New bank services (Bank of the West merging with Bank of Montreal)

SunnyBeach

Hello - My current bank, Bank of the West, will be merging with BMO (Bank of Montreal) starting 9/1/23. Could you pleae tell me if BMO supports the current version of Quicken Deluxe. BMO Tech Support is near non-existent at this time.
Thank you,
Lanny Beach
WIN-11, Quicken ver. R51.12

Quicken Kristina

Hello @SunnyBeach,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community. BMO is listed in Quicken. Do you know if this is going to be a merge with BMO U. S., BMO Harris, or a different one?

Thank you.

SunnyBeach

Kristina - Thank you for your response. I'll see if I can catch up with their technical department.
To the point of your question, most of the literature I have received concerning the merger, indicates the name BMO only. However, on one of their financial pages, I did see reference to their apparent legal name of BMO Harris Bank N.A. I think BMO is the U.S. division of that conglomerate.

Hickeymommy

How do I set up my update tool to work with the Bank of the West/BMO merger? The account #'s are the same - they claim the routing # should not need to be changed except if you have been told and they set up a new BMO account. Will my transactions be sync'd?

Jeffrey Wilens

I posted an explanation but it does not post here because of the formatting, will repost in plain text.

Jeffrey Wilens

These instructions worked for me.

1. Open the Account List in Quicken (Tools > Account List OR Ctrl + A)
2. Edit each account with the old financial institution to Deactivate (or Remove From One Step Update) in the Online Services tab
3. Click on the General tab and remove any info displayed in the Financial Institution, and Account/Routing Number fields. Note: The account must be deactivated first before these fields can be edited.
4. When finished, close the Account List
5. Close, then re-open Quicken
6. Navigate to Tools > Add Account...
7. Search and select the new financial institution name (First Citizens Bank, Direct Conn) and follow the prompts to connect
8. Very carefully LINK each of the found accounts to the appropriate account you already have set up in Quicken.

The new bank is BMO, USA. I chose link to existing account not add account. That's the critical step.

rupleys

It would be a nuisance to lose register continuity, do I have no choice but to deactivate the previous bank account and start a new account under the new bank name?

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NotACPA

NO - just deactivate all accounts for the old name and simply rename them.

Whether you CAN reconnect depends upon what the new bank offers.

If you provide the name of the 2 banks, we can be more specific.

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rupleys

The old bank is Bank of The West, now taken over by BMO, do you have further info on that? I had to update my online account and change my password.

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Ps56k2

There are a couple of - Bank of the West - Quicken entries…. which exact one were you using ?

Were you given any new info to now access your acounts on BMO ?
There are eight BMO Quicken entries that can be used…. not sure which one is the correct one -

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rupleys

I had to update my BOW login info to bmo.com, same user name, new password, all of my BOW statements and account info are there.

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Ps56k2

well… as mentioned - just DE-activate those old BofWest accounts -
Then try Quicken Add Account - select BMO - enter your credentials - and see if Quicken & BMO recognize the entry -
(there are eight entries for BMO… so thought BMO US might be a starting point)

Then - when it connects to BMO - it should find and list your accounts…
You SHOULD be able to LINK those BMO entries to your existing Quicken BofWest exacting accounts.
If you trip over this … you will create new BMO Quicken accounts, and now have a duplicate set of accounts.

17614 17614 17614 BMO U.S.
https://www.bmo.com/en-us/main/personal/ (888) 340-2265
https://www.bmo.com/en-us/main/personal/ ACTIVE
BANKING&WEB-CONNECT
BANKING,CREDIT,ACCOUNTINFO&EXP-WEB-CONNECT

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rupleys

Thank you, I was able to establish the connection to the new BMO account, and link it to the old BOW account. However, there is a new issue with this register, it shows a balance more than $3000 than actually exists in the account. I dumped the entire register into an Excel spreadsheet and had it check all of the register math, and of course it agreed with Quicken. I believe the BMO account balance is correct. So now my question is can I open a previous backup file that I saved on Sept 1 (before the BOW-BMO change) and dump that register to Excel, in order to investigate whether any transactions may have gotten lost? I am afraid to do so and lose anything from the current data file, which I want to return to.

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Ps56k2

take a look at the Opening Balance which sometimes get randomly changed with Quicken updates

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rupleys

Hard to verify without looking at the previous backup file (it was in 2012), I can't remember or have any documentation that far back. I know there were at least 2 Quicken updates last week. Will it be safe for me to open last month's backup to check?

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rupleys

P.S. I did a File Validate operation and found no errors.

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Jim Noel

Jeffrey,
I followed your instructions and I have a new account for BMO that downloaded transactions starting with 6/14/2023 up to the present (9/12/2023). It did not, however, download the historical transactions from Bank of the West going back to 12/5/1995. Also, the Bank of the West account last transaction downloaded was on 9/1/2023. I don't know why BMO started with 6/14/23. How do I get the history on to the BMO account (without making duplicates).

Thank you.

Mick1967

Bank of the West (BOW) was purchased by BMO. After their conversion I added BMO and did an update. It duplicated all my Bank of the west transactions. Should I delete all my BOW data and do a full update with BMO? I've made some notes on my cleared checks through BOW, I would guess I need to make notes and go back to the BMO download and update those changes. Also, I had redirected some of the accounts being charged on BOW, do I have to make those notes and change on BMO. Hope you tell me there is an easier way to do this. Thanks.

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Ps56k2

just to clarify - how did you perform the migration ?

do you now have a duplicate set of Quicken accounts - one for BOW and also one for BMO -
OR…. did you LINK the BMO download to your already existing BOW Quicken accounts ?
and now merely have duplicate transactions all within the same Quicken account ?

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rupleys

I successfully update the old BOW account to BMO, first by establishing the online login, then deactivating the Quicken BOW account, and reactivated it, selecting BNO and linking it to the old account. It then was able to download transactions back to the changeover, with only a few duplicate transactions. Then I renamed the account to BOW-BNO. One major problem is it changed the value of my opening balance from 2012 upwards about $3000! I had to open an older backup file to find the original value and correct it in the newer file.

Ps56k2

Tnx for the update on your BOW to BMO migration.

Yeah … that Opening Balance bug is recent. We suggest you go thru ALL of your accounts and scroll to the first transaction and copy the Opening Balance amount into the Memo field for safe keeping.