Access to Prudential/Empower retirement account error OL-301-A
Answers
-
Thank you Drinkingbird for responding. I checked for place holders and have none. It is interesting that I go from (+) xxxx shares of mutual fund which is correct, and next entry my shares are (-)xxxx shares. When I go back and use the adjust share balance, my share balance is worse. If I could fine where the mistakes are, I would correct it.
0 -
First you have to make sure you have hidden transactions enabled in your preferences. Then even if the placeholder entries tab at the bottom of the register doesn't have a number next to it, click it anyway, often times there will be some in there when things aren't making sense. In my case I just have to delete them all then it all matches up.
Adjust shares may cause more problems than it solves, you really want all your transactions in there and the balance to be correct based on that. Adjust shares often creates placeholder entries also.
0 -
Thank you so much Drinkingbird. Once I enabled hidden transactions, they showed up. Deleted them and now I am very close to the correct amounts. I truly appreciate your help.
1 -
OK - got an OL-297-A error today. "Quicken is unable to establish an internet connection" - I hope it's a one off.
0 -
Today received error 297A which is new. Only on my Prudential/Empower account, so I know my connection works since the other accounts updated. Last week it connected but no data was transmitted. Very frustrating.
0 -
Yep, back to the old stuff again. I should have received a bunch of transactions to download today, but instead, I received the 297-A error.
0 -
After the 297-A errors yesterday, mine did connect and download Friday night's transactions - even matching them up with the manual entries I made yesterday.
0 -
For the first time since July 28 my Pru/Empower 401k transactions successfully downloaded.
0 -
Got the OL-297-A error today
0 -
Me too, maybe a weekend downtime for maintenance.
0 -
Mine downloaded today, but something is still wrong. The download from additional payroll investments, is creating negative cash balances.
Back to entering my own data 😣
0 -
Make sure hidden transactions are enabled and look for/remove placeholder entries.
0 -
Had to change the transaction type from Bought to BoughtX. Not sure what this does technically, except for it removed all the negative cash balance activity.
0 -
BoughtX will transfer funds from another account. So that other account is probably off now (whichever one you put for transfer account). Your paycheck transaction should transfer the funds in then standard Bought transactions get used. I think the BoughtX has probably just masked the problem or moved it to another account.
With Pru, balance issues are usually caused by hidden placeholder entries.
0 -
Well this isn't a good omen
On the weekend of October 21st, Empower will upgrade your account to an improved web experience. Note that you will not be able to make transactions in your account 1-3 business days prior to the upgrade and 1-2 business days after the upgrade weekend. To learn more, visit upgrade.empower.com. After the upgrade is complete, you will need to register and access your account at empowermyretirement.com.
20. Can I download my
account activity to
Quicken after
the upgrade?
If you would like to download your account activity to Quicken, simply choose the
Transaction history option under Account Information. On this screen, select Quicken
QFX. Then select a date range and press the Download button.So no more direct connect or EWC?
0 -
"No data available during selected period" error on the website when attempting to download the latest Quicken QFX data using the "Activity since the most recent quarter end" option. If I choose the "Activity from a prior quarter" I only see data up to 6/30/2023, which I already updated. So I am not able to download the latest data for some reason.
0 -
They removed QFX downloads from my account a long time ago. If yours still has it then I'm assuming it was impacted by that 2 month long issue. But it appears once it migrates to the Empower website later this month, QFX will be the only way to download, no more direct connect, so I guess they better get it figured out. What a massive step backwards in this day and age. I certainly hope enough people complain that they at least start supporting EWC/EWC+.
Ironically the tour of the new website is really pushing their data aggregation, saying to add all your accounts to see your whole financial status in one place. That of course requires all your other accounts to support some form of aggregator connectivity, yet Empower won't be supporting it themselves, so you can use their account with any data aggregator. "Do as we say, not as we do".
0 -
Empower wants to hide the day to day activity of holdings that don't have ticker from Quicken users.
0 -
Managed funds (no ticker) don't have day to day activity, they report NAV monthly or quarterly typically. One of the reasons I won't use that investment type.
0 -
This issue was first reported by me in July and August 2023 and really cannot believe it’s not resolved. The Quicken financial management process has become so manual that I am pondering going back to spreadsheets. Clearly something wrong with this overall picture.
0 -
Are you sure your account hasn't been moved from Prudential to Empower's website? They've been moving everyone over, and Empower does not support direct downloads from within quicken, only QFX export from their website.
0 -
I have found that the QFX download is not that bad. It's accurate and it sure beats entering the transactions manually as we had to do with the Prudential account for a while. Empower doesn't want to make Quicken as easy as it is to use their aggregator in hopes to draw more customers to their product. I haven't read anything about the charge for using their aggregator - maybe its rolled in to the fees that they already charge on holdings. I hope that one day they will provide the Direct Connect for easier updates.
0 -
They won't charge you to use their aggregation, they want to use that data to sell you stuff (and to sell to 3rd parties). I had to enter transactions manually for about 2 months but other than that Prudential always worked well (I suspect that 2 month outage earlier this year was related to them getting ready to move people over). The QFX is a pain, and doesn't include all the data that the transaction on their website does, so sort of defeats the purpose.
0 -
My "solution" for using Empower QFX (which does not download the individual transactions shown on their website with cash source, just a single aggregated transaction) -
Use the QFX file, and since I'm right on the screen anyway, click the transaction ID to view the details, and put a note in the memo of the downloaded transactions to notate how many shares are Roth (the only one I care about tracking separately).
Not elegant but can easily export the transactions from quicken to excel and with a few minutes of sorting and formatting, find how many Roth shares of each fund I have, multiply by closing price (typically prior day's close, depending when you're looking at their site) and make sure the balances match. Also have a record in case there is any discrepancy at some point. Since I'm fully vested, all other shares are just pre-tax.
Haven't had enough transactions on their new system to confirm the aggregated transaction is an exact match (number of shares, total price, etc) for the individual ones, but one would hope they can manage to get that right. Going to keep an eye on it over time to make sure.
0 -
My wife's accounts have been moved from Pru to Empower. I don't mind using the QFX method, as my 401k has been with Empower for a while.
I would like to keep the Pru data in my quicken file for the history, but use the empower stuff in a different account going forward. Any advice on what I should do? Do I somehow "zero" out the Pru data so it doesn't interfere with current reports?
0 -
I don't understand why you would want to do that. Empower just purchased Prudential's book of business, nothing else has changed other than the name.
I currently have my Prudential 403b connected via Direct Connect and nothing has changed other than the name.
0 -
tgr131
That's what I did. I noted the day of the purchase of shares in Empower on the website, created the Empower account in Quicken (offline Web Connect), downloaded the QFX file and imported it into the new Empower account, then sold all the shares in Prudential (one holding at a time) on the same date that they were purchased in Empower. It took a little bit of time and effort but it worked seamlessly. The only gap in the dashboard is where Empower was at 0 value over time and then all at once it went to the same amount that Prudential was on the date the shares were sold. When I imported the QFX file it noticed the syntax of a couple holdings was different than what was stored in Quicken from the Prudential account. I just created new holdings - I don't think it matters the Prudential info is obsolete now. I hope this helps.
0 -
I read jfclague's comment and thought what a great idea! So on a backup copy I deleted the Empower account that I had set up and tried to change the Prudential account name and set it up for Web Connect instead of Direct Connect. No dice, Quicken wouldn't let me - when I went to set up a new connection for Prudential it just created a whole new account, so back to where I was at the beginning. jfclague if you have any insights on how to make that work I would be interested. It would be nice if the transactions on my account were unbroken as they are now.
0 -
With my Prudential 403b (Empower), I didn't do anything other than change the name to Empower. The acct. is still connected via Direct Connect with Prudential. Even when you log into the web, it is still the Prudential web address since Empower just took over the book of business.
0 -
Your account hasn't been moved over to the new site yet, so you're discussing something totally different than the rest of us. Be warned, you're next.
Once moved over to Empower's site (by end of year) direct connect will no longer work (quicken will say your account cannot be found) and you must log into empower and download QFX every time.
0
