Freedom Mortgage - Available as a Payee, but not as an Account

Waggster

I was finally able to add and get connected (MFA issues) to Freedom Mortgage as a payee, but was hoping to add Freedom Mortgage as a Mortgage account under Property and Debt but Freedom Mortgage is not listed when searching the list of financial institutions.

Why is Freedom available as a Payee, but not on the available account list?

splasher

You would have to ask both Freedom Mortgage (FM) and/or Intuit (aggregation service provider). FM has to request that Intuit make them available as an authorized download partner and evidently they have decided not to.

From FM's standpoint, they would probably do just about anything to accept funds from their customers, but the expense of providing that transactional information via a third party is probably very low on their list of things to want to do. They already foot the bill to provide it on their website, from their perspective why provide it elsewhere.

Quicken has a dog in neither of these two races since both processes are services that they contract for from service providers and do not control themselves.

UKR

About setting up mortgage accounts in Quicken

I would not bother attempting to activate any loan or mortgage accounts for downloading. I would just simply set them up as "offline" (manual) loan accounts with a Scheduled Reminder to record the monthly payment from your checking account.
(Not discussing LOC or HELOC accounts here. They should be set up as offline credit card accounts)

At least in Quicken for Windows, an online-connected loan or mortgage account does NOT have a transaction register. All data shown in the account come from whatever information the bank downloads to you ... if this process works at all.

As a result of being connected, the scheduled payment transaction reminder cannot transfer the amount of principal paid into the (non existent) account register and must use a category, usually something like Loan:Principal, instead. The category name seems to vary with the Loan Type you selected when creating the loan account in Quicken.

Effective with Quicken Windows 2018 and newer
you can deactivate an online-connected loan account and regain full control over your transaction register. However, you should still review the Scheduled Reminder (or Memorized Payee List entry) associated with the monthly loan payments to ensure they now transfer Principal to the loan account register and not to a Category.

If you're a Q Mac user, you should be able to do something similar about setting up and maintaining an offline mortgage account together with a correctly calculated Scheduled Transaction Reminder for the monthly payments from your checking account.

About your issues with Bill Manager

If your bank (the one that runs your checking account) 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 (in no particular order of preference):

1. 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. Note: limited number of free transactions per month.
2. Logon to the bank's website and schedule your bill pay payments to be executed by the bank from your checking account. In parallel to that, in Quicken use a regular Scheduled Reminder to record your payment. Repeat both actions every time another payment is due.
3. Bypass Bill Manager. Let the biller's computer system do all the work for you. Logon to the biller's website once and set up their Autopay, APS, Direct debit, etc. service to make the current payment and all future payments on Due Date directly from your checking account. In parallel to that, in Quicken, every month before the due date, record a Scheduled Reminder to keep track of your payments before they come due.
4. Write (or print with Quicken) a paper check and mail it to the biller, making sure to mail payment early enough (at least 10 days before due date) to allow time for delivery and processing.

For best results I recommend using option #3 and the Scheduled Reminder created by the loan setup process in Quicken. Correctly categorized, correctly calculated amounts of principal and interest for each payment. Automatic on-time payments every month. How's that grab you?

Waggster

Thank you. I have setup a manual account for my mortgage account. My primary intention for adding the mortgage account was to have the loan balance appear in Property & Debt on the left sidebar and be automatically updated when synching accounts.

UKR

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20363881#Comment_20363881

You don't need to activate the mortgage account for downloading for balance tracking.
Using the Scheduled Reminder generated by the Loan Setup Process to record your monthly payments into the checking account will keep the loan balance up-to-date. The Split detail in the loan payment transaction transfers the Principal amount into the mortgage register, thus reducing the outstanding balance.