US Bank Update Problems

Ray Cosner

This morning 5/12/23 I ran a One Step Update (OSU) on Quicken Premier R49.29 with my bank (US Bank). This resulted in several problems, as described below. I then restored from a 5/10/23 backup, this went fine, and I repeated the OSU with one change, which was successful. Details follow.

My advice to avoid all this: if you are presented with a request to re-authorize your accounts at US Bank, select "remind me later" rather than approving the request. If you want to reauthorize anyway. make a fresh Q backup before allowing it.

Details of what happened:

Prior to all this, my accounts except one were all enabled for "PFM Direct Access" which I understand is being phased out. So, I was halfway expecting a change to my OSU access.

At the start of the first update attempt, after the update began I was asked to re-authorize my US Bank accounts for Quicken access. I clicked OK and was routed to a US Bank site and entered by my usual US Bank browser logins. The next screen asked me to re-authorize Q access to each banking account individually. I did that. I was then returned back to a familiar Q screen which listed each bank account and asked whether I wanted to link Q to that account (I approved those). In some of my older accounts, it did not offer an option to link but an option for some other action, or option to do nothing which is what I selected for those accounts.

I then ran OSU again. For some accounts, all looked OK. I also had several problems: (1) transactions on a credit card going back two weeks were instead downloaded to be added to a CD. I had downloads set for manual confirmation, not auto entry to register. (2) my savings account balance was nearly double the correct amount, the starting balance had been changed, (3) the balance in my two CDs was doubled by means of a duplicated transaction from when I set them up in March (4) they gifted me with a new savings account which had a balance very close to the true balance in my 40-year-old saving account (I rejected this gift). The accounts where I selected "do nothing" were not affected.

I called the US Bank help phone number, but their Q support is not staffed outside normal business hours, apparently on west coast time. I'll try again later.

I began correcting my accounts, but the damage was extensive. I also had a two-day-old backup. I decided instead to restore that backup, which worked fine. I then attempted again a OSU, but instead of allowing the requested re-authorization, I selected "remind me later". The OSU proceed in its normal familiar way, and I had no further problems. I assume "Remind me later" is not a long-term solution, but it works for now.

Boatnmaniac

@Ray Cosner, @Robert - Would one or both of you try doing the US Bank reauthorization process, again, taking extra time and care to make sure the correct accounts in Quicken are linked to the EWC+ downloads? Then post back here to let us know the results?

But before doing this please read the following:

I think this is not a US Bank issue. I've done a lot of testing the last few weeks on this US Bank transition to EWC+ with the Quicken team and it seems that Quicken is doing a poor job of matching the downloads during the reauthorization process to the correct accounts in Quicken. When given the option to Add, Ignore or Link the accounts I've found that one must be VERY careful to make sure that the Linking process was done correctly. What I've observed regarding this:

• Usually the process will correctly show "Link to existing" but not always. We need to make sure that any that are not showing "Link to existing" are manually selected to show that.
• Just as important, make sure that in the drop down the correct account is checked. I have observed that sometimes the incorrect account is checked, that sometimes an account with a different financial institution is checked and that sometimes no account is checked. So, it is very important to not assume anything when "Link" is shown. Always look in the drop-down to make sure the correct financial institution and account is linked.

This issue of mis-matching is not unique to US Bank. Over the last several months there have been a number of users posting about this issue after they have done Reset Account, Deactivate/Reactivate or have reauthorized to cut in EWC+, reporting that their accounts are out of balance, that transactions are getting downloaded into the wrong accounts or even being deposited into accounts at different financial institutions. This is why I think this instance is a Quicken issue more than it is a US Bank reauthorization issue.

It has also happened with me during my US Bank EWC+ tests and in each case I had proceeded too quickly and had wrongly assumed that simply because "Link" was selected that it was correctly being linked to the right account. Since identifying this issue and making absolutely sure that the reauthorization downloads are getting correctly linked (and, yes, there were quite a few mismatches), I have done perhaps a dozen EWC+ new setups and reauthorization setups for US Bank in 6 different data files. Every single one of them then set up correctly with no issues encountered.

You are absolutely correct: Make sure to have a backup file before making any Online Services setup changes. In fact, I recommend that the Backup Preference be set to automatically backup the data file every single time after each session and to set it up for at least 2 wks (or more) of backup files. Then one never needs to do a manual backup.

Robert

I got some screen this morning to "re-authorize" due to new connection method for US Bank. I did what was asked. Only unusual thing was during the re-connection, one account default to linking to wrong account, but I corrected this. It then downloaded transactions.

At this point, I had two new transactions. They went to the wrong US Bank account (my business card). One should have gone to my Altitude Reserve card and the other to the Cash+ card. Very wierd.

I'm going to disconnect downloads on the three accounts. Then wait a couple of days and try again.

I should know better than to do any change within quicken until it has been released for a week or two. The quality control as usual sucks.

One more point - I actually have 3 credit cards and one checking account — with US bank. I authorized all four, but it didn't work for the checking account. It is now telling me I need to re-authorize the connection for the checking account. All I can say is "buggy as hell".

BK

On the comment that @Ray Cosner made about the change in the opening account balance (point #2 in his post):

This issue has existed in Quicken for years, where upon deactivating and reactivating an account, there is a probability that the opening balance may get altered and hence your ending account balance is off. One of the recent release notes suggested that this issue was fixed. As many of us have still experienced, it is not fixed.

I accepted years ago that this issue may never get fixed - So not a solution but a tip to manage it: Go to every account in Quicken and manually enter your correct opening balance in the memo field. Perhaps even write them in a separate text file as a backup. This will allow you to check the values next time you deactivate/reactivate an account and make the correction if needed.

Hope this tip helps.

Boatnmaniac

@Ray Cosner, @Robert - Would one or both of you try doing the US Bank reauthorization process, again, taking extra time and care to make sure the correct accounts in Quicken are linked to the EWC+ downloads? Then post back here to let us know the results?

But before doing this please read the following:

I think this is not a US Bank issue. I've done a lot of testing the last few weeks on this US Bank transition to EWC+ with the Quicken team and it seems that Quicken is doing a poor job of matching the downloads during the reauthorization process to the correct accounts in Quicken. When given the option to Add, Ignore or Link the accounts I've found that one must be VERY careful to make sure that the Linking process was done correctly. What I've observed regarding this:

• Usually the process will correctly show "Link to existing" but not always. We need to make sure that any that are not showing "Link to existing" are manually selected to show that.
• Just as important, make sure that in the drop down the correct account is checked. I have observed that sometimes the incorrect account is checked, that sometimes an account with a different financial institution is checked and that sometimes no account is checked. So, it is very important to not assume anything when "Link" is shown. Always look in the drop-down to make sure the correct financial institution and account is linked.

This issue of mis-matching is not unique to US Bank. Over the last several months there have been a number of users posting about this issue after they have done Reset Account, Deactivate/Reactivate or have reauthorized to cut in EWC+, reporting that their accounts are out of balance, that transactions are getting downloaded into the wrong accounts or even being deposited into accounts at different financial institutions. This is why I think this instance is a Quicken issue more than it is a US Bank reauthorization issue.

It has also happened with me during my US Bank EWC+ tests and in each case I had proceeded too quickly and had wrongly assumed that simply because "Link" was selected that it was correctly being linked to the right account. Since identifying this issue and making absolutely sure that the reauthorization downloads are getting correctly linked (and, yes, there were quite a few mismatches), I have done perhaps a dozen EWC+ new setups and reauthorization setups for US Bank in 6 different data files. Every single one of them then set up correctly with no issues encountered.

You are absolutely correct: Make sure to have a backup file before making any Online Services setup changes. In fact, I recommend that the Backup Preference be set to automatically backup the data file every single time after each session and to set it up for at least 2 wks (or more) of backup files. Then one never needs to do a manual backup.

Robert

@boatmaniac I "deactivated" the download on my 4 USbank accounts (3 credit cards and one checking) and then started from scratch "set up online". All accounts defaulted to "link to existing", but 2 were obviously mis-linked. Trying to get them linked to correct account was non-intuitive as the mis-link was usually to the wrong US Bank account and the correct account didn't show up on the account list as it was linked to another account incorrectly. The work around I found was to change the link to a non-us bank closed account and then re-link to the correct account. Once I doubled checked all accounts and ensured they were linked to the correct existing account, I then went ahead in the process and it looks like it is working fine now. I'll defer final judgement for a week and so to ensure new transactions are downloaded to correct account.

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20360597#Comment_20360597

Thanks for doing this and posting the results. Looks like you got a new twist on the issue that I hadn't seen before but overall it does confirm that the setup process is mismatching at least some of the accounts.

On a more positive note: I have had four US Bank accounts set up with EWC+ for about 1-1/2 weeks now and OSU has been working flawlessly with them. If you get different results, please post back here.

BK

When I encounter reactivation issues, I take a step back. I deactivate all accounts within that Financial Institution, wait a few days (3+) and while waiting I do daily OSUs. After a few days I reactivate and link them. This approach of "waiting" has worked well for me. Something to consider trying if other options fail.

Boatnmaniac

FYI - More evidence that the accounts mismatch issue during Reauthorization/Set Up Now/Add Account is a Quicken issue and not a US Bank issue: Last night I needed to deactivate/reactivate my wife's 3 different Fidelity accounts because of an error message received during OSU. One account was Linked to a closed Fidelity account. A second account was Linked to one of my Fidelity accounts. The third account was Linked to one of her other Fidelity accounts. I manually corrected the Links and then the setup process completed properly.

Robert

As followup to my last post, downloads do appear to be working correctly. However, I did discover that on my US Bank checking account, the balance was wrong due to a bogus opening balance issue. Not the first time. Whenever I see an incorrect balance, I have learned to check the opening balance (which in my case for all accounts is zero) and usually find a bogus entry thanks to quicken bugs. And I know this was caused by the re-authorization process as I checked all my USbank accounts first to ensure opening balance was correct.

Ray Cosner

I followed the above advice and did an update, going through the bank re-authorization process again. I had the @Boatnmaniac detailed posting open and followed it carefully as I went through the Q screen to link bank accounts to Q accounts. Everything now works OK.

Here are the details:

Before embarking on this adventure, I took a screen shot of the account balances on the left side of the Q screen, and saved it for comparison later. I also took the advice of @BK and added a memo note to the Opening Balance transaction in each banking account.

The was an issue when checking the bank-to-Q account linkages in Q. For three of my older bank accounts, I was not asked to re-authorize them today on the bank site. I had re-authorized them the day before, in the adventures of my original post. In the Q screen today for linking accounts, there was no option for these three accounts to "Link to existing" and I could not cause that option to be presented. That had also been the case the day before. So I selected "do nothing" for those accounts and I continued. In checking the linkages as advised above, there was indeed a mismatch which I corrected.

The update then appeared to run normally to completion, but there was one more discrepancy. Back in March, I had moved funds from Savings into 2 new CDs at my bank (I was tired of getting 0.01% interest on my savings account), and this created a new savings-type account for each of those CDs. One of the CDs after the update was fine, but the other one had doubled in value and the same erroneous amount also appeared in my savings account. The linkage mismatch which I noted in the previous paragraph had mis-linked a credit card to this CD. Kind of strange, there was a plus in both accounts (savings and CD), but the actual transaction had been a simple transfer from one to the other, a couple months ago. I deleted the erroneous transaction in both accounts, and repeated the update. It ran normally and every account matched the screen shot exactly.

For the three accounts where I selected "do nothing" in the linkage check, the connection method is still "direct connect". For all the other accounts, the connection is now EWC+. I suppose that failure to convert the older accounts is going to bite me in the future.

I then closed Q, rebooted my computer, opened Q again, and ran the update again. All appeared normal, no problems were seen during or after the update. Fingers crossed, it looks like the advice from @Boatnmaniac did indeed resolve my problems. If I have further issues in the next several days, I'll post here again.

Boatnmaniac

@Ray Cosner - Thanks so much for trying, again, and posting your results back here.

It's just one more confirmation that something needs to be improved with how Quicken is matching accounts during account setups and during reauthorizations.

It is also another confirmation that the mismatch issue is something that we can correct provided we give it the appropriate level of attention during the account setup process.

Disgruntled51323

I cancelled Quicken over this - years of data ruined. CD's were now connected to checking or became a mortgage account, my old checking became a CD. Hours trying to get help - long time on chat and it was worse than what it started. This glitch was it for me.

DavidC1857

Just curious, because I came to the forums today because of similar problems…

But where are we seeing that US Bank is phasing out Direct Connection?

I got the incredibly long winded popup about recurring online transactions last week, and again today. I don't use those, so I wasn't too concerned. At the same time, I've been getting an error on the Quicken online app that says I needed to reauthorize my US Bank connection.

So I tried to do that. Big mistake as I can't apparently re-authorize the Direct Connection. When I deactivated my account and then re-activated it, the only thing I could get was EWC, which doesn't allow bill pay. I ended up restoring a backup to get the Direct Connection back and as of today, it appears to be working. At least, it downloaded a transaction this morning. I won't be able to test bill pay until I get some bills to pay, and money to pay them with.

If US Bank is phasing out Direct Connection I'm gonna be pissed, because being able to directly pay bills online with Quicken is one of the main reasons I use Quicken and one of the reasons I've always stayed with US Bank.

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20361122#Comment_20361122

I was involved with the Quicken Team in testing the US Bank EWC—>EWC+ migration. While the current notice that has been posted and the emails received have mentioned only EWC being changed now, I was told that US Bank is planning to do the same thing with DC at some point in the future, as well. They just did not know (or would not tell me) when that might occur. My guess is that it will occur sooner rather than later, maybe as soon as when the EWC—>EWC+ migration is completed, but I could be mistaken about that.

I don't use DC with US Bank but I do with PNC Bank. PNC also just announced that they will soon migrate EWC—>EWC+. And the Quicken Team also told me that PNC will also migrate DC to EWC+ at some point. It does bother me some but I long ago positioned myself to not really needing DC Bank Bill Pay by setting up billers to pull the payments on a recurring basis directly from my credit card or from my checking account so using Bill Pay is now an exception and not the norm for paying bills. For those few that I still need Bill Pay for (just a couple of bills each month) I will log into my online account at PNC and schedule it there.

DavidC1857

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20361175#Comment_20361175

Well, that's kind of a bummer. I did kind of figure that's where they were headed when I couldn't re-activate a Direct Connection. All I could get was a EWC connection. Which would be fine other than the fact that I lose bill pay, which I really do like. And pay $3.95 a month for. I restored a backup file and my DC appears to be working, so I'll just keep using it until it doesn't.

And if it happens it happens. I'll call them and cuss them out over the phone (not really, I'll just kindly express my disappointment), and then decide if I want to pay for Quicken Bill Pay or have to go to their website to do bill pay. I'd probably go ahead and spring for the extra few dollars for Quicken's bill pay, just because it's really, really convenient to pay a bill by just making an entry in Quicken and then doing an update.

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20361181#Comment_20361181

I know. I've really liked DC Bank Bill Pay and have used it with Quicken since 2010 and with MS Money for about 15 yrs before that. Fortunately, there are other options available but they are not as nice as the DC Bank Bill Pay process.

Boatnmaniac

@DavidC1857 - FYI, if you ever need to get US Bank set up for DC, again (assuming DC has not yet migrated to EWC+), make sure to select U.S Bank - PFM Direct Connect for the Add Account or Set Up Now process. Any other US Bank financial institution link will not set up DC.

DavidC1857

> @Boatnmaniac said:
> @DavidC1857 - FYI, if you ever need to get US Bank set up for DC, again (assuming DC has not yet migrated to EWC+), make sure to select U.S Bank - PFM Direct Connect for the Add Account or Set Up Now process. Any other US Bank financial institution link will not set up DC.

That's what I had. There may have been something I was missing but I could never find any option to change or even set a connection type. It just took me directly to a screen where I logged into my US Bank account and it created the EWC+ connection. I tried it two or three times and then just went with the backup.

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20361186#Comment_20361186

Well, it certainly does sound like they are prepping for the DC migration by not letting any new DC connections to be set up. Glad to hear you were able to buy yourself some additional time with DC by restoring that backup file.

Ray Cosner

As I mentioned above, three of my banking accounts (the oldest ones) did not convert to EWC+ when I tried to convert all of them a few days ago.

This morning I got a message when I started OSU that Direct Connect to US Bank would cease working on May 21. So, I focused on trying to convert the remaining three accounts to EWC+. Those accounts were all linked by Direct connect to US Bank more than 20 years ago. Apparently the login credentials in the Vault for these accounts were a problem. These credentials had been provided to me by US Bank and apparently they were tightly linked to the direct update.

I disconnected all three remaining accounts from the online services. Spent a lot of time waiting for the next prompt, but it all worked. I then hit the button to reconnect, and the re-authorize screen came up again, followed by the Quicken screen to verify links between bank accounts and Quicken accounts. This time, the links that came up were all correct. I accepted, and Q started churning. It churned for 15-20 minutes (seven accounts, with transactions back to the 1990s) and at one point Windows reported that Q was not responding. I'd seen this before during a cloud sync, so I just let it churn. When I returned to the computer 20 minutes later, Q had finished and everything look OK. The OSU had completed. Everything is now on EWC+.

Boatnmaniac

Only 5 days from now? Well, it looks like the DC migration is certainly happening "sooner rather than later"…actually, sooner than I'd thought it would. Personally, I think more notice should have been provided to give people who use DC Bank Bill Pay a reasonable amount of time to make adjustments in how they will pay bills going forward.

My understanding is the US Bank has been charging a monthly fee for access with DC. If I had DC with them and when DC is migrated I would contact US Bank to make sure they stop charging this monthly fee. I would not trust them to do that automatically.

Ray Cosner

I misremembered. The cutoff date is May 23, not the 21st. Still seems awfully short. This Community will get really busy next week.

Yes, US Bank charges $3.95/month for direct connection.

DavidC1857

I have yet to receive any communication from US Bank about this. No messages have come up when I do updates either. I'm thinking I might hit up US Bank tech support later this morning and see if they know anything.

Athilstan

I followed directions today to avoid US Bank account problems on the 23rd. Now, everytime i update I am greeted with a window requesting that I authorize the relationship between Quicken and the bank. Worse, none of the transactions in the account will download to Quicken. Next step, sever the relationship between Quicken and the bank and start over. The last time I had to do that it resulted in a dump of all bank data and I spent a couple of days deleting duplicate transactions. This is not fun, especially when I'm being charged for this fiasco.

danbehnke

I've received this request for authorization several times recently…. all for an account at US Bank that's been closed for several years! I'm doing the "remind me later" route.

Randy 415

Thanks for the great discussion. I have learned a lot.

I am a Union Bank (UB) customer, and as you may know, US Bank bought UB and is going to do a massive conversion this weekend (May 26-29, 2023). We are all being told that we have to deactivate UB Direct Connect now, and wait until May 30 to reactivate with US Bank, including DC and BillPay and $3.95 a month.

But it sounds like US Bank is not correct. Looks like we will only go to EWC+ and will lose Bill Pay. There has been NO notice of this.

Randy 415

I have been using Quicken DC BillPay for decades. Although my usage of BillPay has substantially decreased, what are my options as a replacement? Is there a link to a discussion on the forums as to a deep dive on alternatives?

DavidC1857

> @Randy 415 said:
> I have been using Quicken DC BillPay for decades. Although my usage of BillPay has substantially decreased, what are my options as a replacement? Is there a link to a discussion on the forums as to a deep dive on alternatives?

Well, I had a whole informative message typed out and then accidentally closed the tab. So to sum up...

US Bank Direct Connect is still working for me. I haven't tried paying a bill yet but I think it will work. I'll try one later today or tomorrow and report back. But I'm not convinced that US Bank is doing away with DC. At least not yet.

The release notes for the latest update indicated that they'd fixed it so you can select Direct Connect when setting up a new connection. I suspect this will have fixed the problem I was having with setting up a new DC with US Bank. It was never US Bank, it was Quicken. I could test this, but I'd have to reset my connection to do it and I'm not sure I want to do that. At least not until I have more time.

Quicken Bill Pay is your other option. It's starts at $9.95 a month for 15 checks and 15 electronic payments, but you could cancel the $3.95 you're paying US Bank now.

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20362865#Comment_20362865

Here are your options for paying bills once DC Bank Bill Pay stops:

1. Log into your online checking account and use the bank's bill pay service to pay your bills. Banks will generally select the most efficient method they have available….so ACH/EFT when available or print out and mail checks when not available. It's the same as DC Bank Bill Pay but without the Quicken interface.
2. Log into your billers' online accounts and set up payment schedules there where they will pull the payment directly from your payment account. This is the best one for knowing exactly which day the payment will be process. And if there is an error it is the biller's responsibility to fix so there is no late payment fee risk.
3. Use Quicken's Bill Manager CheckPay service (print out an mail checks via a 3rd party) as mentioned by @DavidC1857 above. The QuickPay service (ACH/EFT payments) is not currently available with EWC+.
4. Find and use some other 3rd party bill payment service.
5. Revert to writing or printing out and mailing checks.

I, too, do not use DC BillPay very much anymore because over the last several years I have made changes in how I now pay bills. For the most part I've set up recurring fixed amount or pay-in-full bill payments per Option #2. For the few remaining bills that need to be paid via my bank I do Option #1.

In both cases I have recurring Bill Reminders set up and I will manually adjust the payment amount and enter the Reminders as needed once I get the biller's statement/email notice. For the few bills that are not recurring I will manually enter the payment transaction in the register. Then when the actual payment transactions download Quicken will usually match them to the Reminders and manual transactions that were previously entered.

kotagalp

Same issues as all of you. Quicken mixed up my US Bank checking and American Express online savings bank so my Amex savings account looks like I have an extra $6000 (I wish)!

Quicken appears to have started this mess and needs to fix it. Please stop blaming your customers for this. If the problem lies with Amex and US Bank, talk to them and find a solution.

Until the problem gets fixed, Quicken should alert customers not update those 2 accounts.

Boatnmaniac

FYI: US Bank is not discontinuing DC at this time…..

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7936351/new-6-15-23-u-s-bank-and-direct-connect-bill-pay

This now makes 2 banks (US Bank and PNC Bank) who have transitioned EWC to EWC+ but have decided to leave DC intact (at least for now).