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Why does One Step Update Process 5 accounts at once?

jwkitz

I am using Windows Quicken Classic v R53.16 Build 27.1.53.16 and been having an issue with multiple accounts from multiple institutions updating at the same time for a while now. It originally just used to do it with the Citi accounts. Since the TD Ameritrade conversion to Schwab accounts 5 accounts are processing at the same time. Even though it eventually finishes times are exceeding 5 minutes quite often. Is this a common issue?

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Ps56k2

Quicken processes "like" accounts that use the same downloading protocol at the same time - parallel processing -
So - all 5 Schwab use the EWC+ protocol, and the same for the others …
they use a proxy server, so is the slowest and last to complete.
USBank uses Direct Connect, so it is first and completed.

Chris_QPW

The reason for doing them all at a time is to speed it up. I know that sounds strange coming from when they were Direct Connect and updated faster, but that is the purpose.

Frankly I don't know exactly what the holdup is with Express Web Connect +, but 2 or so minutes is the "low end" of how long they take to update.

If one looks at the Cloud Sync Log which is where Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect + log their communication you will see that they do some quick "setup information gathering" requests (seconds) and then make the main request for "the transactions", and then it waits…. So, everything past that is waiting for the server to finally return the transactions and information like the online balance.

Note that the data path here is: Quicken (the program) ←> Sync to Quicken Connection Services/Quicken Cloud dataset <→ Intuit server ←> financial institution

For Direct Connect for some reason they can't do it in parallel, but for most financial institutions they return the same basic information in seconds. As the name implies, the data flow is directly from Quicken to the financial institution.

Chris_QPW

P.S. imagine if each of those were done serially and that all take two or more minutes. Given that, then you can see the "speed up" that doing them at the same time brings.

Boatnmaniac

This parallel OSU process is by design and is normal. It should not be viewed as being an issue in and of itself.

But, IMO, 5 minutes is unusually long for completing the OSU update process for 5 financial institutions. In my main data file I have 8 EWC/EWC+ accounts with 6 different financial institutions and 12 DC accounts with 4 different financial institutions and the entire OSU update process typically takes 2-3 minutes to complete for all of them.

I don't know why it is taking you so much longer for fewer accounts than what I have. But one thing I noticed that might help to make it a little faster is to try changing your Citi Cards connection method from EWC to DC. To do this:

First backup your data file.
Then go to Account List.
To the right of the Citi Cards listing you should see Yes (improve connection). Click on the blue font improve connection and that should start the process to upgrade your connection to DC.
If you have more than one credit card set up with Citi Cards, this "improve connection" process should upgrade the connection method for all of them at the same time.
During the setup process you might be prompted to decide what to do with the downloaded data. Make sure you Link it to your account(s) that are already in Quicken.

Once the upgraded connection is completed, the Citi Cards account(s) will download very quickly (like the US Bank connection). Whether or not that will improve the download process time for the other EWC/EWC+ accounts is not known but hopefully it will help a little.

Chris_QPW

One thing I just noticed about your screenshot (I just wasn't that observant the first time) yours all say "Processing data…", not "Waiting".

What percentage of time does it spend in this state?

How often/many transactions do you usually download at a time?

With maybe the exception of the very first time I downloaded for a given account, I have never seen this state on my status window. I'm assuming that is because it gets processed so fast that it doesn't show.

This would indicate that in fact, this time is Quicken being slow for some reason, not the speed of the downloading of the actual transactions.

I know that Express Web Connect + is doing "extra processing" that Direct Connect never did, and that might be contributing to the slowness. One of the biggest surprises I had was when Chase changed from Direct Connect to Express Web Connect + and I got no duplicate transactions. The way duplicate transactions use to be handled was that the downloaded transactions data had a unique Id in it that Quicken stored, and if it saw a transaction with that unique Id it skipped it. Well, there is no way that the exact same unique Id would be generated for Express Web Connect +. There should have been duplicates, but there were none, but there was something else "processing". After authorizing the accounts on the Chase website Quicken churned for a very long time (on the first switch over). Best I can figure they deciding to come up with a different way to scan the transactions for duplicates, and evidentially it is much slower of a process.

I download at least daily and as such have very few transactions at a time, so it makes sense that this part of the processing might go by so fast on my machine that I never see that status.