Mac vs PC | Supported Financial Institutions Inconsistency

cmrozewski

I recently installed Quicken on my home desktop (PC) but have previously been using it on my Mac laptop. I was surprised that several account connections became invalid. When I try to add them through "Add Account", they do not show up. This happened with three different companies (Betterment, Fundrise, and my 401K company). These are all available and show up when searching on the Mac side when adding a new account, but are not available on the PC side. Is what I'm experiencing a known issue? It seems odd that the supported financial institutions would be inconsistent between operating systems.

UKR

Have you asked any of these three companies to give you a reason why they are not supporting Quicken for Windows?
Might their management have missed checking a box while filling out the sign-up sheet with Intuit as the service provider?

NotACPA

It's the decision of the FI, NOT Q/Intuit, as to what to support. Bug your non-compliant FIs

cmrozewski

Yep - I've reached out to Betterment and Fundrise. Betterment said they do allow Quicken connections and could not explain why it works on one operating system and not another. Fundrise didn't get back to me.

I didn't realize that companies could opt to only support certain operating system when allowing Quicken connections. It seems like that wouldn't have anything to do with making the connection but it sounds like it does. There are so many differences between the Mac and Windows version of Quicken that they are almost separate products, so I assumed one of them just hadn't been updated to include to correct connection info.

Anyway, thanks for your ideas.

Boatnmaniac

There are so many differences between the Mac and Windows version of Quicken that they are almost separate products….

It is not that "they are almost separate products"…..they really are separate products. QWin was developed back in the old DOS days (1980s?) and eventually became a Windows platform. Intuit developed QMac independently from QWin as a totally separate product years later as something that would somewhat mimic what is in QWin. As a result there are many differences between the two in both features and functionality, even today.

They also have their own unique FIDIR files (Financial Institution Directory). The FIDIR is what tells Quicken which Financial Institutions (FIs) support Quicken, for which types of accounts and with which connection methods. Many FIs are set up in both FIDIR files because those FIs contracted with Intuit (the aggregator) for that. But some FIs have not done that.

Betterment connections have been an issue for a few years. A while back there were some Investment Companies (including Betterment) that were added to the QMac FIDIR for limited support with limited support meaning Simple Investing only. But those same Investment Companies were not added to the QWin FIDIR.

Following is what my somewhat old QMac FIDIR file shows for Betterment:

08972 08972 08972 Betterment https://www.betterment.com/ (646) 600-8263 https://www.betterment.com/login ACTIVE ACCOUNTINFO,INVESTMENT&EXP-WEB-CONNECT NOT_QBP NA

Following is what the current QWin FIDIR file shows for Betterment:

08972 08972 08972 Betterment https://www.betterment.com/ (646) 600-8263 https://www.betterment.com/login ACTIVE ACCOUNTINFO&EXP-WEB-CONNECT NOT_QBP NA

They both look pretty identical with EWC being supported by both. But the QMac FIDIR shows that Betterment includes INVESTMENT while the QWin FIDIR does not include that. This means that Betterment can download investment data into QMac but not into QWin.

IMHO, I think that EWC for QMac is different from EWC for QWin and that this difference is why QMac calls it Quicken Connect instead of EWC. Whatever that difference is is what allows QMac to download investments data (Simple Investing only) with EWC whereas it cannot be downloaded with QWin's EWC connection.

Until the last 1-1/2 yrs, to download investments data into QWin has required the DC connection method which costs the FI a pretty penny in fees. For the last 1-1/2 yrs QWin has been starting to cut in EWC+ which is capable of downloading investments data. If/when Betterment implements EWC+ I think we will see Betterment support for QWin added.