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Quicken Bill Manager or Bill Pay

dan5

Hi I am a 30 year Quicken user, my most valuable software. I almost quit when they dropped check free or whoever did their bill pay. I tried it a year later, even switched banks 3 times to try adn find a direct connect pay bank, and finally went back to my local credit union and double entered in their bill pay and in Quicken which I hate the inefficiency of that.

After a couple of years I tried again and thought surely they must have figured it out now many years later. It's still horrible, my little credit union can pay more bills electronically by a mile than quicken. Whenever I try to set up an electronic bill it acts like it can authenticate, but then goes into a loop of fixing it and can't do it.

This is so frustrating. Has anyone figured out how to pay all their bills electronically? Is there possibly a way to pay electronically so USPS is not involved without setting up the eBill first? I can't believe such a valuable SW package could [mess] up so bad and still not have a fix 5 years later. Is there way to hook in a 3rd party electronic service like my little local credit union uses that just works so I don't have to do double entry? I would pay an unreasonable amount of money in the subscription if they could make this really work. I just don't understand why they cant when my credit union proves a much better service for free.

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Comments

mshiggins

Based on my reading posts here on the Quicken forums, the most reliable way to ensure your bills get paid and are paid on time, is to use your own bank’s payment service. Quicken Quick Pay and Check Pay continue to be far less reliable.

Chris_QPW

I don't see the reliability of these changing any time soon. It would take Quicken Inc changing vendors.

This vendor's approach is mainly "go to biller's website and schedule". Given the number of possible billers and the nonstandard websites, I think you can see the problem here. Recently they said that for some billers they will do ACH, BUT only if the other approach fails first!

My recommendation which I see several others doing is to go to the biller's websites and setup automatic payments from there. This might seem like the same thing that Quicken Bill Pay vendor is doing, but there are two fundamental differences. One is that you are a human and can understand the website and how to set it up. And the second is that once setup it goes on automatically. Whereas the Bill Pay system is submitting a request for every payment.

I can use this method to pretty much automate all my reoccurring payments. Mostly using my credit card that I get cash back from, but for some they only allow taking it directly from my checking account, so I do that for those (HOA, Utilities). I have some others like paying property tax, that I just do on their website.

I haven't used my bank's payment system except for once to try it out, but it is a viable method, I just find I like the "automatic method better".

Note that the main reason the old systems (Direct Connect, and the old Quicken payment systems) and your bank's system are more reliable is because it is a "push system". They all are scheduling the payment to be pushed from the bank to the biller, not the other way around.

Note that I have found that me setting up automatic payments at the biller's sites to be extremely reliable too. The failure of the Quicken Bill system as it exists right now isn't the "push" part of it, it is the "how do I get it scheduled" part on Non standardized websites.

dan5

For the payments that can connect to a credit card I have all those automated, and then put bill reminders in which makes the double entry more efficient, but still not as great as enter it once in Quicken and have it paid. That way its easy to manage cash flow by paying early or a day or two late as needed, or make interim payments as the balance builds. I find the ability to push very valuable to manage cash flow better in my control. With automated you cant do this without doing a check pay off cycle. I hate letting anyone connect directly to my checking account via ACH so I can easily change banks or keep someone out of my checking account if I dont want them auto withdrawing. I just wish Quicken could figure out how to make work as well as it did 5 to 10 years ago. I find it really frustrating.

Chris_QPW

Believe it or not, Quicken Inc isn't in the business of "making it work". No more than they "make downloading transactions work" like most might think.

Quicken Inc isn't big enough to handle/influence that kind of change. The pay third parties to do this.

Direct Connect is going away, Express Web Connect + (FDX in backend) is replacing it, and it seems that they purposely didn't put bill pay in that system. I suspect the financial institutions feel exactly the same way you do; they don't want anyone directly accessing their systems to pay bills.

With that gone, that only leaves a "pull system". Now the old third-party service was better at this. What they did is have you agree to them acting like you to do ACH transfers at your financial institution. And if an ACH transfer could be done, then they would do a ACH transfer to their accounts and send out a check. Because they were only dealing with your financial institution it was more reliable. But that third-party company got out of the business, and there just isn't that many that are willing to do something like this.

And there is another big difference. Long before Quicken Inc paid for the Billing part of this they contracted with the same company for "Bill Presentment" (Online Bills). One thing you might have noticed about Direct Connect/Bill Pay and the older system, you couldn't say "Pay what is due".

With Bill Presentment the system knows what is due (or the min payment) and therefore show you what it is, and with the extended service of Bill Pay, schedule that payment. So, that is the direction that this third-party service came from. And I can see why they wouldn't flip their whole system around at this point.

So, for it to get reliable there really is only two possibilities. One is a miracle happens, and all billers get a consistent system API that the third-party service starts using it. Or Quicken Inc finds another vendor that do this, which is almost as unlikely as the first possibility.

dan5

somehow my little local credit union finds a vendor inexpensive enough that they can offer free bill pay…