Bills and Income STILL does not work

Rich Burke

This feature is riddled with connection issues and has been for a long time and it get's zero attention. Almost all my online billers has a "fix it" icon, but clicking that does absolutely nothing. it either comes back and says "account is locked" - account is not locked, or it says "still connecting - try back in a few days" - been getting this message for months, or "invalid credentials" - they are not invalid.

Very frustrating to have a feature that used to work stop working. No matter how many times I report it or get emails from product managers it NEVER gets fixed.

UKR

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.

IMHO, 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 (or credit card company'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, record a regular 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.

I've been using method #3 for decades, since before the Internet and transaction download capabilities were even introduced. It's easy to get used to this process. And I have yet to miss a single payment.

Rich Burke

Yes I understand all this. I do not use Bill and Income Manager to pay bills, I know how to online bank and I have been working in financial services technology for over 30 years. I am not looking for explanation on how you workaround a broken feature. I am escalating the fact that Quicken as a software company has a feature that they release in their software that does not work. There are MANY posts about this, I was even emailed directly by a product manager regarding the issue.

Chris_QPW

Very frustrating to have a feature that used to work stop working. 

In my opinion this feature has never worked right.

I think Online Bill presentment was created in something like Quicken 2015. I tried for years to get it to work and gave up on it a couple of years ago. I'm not sure why I even put myself through trying to use it for that long.

From the get go, some online bills would work fine, some would work and then not work and then maybe resetting would help, sometimes not. And then there were the bill that never worked. Either they never "finished connecting" or they got connected, but never downloaded a bill.

I'm not surprised that this system doesn't work reliably. There isn't any Biller API, so what the third-party service that Quicken is using for this does is "log in to the biller site" as you and try to get the bill information. Given the total unstandardized websites and log in procedures it isn't surprising that this isn't reliable. And on top of that I do believe that there are bugs in Quicken in that section of the code.

One might ask why Quicken Inc is even providing such a service, and I think the answer is simple, their customers expect/demand it, even if they don't understand the ramifications of a service that isn't reliable. Quicken Inc like downloading transactions can't possibly directly provide these services, and as such are subject to what is available through third-party services. What's more once they have decided on a given service even if there might be a better one out there, they are pretty committed to staying with the current service even if it isn't ideal.

One of the main ramifications of this is that Quicken Inc is a customer just like you. When you complain about a biller that isn't working right, provided it isn't anything in the Quicken code they only thing they can do is forward your complaint to the third-party service and hope they will fix it. And we have seen how effective that is…

Rich Burke

Yes I have heard the API excuse from the product team as well, and I get it that relying on a 3rd party vendor (or lack thereof) for the success or failure of your product is a risky venture. However, this is a Quicken product, a feature of their software, and it does not work. As a service provider, they need to make some decisions on this feature and if they want to continue to support a feature that does not function, re-design the entire process, or pull the plug and explain it just does not function as they had hoped. This also brings up the topic of QA and testing and how they can release software that clearly cannot pass a QA test.

I do not expect any positive movement on this issue, I have complained about this many times. Discussions get closed, releases happen with no fixes, it seems Quicken is happy to have a feature riddled with bugs released in their product.

Chris_QPW

I do not expect any positive movement on this issue, I have complained about this many times. Discussions get closed, releases happen with no fixes, it seems Quicken is happy to have a feature riddled with bugs released in their product.

I'm sorry to say, I wouldn't say they are "happy" about it, but they are certainly willing to "tolerate" it.

And the truth is that if they didn't tolerate such problems, Quicken would probably not be here. How many customers would they have if they stuck with only Direct Connect and Web Connect (QFX File) and didn't have Express Web Connect? Even though Express Web Connect is in the same boat?

Karyl Wilson

Up until about 10 years ago Bill and income reminders worked perfectly. I have my pay check set up, and I have to go through bill and income to post the entry. About 3-6 months ago when I click on the bill and income it just spins and says not responding. I keep having to control alt delete. I have don that 5 times tonight. I have reported it multiple times. I even did the validation and that fixed it for 3 weeks. Very frustrating. I have been using a form of quicken for over 20 years.