Pay is missing ?
In the 'Check #' column there used to be a "PAY" option which initiated the Check Pay feature I have used for years. I do not see this selection. Has it been removed?
DaveR
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Did you recently change from Direct Connect to Express Web Connect + in that account?
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No. It has been Express Web Connect for quite a while now.
Quicken user since DOS 1.1 (1983)0 -
I used to be able to initiate a "Check Pay" right from the register but it appears that option has been removed. Using this option, I could initiate a "Check Pay" to anyone. Bills and Income tab does not seem to allow that. I have yet been able to initiate a "Check Pay" transaction.
DaveR
Quicken user since DOS 1.1 (1983)0 -
@Dave Robinson Check Pay from within Q is a function of what your bank allows.
What bank do you use that supported this?
Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
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Please show us an image snapshot of the Edit Account Details dialog, Online Services tab so that we can see what the current status of the account is, with respect to Online Bill Pay services.
You may have to go to the Bills, Income & Transfers view and perform a "Review and Repair / Review and Repair Payment Accounts" action from the Settings gear icon.0 -
Is this the screen you asked for?
Quicken user since DOS 1.1 (1983)0 -
Additionally, this is a manual pay not a billed account.
When I wanted to send a payment to someone, I could do that from the Register screen for my pay-from bank account. After I entered all the necessary information I could do an UPDATE. Then Q would create a check number and enter it into the register line. I believe this was something "Bill Pay" would do. It was pretty simple to do and I did not have to set up something In BILLS & INCOME to do it. Bill Pay did this free for a limited number of transactions per month. It seems Quickens "New" plan is not as simple to use as advertised.
Quicken user since DOS 1.1 (1983)0 -
After doing a little research and reading other mentions about Quicken Bill Pay (formerly referred to as Check Free), it seems the "Bill Pay" option is no longer available (when was it terminated?). I have to use "Bill Manager" instead.
My question now is how do I send a random check to say "JOHN DOE" address "1234 FIRST ST" etc. for the amount of $$$ ? This is where I am getting mixed up. Someone point me to the starting point for this process. I understand the "Online vs Manual Bills" ( I have never gotten the Online Bills to work ) even the Manual bill does not work as I expect it to. How do know that the information has been received, scheduled, and sent? How will it appear in the register and when? "Bill Pay" gave me a check number that I could trace, etc.
Quicken user since DOS 1.1 (1983)0 -
@Dave Robinson see if this is what you need:
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Chris
Helpful but didn't give me a cut off date for Bill Pay. I have two checks "sent" via Bill Pay that have not been processed through the bank yet. I need to determine if I need to re-send them.
Quicken user since DOS 1.1 (1983)0 -
even the Manual bill does not work as I expect it to. How do know that the information has been received, scheduled, and sent? How will it appear in the register and when?
Let me take the "old school". I write a check, in the check book I write down the check number, and I mail it out. At some point I check my checking account statement and see it has cleared the bank, so I go to the check book and mark it cleared. At some point I also go through and reconcile and mark all those transactions reconciled.
A manual entry works exactly the same way as the check book.
You write a check, you enter the check into Quicken, including the payee, check number, and amount. At some point in the future you download the transaction, and it matches to the one in the register and is marked cleared. You at some point reconcile and it is marked reconciled.
A reminder isn't any different than the manual entry, it is just that for a "placeholder" for a check (or other transaction like a transfer) that you know will be repeat at a certain interval. It doesn't actually do anything except record something that happened outside of Quicken.
Another example of bill paying. I have most of my bill's setup to be automatically paid from my credit card. This was setup on the biller's website. So, what is happening is there is a transfer from my credit card account to the biller. And that is how I record it in Quicken. And my credit card is setup to automatically be paid from my checking account. So, again it is recorded in Quicken as a transfer. But again, what "initiated" the transfer was completely outside of Quicken.
If you have a financial institution that can pay bills using Direct Connect, then it works like Quicken is a GUI for their bill system. You can initiate and track them from inside of Quicken as if you were doing it at the financial institution's website.
Quicken Bill Manager was pushed into the reminder system in a bit of a different way, so it looks different, and it works different behind the scenes. Instead of the bill payment starting at the financial institution, it starts at the biller's website. With the exception of "check pay" which is having the third-party bill payment system send out a check.
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Personally, I think this third-party service stinks and I wouldn't use it.
From what I gather from just looking at the comments in this forum is that there is no visibility into "what is happening". If you want to check on something like this, you are told to contact Quicken support. But they have no access to this information either. All they can do is forward your request to that third-party service. And you can't contact them directly!
There are a couple of fundamental differences between the old third-party bill payment system and the new one.
- Old system, when possible, use ACH transfer from your checking account to the biller. New system, "try to access biller's website and get a payment submitted to pull the payment from your checking account." New to that system, if this part fails then for some billers they might be able to try a ACH transfer, but only after the first part fails!
- Old system, had website, and support to check on the status. New system, no website, no support contact.
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Chris
Sorry, I am being dense here. I am missing something. I understand the manual entry process, I do that when I physically write a check for something. The check has its number and I have personally handed the check to someone. How do I do that in Quicken where they write the check and give it to someone? I can't just write any check number into the register and it doesn't appear that Quicken provides me with feedback. I see the entry in my register but no indication that it has been scheduled or a check number has been assigned. So I don't know the status of the payment. The pay date could come and go and I find that the check wasn't sent. With Bill Pay, there was a PAY selection in the check number column that started the process where I enter the payee information, address, amount, and send date. The "UPDATE" process sent the payment information and provided the check number along with the payment status right there in the check column. Somehow, I entered a payment and received a confirmation number in the register MEMO column. I can take that as a completed process and I assume the payment will go to the payee as it should. I am having difficulty duplicating what I did for that transaction.
Am I driving you crazy yet? I am about ready to clear everything in scheduled and Bill Manager and start over.
Thank you for all your help and patience.
Dave
Quicken user since DOS 1.1 (1983)0 -
Chris,
Additionally, I have been receiving this error message when I attempt to delete a payee or select "Pay with Bill Manager" This has been going on for a couple of days now.
Quicken user since DOS 1.1 (1983)0 -
For a manual reminder/entry, like I said think about what kind of feedback you would get from using your old school checkbook and the information that your financial institution gives on their website.
That is all you are going to get with Quicken outside of a "bill payment system".
In other words, old school, you sent out a check, you got no feedback until it cleared the bank. Well, you might also get the feedback from whatever the bill payment was for, but I mean the check didn't send you information like, I just got put in the mail bag, now I'm on a truck. 😉
If it was a really important check maybe you traced could pay extra and trace it through the mail, but normally you didn't.
You looked and if at the time you were reconciling for the month if the check hadn't yet cleared, then maybe you would have done something to try to track it down. If it really went missing, maybe you voided that check and sent another.
As for the new Quicken Bill Manager, like I said, I don't use it, and I don't recommend it. It lacks good feedback, reliability, and ways to resolve problems.
I suggest instead one of these other approaches:
- Use biller's website and setup automatic payments. Use some system to get the transfer entered into Quicken and then matched when the payment clears your financial institution (whether that be a credit card or checking account). Here is a link about transfer transactions that might be helpful.
- Find a financial institution that will support bill pay through Direct Connect. This works the way you were used to. And is even better because it only includes Quicken (the program) and the financial institution, no third-party.
- Use your financial institution's bill payment system. This will require double entry in Quicken and at the financial institution's site, but it will be reliable, and you will at least be able to check status there and get customer support there if needed.
- Go old school and write paper checks. Maybe even have Quicken print them if you have a lot of them.
A bit of history. The third-party they are using for Quicken Bill Manager was actually first added back in Quicken 2015 as only "Online Bills" (no bill payment). I tried using just that for years but found it to be unreliable and dropped it a few years ago. When the other third-party bill pay company decided to get out of the business Quicken Inc was left searching for a bill payment system and decided to stay with that same provider. And their bill payment system doesn't seem to be any better than their bill presentment system (which is really just two parts of the same system).
Besides just the frustration of trying to use such a system, I personally wouldn't put my credit records on the line by using such a system.
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So Quicken Bill Pay does not write physical checks and send them to my recipient? Only Electronic payments are sent.
That's where I am having confusion. How can I have "them send" the check? Other than I can't edit a payment from the registry, There is no indication that a check "will" be sent.
Quicken user since DOS 1.1 (1983)0 -
I think I am finally "getting" it. Quicken doesn't write checks only the bank does and then only if they have Direct connect and check writing options.
In my case, I have Express Web Connect now. Not Direct Connect.
Thank you for clearing this up for me Chris.
Quicken user since DOS 1.1 (1983)0 -
Quicken Bill Pay has two options:
Quick Pay and Check Pay.
Quick Pay is when it can use the biller's website to schedule the bill to be paid (and recently as a fall back maybe use a ACH transfer).
Check Pay, it where the third-party service does send a physical check.
As for the exact details of all of this, and what "Feedback" it provides, I'm the wrong one to answer and maybe someone else will join in and post on that. The very fact that it is so unreliable (even the sending of physical checks {that get lost for some reason as reported by others on here}) I wouldn't go near it and therefore can't answer about the details, only point you at their web pages.
Bill Pay through Direct Connect when the financial institution supports it is something I did in the distant past and know a bit more details on it.
And the old "Quicken Bill Pay" that used a different third-party service was connected into Quicken in a way that made it appear almost identically to the one through Direct Connect. Unlike this new implementation that goes through "Bills tab/reminders".
And then of course, there is doing this completely outside of Quicken and then just having it download transactions as they clear.
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Exactly. If you enable the service that is in that dialog, you aren't enabling bill pay through your financial institution like Direct Connect, you are using the third-party service.
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One more thing I will say about this is that I can understand the WHY that the new third-party service works the way it does, but don't like the RESULTS.
In the case of both Direct Connect and the old system, they were geared to "pay bills". You are responsible for setting up where to send the payment, you decide how much. And it is a push system, from your checking account to the biller.
In the case of the new third-party is clear that they started as a "bill presentment system". Unfortunately, there isn't any standard protocol to go and get the bill from every biller. So, it is clear that they are doing "web site scrapping", as in logging in as you and trying to navigate that site as you might to get the bill (and sometimes the statement). I'm sure with some biller websites this is easier than with others. And as such this explains why some might be reliable and others not.
Now once they had built up this system to try to present bills to people, it isn't too farfetched that they said that they could try the same kind of thing to actually schedule bills to be paid from that biller's website. So, this is a "pull payment" system. This is basically the same as a user going on to that site and schedule a bill to be paid, but there are fundamental differences. The first is that a human is a lot better at this. The second is I schedule to pay the bill when it is due for the full amount and then I don't have to go back to the website. People using Quicken tend to want to say "Don't schedule this month until I tell you to do it." That means that the "navigation" has to done over and over again.
Why this third-party is having problems with sending physical checks at times, I have no idea. Note that main draw of doing it the "Quick Pay" way is cost, and maybe speed. You get a certain amount of "Check Pays" for Premier and above, and then you have to pay. If you are using Deluxe or below you pay in from the start.
One thing I haven't ever seen is when someone has complained that "The check too weeks" or "The check never got there" I don't see any Moderator say "You can check on the status, by going here…" There doesn't seem to be any way to get much status out of this system.
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Thank you again.
Currently, my Q connection to my financial institution is via "Express Web Connect" Do I have an option within Q to change that back to "Direct Connect"?
Quicken user since DOS 1.1 (1983)0 -
What is your financial institution?
What is supported is entirely up to them, but is recorded in this file:
The line for your financial institution would have to have both DIRECT and PAYMENT on it.
I doubt it even has DIRECT. Most don't these days. Direct Connect is the more reliable connection method.
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