Financial account reauthorizations

Snakeyes

I am so tired of doing repeated account reauthorizations on the same accounts week after week after week in QMac, even though the repeated account reauthorizations work okay! These repeated account reauthorizations started numerous months ago in my QMac. They were never done before, and I have been using QMac for a looooooong time. Just today, I had four different repeated financial account reauthorizations occur during just one download session which prompted my frustration (and this discussion).

My assumption is that these repeated financial account reauthorizations are ADDED financial account security activity, to prevent hacking financial institutions via Quicken. Am I wrong?

If I am right, my question for Quicken Support is can't you make additional Quicken software to help Quicken users show these financial institutions that Quicken is safe? In other words, Quicken would do the account reauthorizations with added security information in our Quicken vaults?

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Snakeyes,

To assist with this issue, please provide more information. Which financial institution(s) is constantly prompting you to reauthorize? Typically, the reauthorization prompt will list the exact accounts that Quicken sees needing reauthorization (see sample image below).

If you haven't already done so, I recommend that you take note of the exact account names, then go to Accounts>Hide and Show Accounts… to check for those accounts and verify if there are any duplicates of those accounts (sometimes, when reauthorizing an account, it can get added as new rather than linked to the existing account).

If the accounts are older accounts that shouldn't be trying to connect in Quicken anymore, then you can resolve the issue by making a backup of your Quicken file and deactivating the problem accounts. If the accounts are closed on the Financial Institution side, you may also want to mark them as closed in your Quicken.

If the accounts got duplicated rather than reauthorized, then you would need to backup your Quicken file, deactivate the duplicate accounts, then go to Accounts>Add Account… and follow the prompts, making sure to carefully relink the accounts to the correct names in Quicken. Once everything is connected and linked properly, you can delete the duplicate accounts.

Please let me know how it goes!

Snakeyes

I just want to understand what causes the financial accounts to ask for reauthorizations. Reading into your answer, I believe you are stating that DUPLICATE Quicken financial account logins to financial institutions cause the financial institutions to require reauthorizations for added security?  And this added security has just recently been added to the financial institutions within the last several months?

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

Reauthorization prompts are associated with financial institutions that require OAuth. OAuth is when, during the process of connecting/reconnecting your account, you are redirected to the financial institution website to authorize, then back to Quicken to connect/link the account.

It is considered an improvement to your account security because, by going through the authorization on the financial institution website, you do not share your account login credentials with Quicken. Instead, once you have authorized through the financial institution website, a token is issued to Quicken that provides authorization to access/download account info into your Quicken file. Since those tokens do periodically expire (or can be revoked through the financial institution website), if Quicken does not have a valid token, you may see a prompt to reauthorize the account.

Duplicate accounts can be a symptom of a reauthorization that didn't complete correctly. What should happen when you reauthorize is you follow the prompts, authorize through the financial institution website, then carefully re-link your accounts to the correct names in Quicken.

If instead of re-linking the accounts, they get added as new, then you end up with duplicate accounts. The newer duplicates have a valid token, but the original accounts do not, and still trigger the reauthorization prompts.

I hope this helps!

Snakeyes

Yes, thank you very much.

I was missing the 'token' part of the explanation.