Bank Bill Pay with Direct connect - Windows vs Mac

Genius_not

I'm a 10+ year Quicken Windows users, transitioning to the Mac. I'm confused on bank bill pay settings in the mac version. In Quicken Windows, I would set up a online payment via direct connect (to PNC), set the date for it to be paid, and it would automatically figure out if it needed a check or could do a EFT to the payee. If it was a check, it would get sent with 5 or so days ahead to assure it arrived on time

In Quicken Mac (subscription version), there is this "Pay on next update" dropdown. I can't choose "automatically" for some reason, only "I'll do it myself", or "Before scheduled time" and then I can enter a number of days. I have no idea how this translates, or what I should do if I want a payee to get a check on the 15th of the month.

Anyone else using this and have advise? This is very different in the Mac version, and I'm a bit lost.

Genius_not

Thanks very much. This is helpful.

My most urgent need is to re-setup my cadence of recurring payments that I had in QWin (and cancelled before the migration because that was recommended during the migration process) . In the schedule tab, I set them up for the necessary frequency (e.g. monthly). On the Details tab, I set up "Pay on next update" as 1 day before the scheduled date, but my understanding from your above comments is that just affects when the bill will be marked paid in the ledger?

When I do this, the upcoming payments show up in the ledger with a gray "clock" icon and a gray "send" in the check # column. This has me concerned they aren't scheduled to be paid by the bank.

I guess my goal is to have the recurring payment happen automatically by my bank like they were before, without having to take action on the payments until I want to change them.

Does that all make sense?

Genius_not

OK, so the "pay on next update" setting determines when QMac sends the payment instruction to the bank, even if it is part of a recurring bill payment?

I didn't have to do any connections or updates on QWin to keep a recurring transaction going. The payments would just continue to happen on the cadence and dates that I set. They would then show up as "payments made outside of quicken" when I connected, and get matched to the register transactions when I reviewed and reconciled.

Appreciate the help - QMac is different enough that I'm feeling a bit lost ...

Genius_not

For anyone using Bank Bill pay with QMac, here is my solution to try and replicate the QWin way of having a repeating payment be set up at the "bank" end (where the bank repeats the payment) vs the Quicken for Mac (where Quicken sends each individual payment when the repeat data occurs). I set the "pay before scheduled date" to 99 days - which seems to be the longest available. So for monthly recurring payments it will schedule the next 3 payments, allowing plenty of cushion if I'm not able to update quicken in between, which sometimes can happen due to my travel and obligations. This seems to be working for me, others may have different approaches. Any cautions or advice welcome!

Genius_not

> @RickO said:
> One catch I see is if your bank is one that deducts the funds from your account as soon as it receives the instruction, you will be down three months of money ahead of time.
>


Yes I thought of that, but it looks like the withdrawal date for the funds is always set at 6 business days before the payment date, at least according to the one-step update window. And I think my bank doesn't actually withdraw funds until the check is presented, or on the EFT date for electronic payments.

If anyone from Quicken is here, there needs to be a lot more info on how this works in QMac. The QWin operation for this bank pay function is much better documented. Also not sure why the two versions would work differently since they accomplish the same connection with the bank for the payments.