paying through the credit card isn't possible then it comes out directly from my checking account. And my credit cards (3 of them) are automatically paid from my checking account. I have two Chase credit cards, one for online, and the other for local purchases. Separated these when my wife lost a credit card and had to get a new number, which resulted in me having to go to all the sites and change the card number. And then a Citi Visa Costco credit card since we live very close to one.
So, my cash flow is basically the credit card payments, and the few ones that are paid directly from the checking account. With most of the payments going to the credit cards and having at least 20 days from statement to payment, this makes the cash flow much easier.
On the subject of reminders. If it would work correct (and it does for some billers) the idea bill to make a online bill liked to a reminder is one that varies (not I still wouldn't trust paying the bill this way). For instance, say your gas, electric, water. Bills that are “constant” don't really add any benefits for “online”. And in my case, even though credit cards vary they aren't ideal for online bills either. It seems like for us with maybe the exception of the Costco card we always have some returns. That means that how much we will pay is something lower than the last statement balance. Since you can have a return right up to the moment the bill is paid, even the financial institution doesn't know the exact amount, and can't give it to any bill presentment system. You will get either the statement balance or the minimum depending on what you select in the Online bill options. And to match an existing transaction in the register the amount has to be exact.
So, what I do for credit cards/cash flow is use the estimate of “statement balance”, and when I get an email from my financial instituton with the statement balance I enter the transaction reminder into the register. That fixes the amount at that point. I do this because the estimate will keep going up until the payment is downloaded. It isn't going to be exactly because of the reminders, but when the payments are downloaded I just correct the amount of the reminder/entered transaction and match to the downloaded one. Note that depending on how well the online bill works for your exact credit card you might get this automatically by linking the reminder to the online bill, but what would happen to me on some of them is that after the bill was paid, the online bill would either not be able to pick up the current amount or use the last statement amount, resulting in a “predicted next bill” of zero. Not great for a cash flow prediction.
For cash flow predicting I use the “Projected Blances: Next 30 Days" on the Home tab with my checking account and credit cards selected in it.
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I don't understand why Quicken's third party bill presentment is so bad. I've used bill presentment with BofA for more than 20 years and never had the issues I see reported with Quicken's bill presentment. The bills with BofA bill presentment consistently show up on time with accurate amounts.
I wonder is the problem the third party or Quicken's integration with the third party?
Quicken user since Q1999. Currently using QW2017.
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AFAIK, it's the banks following a new government rule for improved security and protection against international hackers that they are now closing their doors to Quicken, Intuit and other data aggregators thus making use of Quicken Bill Manager practically impossible.
No more Direct Connect = no more Online Bill Pay (Quick Pay) thru Quicken.
You can still use the bank's Online Bill Pay thru the bank's website. You just can't do it thru Quicken anymore.1 -
@mshiggins I do wonder how the bank's bill presentment is so good, but not how the third-party system is so bad.
In other words, to have a really good bill presentment system I would expect some kind of standard for collecting the billing information. I suspect for at least some billers that wouldn't be the case, but I don't know the insides of that industry.
And I want to say that I have never used any financial institutions bill presentment system, but have used their bill payment from time to time.
But just a quick understanding of what this third-party is doing is enough for me to understand why it is so bad. It is clearly not using any "standard system".
If we look at either the financial institution's bill payment system or the old "Quicken Bill Pay" (provided by Metavante Payment Services) for the payment side of these they are "push" systems. As in, to pay the bills that aren't paid by a check, they use a ACH transfer from the your checking account to the biller. This third-party system is doing the opposite. It is scheduling the bill to be paid on the biller's website. And as close as I can tell, that is how they have setup the bill presentment too.
Like I said I'm not sure how the financial institutions get the amounts of the bills so reliable, but it is easy to see that a push bill payment system would be much more reliable than a pull system. With the push system you have one system to know how to submit to. And in the case of the financial instituiton, that is their own system. In the case of a pull system you have know how to submit a payment for every single biller's website.
Now note that by recommending using automatic payments at the biller's website it might seem like you are talking about the same "unreliable push system", but you aren't. Quicken Bill Pay/third-party has to allow for all kinds of combinations other than "pay bill each month in full" which is the norm for automatic payments. The user can choose to send the request each month, which would mean it has to be submitted each month instead just being always setup. The second part of this is that humans can read the instructions and setup the automatic payment system better than some "script".
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I tried Bill Manager with bill presentment for several months and had much the same experience as Chris_QPW for the bills downloads. Essentially nearly all my bills stopped arriving and linked reminders would reset to zero once the working bills were paid. I also tried bill pesentment from US Bank and a couple credit unions with similar results. It would never work consistently and I often had to go to the biller's web site anyway so that became my standard for all bills.
When a bill is generated, I download it from the biller (and reconcile in Quicken if it is a credit account). I also use the bill amount to update the "Next instance" of my payment reminder. That replaces the estimated reminder with the actual bill amount for the next payment only. After I have received several bills, I use my FI's billpay system to schedule payment for all of the current bills. The final step is to actually enter the corresponding current reminders into the quicken register for a day or two before the scheduled payment date. That way when the payment is downloaded from the FI or CC provider it matches with the entered reminder. It works out that I only have to actually schedule payments a couple time a month but the quicken downloads & projected balance graphs work well consistently for several months in advance.
Quicken user since 1995
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All of the methods described above are way to complicated and time consuming. I think I'll just dump a bunch of extra funds in my checking account so that I am confident that all the bills are covered without having to watch cash flow so closely. I will schedule the credit card bills on the biller's website when I get my snail mail statement each month and accept the transactions when I update my checking account register with my bank. Quicken needs to acknowledge that BIll Manager has failed and withdraw the product.
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