Cannot add Principal Financial Account.

gene.burd

I am having problems adding Principal Financial Group online account. After the notice about conneciton via Intuit, it takes me to the manual account. There are no error messages.

Boatnmaniac

The FIDIR.txt file (Financial Institutions Directory) lists all financial institutions that support Quicken, which connection method(s) they support, which types of accounts they support and which services they support. This is what the FIDIR shows for PFG:

02194 02194 02194 The Principal Financial Group https://www.principal.com 1-800-986-3343 https://secure05.principal.com/enterprise/fdx/hybrid ACTIVE 401K&WEB-CONNECT NOT_QBP NA

The two key things to take away from this listing regarding PFG:

1. They support downloading of 401K accounts.
2. They support only the Web Connect (WC) connection method. WC is the method whereby one must log into their online account with PFG and manually download and import transactions in .QFX file format (which might also be referred to as "Quicken" or "Web Connect" format).

PFG does not support downloading from within Quicken, it means the account can be set up in Quicken by one of two ways:

1. When trying to set up the account via Add Account, Quicken will prompt you to set up a manual account (what you have been experiencing) instead of an online account because PFG does not support downloading via One Step Update or Update Now. After the manual account is set up, you can then use the WC connection method to download and import the account information and transactions, making sure to Link the imported data to the manual account you set up in Quicken.
2. Forget about doing Add Account and setting up the manual account. Instead, log into your online PFG account and use the WC method to manually download and import the data into Quicken. When the data is imported into Quicken, Quicken will prompt you to decide what to do with it. Select "Add". Quicken will then add the account in Quicken for you.

In both situations, you should be prompted to decide what to do with the imported data only the first time. Future WC downloads/imports should be automatically entered into the account in Quicken.

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