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US Bank - Issue with sending payment using Direct Connect

Kelly Flesche

I use Direct Connect with US Bank to pay my bills. I have a bill that I have created and when I send to the bank using the "Send Online Payment" option, nothing happens. The account updates, but the payment doesn't send. Each time I do an account update, the payment shows up on the list as needing to be sent. When I close Quicken it tells me I have an online payment to send. How do I make this payment go?

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NotACPA

USB charges $9.95/mo for BillPay, have you signed up for that? Have you used BillPay with USB previously?

When you do TOOLS, Account List, what shows in the "Transaction Download" & "Financial Institution" columns adjacent to your USB account?

Kelly Flesche

I am not using BillPay on the US Bank website to pay the bill. I am using Quicken leveraging my Direct Connect (Transaction Download). They do not charge $9.95/month for that service and I have been using it for several years. The financial institution is U.S. Bank - PFM Direct Connect.

Adam in OC

I am having the same problem with US Bank Direct Connect - I can't download transactions or send bills. I have spent hours on the phone with both US Bank and Quicken support. It appears that this is a quicken problem - US Bank is sending data to quicken but quicken is not processing it (at least for me). By the same token, Quicken is not sending bill payment requests to US Bank.

Kelly Flesche

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20369000#Comment_20369000

Did Quicken acknowledge this was their issue and they are working on a fix or do we need to find an alternative way to pay our bills?

Lois Weddle

New to US Bank via takeover of Union Bank and it was explained that to use Quicken Bill Pay, there is $4 mo charge. $10 for businesses using Quickbooks. Not thrilled but ok. Jumped through required hoops to change and pay from PFM Direct, only to discover it didn't work. Several phone calls later I was told that just like Chase, Discover, Citi, etc., US Bank is phasing out Direct Connect and going with the "new/improved" connection. So I no longer need Premier Quicken, but they won't allow downgrade. Now, not only do I have to keep a version I don't need, I have to use the bank's billpay system and download it into Quicken. So every time I pay a bill, I have to enter it into the Bank's site, then open Quicken and record it there. Funny they don't mention "and double the work" with the "New and Improved".

Ps56k2

@Lois Weddle - you should be able to downgrade from Quicken Premier to Quicken Deluxe… contact Quicken Support for the change

And yeah - after using Chase for their direct bill payment for years, and then getting migrated to EWC+ .. now have to go back to double entry - pay bill at Chase, and then use Quicken Reminder & Calendar to enter into Quicken Register .

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20370578#Comment_20370578

According to this Alert posted on 6/15, USB is not eliminating DC Bank Bill Pay: NEW 6/15/23 U.S. Bank and Direct Connect Bill Pay.

The same thing is also stated in this Support Article: https://www.quicken.com/support/why-am-i-receiving-message-about-my-us-bank-accounts .

Instructions are provided for those who might have inadvertently reauthorized a U.S. Bank - PFM Direct Connect connected account to EWC+.

I do find it odd, however, that when trying to set up an account with U.S. Bank - PFM Direct Connect the set up process goes directly to apparently the very same reauthorization screen that is typically used for accounts that are being converted to EWC+. Is this normal? To me it seems it is not but I do not have any USB accounts set up with DC so I cannot test this out. If it is not normal, then perhaps this is what is causing the the DC connection set up issue.

I do know that if one has multiple accounts to be set up with DC one should first deactivate all of them before trying to set up with DC, again.

But I wonder if one has a mix of EWC+ accounts and needs to set up DC with one or more other accounts, do all of them need to first be deactivated, then followed by trying to set up the DC accounts and then followed by setting up the EWC+ accounts?

Boatnmaniac

@Lois Weddle - Per Quicken's Support Article regarding downgrading ( https://www.quicken.com/support/how-do-i-manage-my-quicken-subscription ):

A downgrade can only be made in the last six months of a subscription term.
A downgrade does not prorate. The current membership plan will
expire on the original expiration date and the new downgraded plan will
begin after that.
If a subscription is downgraded from a tier that includes free
Quicken Bill Manager (Premier and Home & Business on Windows, or
Premier on Mac) to Deluxe or Starter, you will no longer be able to use
Quick Pay or Check Pay.

You can contact Quicken Support to get this accomplished (as suggested by @Ps56k2) or you can do so from within your Quicken.com account. The potential advantage of contacting Quicken Support is that you can request them to make an exception to their standard policy to downgrade you immediately and prorate the remaining part of your Premier subscription to a lower edition but I suspect they will not do that. Still, if you do not try then for sure it will not happen.

BTW, DC Bank Bill Pay works with any Quicken edition, not just Premier, and there never is a charge from Quicken for using this feature. This is the bill pay you have been trying to get set up and you never needed Premier to use this bill pay function.

Premier is only cost advantageous if you want to use Quicken's separate and optional Bill Manager service for paying bills via Quick Pay or Check Pay.

This thread and the bill payment issues regards DC Bank Bill Pay, not Quicken's Bill Manager service.

Kelly Flesche

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20370598#Comment_20370598

I can confirm that if you have multiple accounts with USB and one is PFM Direct Connect and the rest are EWC+ you DO NOT need to deactivate all of the accounts. Only the one you are converting back to PFM Direct Connect. I can also state that USB confirmed to me in my conversations with them that they have no plans to phase out PFM Direct Connect. The issue of sending payments using PFM Direct Connect still remains and that the issue is on Quicken's end as the updates are not sending the payments to USB from Quicken. The question remains as to whether or not Quicken will be providing a fix for this issue anytime soon. It seems to have arisen as part of the confusing communication regarding the need to update accounts to EWC+ or as a result of a recent patch.

Boatnmaniac

@Kelly Flesche - Thanks for the additional information. These issues with USB seem to be similar to some of the issues with PNC Bank.

Both transitioned to EWC+ at about the same time.
Both transitions were very unclear (or inaccurate) at best regarding whether or not DC would also be transitioning to EWC+ but seemed to indicate that users should reauthorize their DC accounts to EWC+.
Both later came out and clarified that DC would not be transitioning to EWC+ and that those who had mistakenly reauthorized to EWC+ could change their connections back to DC.
The processes for changing connections back to DC for both banks that were inadvertently reauthorized to EWC+ are very similar but neither seems to be working very well (or at all).
Those who never reauthorized their DC accounts are not having any download or Bank Bill Pay issues.

What a mess.

Kelly Flesche

It’s taken some troubleshooting on my own, but I think I’ve found the issue that is preventing transactions from being downloaded from US Bank after switching from Express Web Connect+ to Direct Connect.

In my Quicken file, I disabled the account I’m trying to get working from Online Services and renamed the account by putting OLD in the name. I created a new account in Quicken and set it up for Online Services using Direct Connect. The new account worked fine. Transactions are downloaded, I can reconcile, etc. So I started looking for the differences between how the two accounts are set up and here is what I found.

In the new account I created, when going to Edit Account Details, on the General tab, the customer ID is filled in. On the old account (the one that was Express Web Connect+), the Customer ID field is blank. It does not fill in when changing the account from Express Web Connect+ to Direct Connect. There is a little question mark by the Customer ID field that states:

“The Customer ID is not available for this U.S. Bank - PFM Direct Connect account as it uses the Express Web Connect+.”

So even though the account has been changed to Direct Connect and it looks as though it’s set up as Direct Connect in the Connection Method on the Online Services tab, for some reason the Customer ID field is not being updated.

I walked Quicken Support through this and she thinks it may be a bug. She is doing further research on it and will call me back.

I thought this may be something those of you also having trouble downloading US Bank transactions for an account that was Express Web Connect+, but you are changing it back to Direct Connect could use to see if this is also true in your files.

Boatnmaniac

@Kelly Flesche - Thanks for following up on this here. Hopefully others will find it helpful.

Kelly Flesche

For any who are interested, I worked with Quicken Support and US Bank to try to resolve this issue. It seems there is an issue with the US banks accounts in my Quicken file as none of them would update when changing from Web Express to Direct Connect, however, I was able to work around this issue as follows:

Back up your Quicken file
Disabled online updates for all US Bank accounts
Renamed my Direct Connect account (the account I use to pay bills) to OLD - Household Account and removed the financial institution
Created a new Household Account and went through the setup process for Direct Connect. It brought in transactions for the last 92 days.
Changed the transfer account for the opening balance in my new register to the name of the old account.
Deleted the duplicate transactions in the old register (the ones that also appear in the new register).
The balance in the old register should now be zero. The balance in the new register should be the current online balance for this account at US Bank.

So now I have two registers for this account. One labeled OLD - Household Account with a zero balance but all of my historical transactions still in place and one labeled Household Account that has the correct bank balance and only the transactions downloaded for the last 92 days.

I will use the old one when I need to look at history (this is not set up for online access). I will use the new register for all future transactions. I am now able to download transactions for the Direct Connect account and reconcile the balance to the bank. I haven't tested sending payments yet.

It's not perfect, but it will work. I hope this will work for you as well since support was unable to help me fix the file.