The Community Meet Up- May 2024 Edition
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Set Up For Success
By Janean Comfort
This month we are focusing on bill payment in Quicken. This tool helps you track and manage your bills efficiently. Quicken offers bill tracking, online bill pay (more robust in Windows), e-bills, payment scheduling, and customizable reminders and alerts. Overall, bill payment is meant to ensure your payments are made on time and you are better organized financially. There are differences in what is offered in Quicken Classic for Windows versus Quicken Classic for Mac and we will discuss those as well.
I know with summer coming up, I am busier, and having a way to pay my bills on time and accurately in Quicken makes life easier.
Paying your bills
While Quicken for Windows and Quicken for Mac both offer robust bill payment features, there are some differences in functionality and interface between the two platforms.
Let's get into Quicken Classic for Windows first and the how to use the feature Bill Manager. With Bill Manager you can pay your bills in two ways:
- Quick Pay: Send electronic payments to billers (payees) who have online accounts accessible by Quicken. This includes over 11,000 billers.
- Check Pay: Send a check to anyone in the United States with an address. The check is sent through a Quicken service, so you will no longer need to print or mail checks.
Quicken Classic for Windows also offers more advanced scheduling options. They are available for setting up one-time or recurring payments, with better integration into the overall financial planning tools.
Keep in mind that you need to have Quicken Classic Premier or Quicken Classic Business & Personal, for both bill tracking and bill payment features to be included as part of your subscription. Quicken Classic Starter and Deluxe come with bill tracking. If you’d like to add bill payment, you can either upgrade or sign up.
You also have more customizable reminders and alerts to notify you of upcoming bills, due dates, and payment statuses.
Check out our support article for more details and how to set up Bill Manager.
Moving on to Quicken Classic for Mac, you have less integration with online bill payment services compared to Windows. We offer basic bill tracking, allowing users to enter bill details, set reminders, and track payments.
When it comes to bill tracking, you are allowed to enter and track your bills in one place. Users can input details like due dates, amounts, and payees to keep an organized record of their financial obligations.
The Bill Manager integrates with users' financial accounts, and provides a comprehensive view of their cash flow and ensuring that bill payments are accounted for in their overall financial planning. Some billers support the downloading of electronic bills (e-bills) directly into Quicken. This feature allows users to view their bills without logging into multiple websites, consolidating their bill management in one place.
One aspect to consider is that users can schedule payments within the software. While Quicken Classic for Mac does not facilitate direct payments, it allows users to plan and record when they intend to make payments, ensuring they are aware of upcoming financial commitments.
Both Quicken for Windows and Mac offer reports that provide insights into users' spending patterns, upcoming bills, and cash flow. These reports help users understand their financial situation better.
This support article has more details and steps on how to set up Bill Manager.
Users who want a more robust and integrated bill management system may prefer Quicken for Windows, while those who need basic bill tracking and scheduling with a straightforward interface might find Quicken for Mac sufficient.
Question of the month
Do you use Bill Manager? How has your experience been?
Releases this past month
For the month of April we had releases R55.26 and , R56.9 for Quicken Classic for Windows. Some highlights from these releases are:
- Hidden accounts were mistakenly excluded from the Portfolio Value card on the Dashboard. Accounts will now remain included regardless of their visibility in transaction entry lists.
- You now have the option to download Pending Transactions. This will allow you to see transactions that have not yet cleared if your bank provides that information to Quicken. Go to Preferences > Pending Transactions to enable this feature for your banking and credit card accounts.
- Added an option to select and remove unmatched transactions from the Manually Match Transactions list.
- Resolved the issue where the Due In x filter in Bills & Income incorrectly reset to 14 days after being changed.
Before you install any update, we recommend you perform a One Step Update. You should also make a backup of your data file. To see all the current releases for Windows, please visit this support article.
We released 7.7 & 7.7.1 in April for Quicken Classic for Mac users. Some highlights from these releases are:
- We improved where you can more easily toggle between balance types (Today, Online, and Projected) in the Sidebar customization menu.
- Another improvement that was made was we‘ve streamlined the progress indicator in the Sidebar while updating accounts.
- A new feature that was added was the Home Dashboard can now be customized by changing the currency.
- Reports can be customized by Memo field and Reconciliation Status.
To see all the current releases for Mac, please visit this support article.
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Comments
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Your question: Do you use Bill Manager? How has your experience been? My answer is I try to use Bill Manager, but it is inconsistent and sometimes just overlooks bills. I presume this has to do somewhat with inconsistent communication with various Billers and their systems, but you could identify that and notify us if there is an inconsistency much better than it is presently done. Worst bill management I have dealt with in my 25 years using Quicken for Windows.
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Re: Bill Manager
In order to use Bill Manager you have to log into Quicken to see which bills are due. I would suggest to bring back Billminder(!!!), which was a convenient and very helpful addition to Quicken.
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I think the Bill Manager is the most important feature in Quicken. However, my experience over the years is that it has been full of bugs that were not identified and fixed by the Quicken Quality Control team. The Quicken Community is apparently in charge of Quality Control.
The most recent issue is the Bill Manager changing a bill reminder to a deposit reminder. When this happens the bill falls to the bottom of the list and is out of sight and out of mind. The only solution is to delete the deposit reminder and recenter it correctly as a bill reminder after which it is liable to be changed again by Quicken. Very frustrating.
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I get an email from Quicken, and in that email is a section titled "Explore Bill Manager in Quicken Classic" followed by "In our latest Quicken Community feature highlight, learn how to track your bills, customize upcoming bill notifications, and even schedule & pay your bills, all in Quicken." That is followed by a button labelled "Read on." I'm thinking "Ok, yeah I'd like to learn how to track my bills" so I click on "Read on" and here I am. So now what?
Anyone with two brain cells and a chance they could slam against each other can look at this page and see that it's titled "The Community Meet up - May 2024 Edition". Remember, I clicked to "learn how to track my bills." There is NOTHING TO LEARN HERE ABOUT TRACKING BILLS.
Part 1 - "Set up for success": (Incorrect capitalization of the section title.) It says "We" are focusing on bill payment to help "you" track "your" bills. Fine! Are you going to discuss setting up for success or NOT? No, you didn't. Remember, I clicked to "learn how to track my bills."
Part 2 - "Paying Your Bills": (At least the capitalization is correct.) This section discusses differences between two versions of Quicken. Are you going to discuss paying bills or NOT? Remember, I clicked to "learn how to track my bills."
Part 3 - "Question of the month": (Return to incorrect capitalization.) You sent me an email with a link to "learn how to track my bills," you tell me nothing about tracking my bills and have the audacity to ask me if I use Bill Manager. Let me ask you something . . . How did you get this job? It's not a rhetorical question.
"April statistics": (More incorrect capitalization.) I don't see any statistics. I see what looks like FAQs. What do you see? Remember, I clicked to "learn how to track my bills." I did learn something but it's not what you brought me here to learn.
This entire experience raises a serious concern for me. Should I continue to use financial software developed by a company that appears to lack quality assurance and accuracy in written correspondence?
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Question of the month
Q: Do you use Bill Manager? How has your experience been?
A: I used to use it but have abandoned it. Too many times payments were messed up and not made. This led to late payments and in some cases additional fees. If Quicken plans to continue to offer this, it needs to be bullet proof.
I like the ability to manage payments in Quicken and keep my bank accounts off other payment sites when auto pay set up at each one but for now that is what I am doing. Maybe try it again someday.
“Never stop dreaming,never stop believing,never give up,never stop trying, andnever stop learning.”
Quicken user since 19932 -
Have used Bill Manager in the past. When it works, it's pretty cool, but there were way to many times it would go askew and not show bills that are due (and result in a late payment), or there would be some sort of problem with a biller and clicking on the "Fix It" button would never actually fix it. To me it's more frustrating to use that it's worth, but if you're okay with missing or late payments then go right ahead!
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I try to get my reminders to update with the correct current bill amount with very limited success.
One good example is Amazon Store card. I have 3 files that have that same Biller. 1 shows correct amount and due date. Next shows wrong amount and due date off by one day, and 3rd shows nothing except need to fix it which never fixes it. I like the idea but even when it works, I need to go somewhere else to verify the amounts.
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I have to agree with most the other comments. It's just too unreliable to trust my bill payments to. The old system rarely had a problem but I assumed was changed for security reasons. I tried bill manager and missed 3 payments, so now I just use it to download the notice of the bill and sometimes that's not timely. I'll get the paper bill at home and quicken won't find or recognize the current bill till 3 or 4 days before it's due. I pay my bills now thru the biller's websites with auto draws. not necessarily thrilled with that approach but can't rely on Quicken. It's a great concept but too many quirks.
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Just had a few moments to read this update and comments. Allow me this suggestion if you please. I tried bill manager for monthly credit card bills. Seems to me (at least for the moment) a 'bit convoluted' for my way of thinking. Here's what I do to pay credit card bills, for what it's worth. Go to the Credit Card Websites that I frequently use. Pay my bills there. Then go to the corresponding Bank Register and log in "Future Bill Date" with correct charges in Split Categories with each and every Credit Card I use. This allows me to see every upcoming bills for the month; plus automatically displaying the accurate $ amount remaining in that month's billing accounts. This way no need to go back & forth to see when bills are paid that month; then go back to check on how much money left in account to prevent overdraft.
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