Two separate AMEX logins but Quicken gets confused

Double-A

I have an AMEX login for 3 cards where I'm the primary cardholder (and wife is secondary) and my wife has a separate AMEX login for 1 card where she is the primary cardholder (and I am secondary). [FYI: From our individual AMEX portal accounts, each of us can see our own transactions(but not our spouse's transactions) on our spouse's card(s) and of course each of us can see our own and our spouse's transactions when it comes to our own card(s).]

Until recently everything used to work fine with the 2 separate logins in the same One-Step Update session, but now Quicken now gets confused (started happening about 3 days ago). It tells me to disable the other AMEX accounts when I update the card(s) belonging to one of the two login IDs. So I deactivated both logins and set up the two sets of connections all over again, making sure to link her login to her card and my login to my 3 cards. But Quicken is still getting confused. I went through this cycle of fully deactivating and then reactivating (one AMEX login at a time), but to no avail. This seems to be a new problem. PLEASE RESOLVE. Extremely irritating.
Windows (updated to latest), Quicken Classic Premier R61.17

Double-A

BTW this issue hasn't happened with our 3 separate Schwab logins or with our 2 separate Chase logins, so it seems to be particular to AMEX and not a generalized issue when there are multiple logins at the same institution.

Boatnmaniac

So you are able to view your wife's card in your online account? If so, when you set up downloading using your AMEX online login account for your 3 accounts are you given the opportunity of also setting up downloading for your wife's account? Then you would have only 1 downloading setup for all 4 accounts. I am able to do this with 1 financial institution (Fidelity Investments) but not with another (US Bank). Maybe it will work for you?

Double-A

@Boatnmaniac, Thanks. As I mentioned in my FYI aside: "From our individual AMEX portal accounts, each of us can see our own transactions (but not our spouse's transactions) on our spouse's card(s) and of course each of us can see our own and our spouse's transactions when it comes to our own card(s)." So if I added my wife's card to my One-Step Update download, I would see only my transactions on her card but not her own transactions on that card… thus, not the complete picture. AMEX does this type of thing for some reason.

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20476860#Comment_20476860

Ah, I misread that part of your post. I thought you said that you could both see each other's transactions and account data in your own online accounts. My bad.

Have you contacted AMEX to see if there is some way that your wife's card can be linked to your online account so that her card data can be setup and downloaded using your online account login? If they can do this it will likely require them to get authorization from your wife to allow that. In a few of my online accounts with financial institutions they allow me to set up and approve 3rd party access to my account data. So maybe that is something you can explore by just logging into her online account and see if that option is listed there.

BTW, AMEX is not the only financial institution that does not allow more than one online account download setup for each Quicken data file. I'm not sure why that is but I suspect it is because their security protocols are set up to "recognize" and accept a connection with Quicken based upon the Quicken file ID and/or computer IP address whereas other financial institutions have set up their security protocols to recognize and accept Quicken OSU requests based upon individual online account logins. Just a guess from a non-technical user. Maybe someone with more tech knowledge on this can provide a better explanation. Either way, I rather doubt that there is much anything Quicken can do about it because the acceptance or rejection of the OSU request from Quicken occurs at the financial institution by the financial institution, not within Quicken. I think about all Quicken can do is to request the financial institution to change their security protocol to allow for multiple OSU connections from the same computer…..which they might have already done because so many Quicken users have complained about this issue. It might also help if you were to contact AMEX and make that request of them because the more customers who complain to and request this of them the more likely it is that they will at some point address it.

Quicken Kristina

Hello All,

To clarify, it is possible to connect two American Express accounts that use separate login credentials in Quicken. To connect the second one, you would need to use the American Express - Delegate connection option.

You can download the primary card account, which includes all transactions and balances for cards under that profile, as a single account in Quicken. However, you can’t download the secondary cards (Authorized User cards) one-by-one. Setting up both the primary card account and the secondary cardholder accounts in Quicken would result in duplicate transactions being brought in.

I hope this helps!