Quicken Classic for Win - OL-295-A Errors at Vanguard
Answers
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This morning, I went to download all the various credit card, bank, and Vanguard data, there was a prominent window overlaying the Quicken screen acknowledging the Vanguard problem, saying it is being worked on, and providing a link with instructions already mentioned in this forum with the workaround to downloading Vanguard data. When I clicked that link that overlay went away and I did not capture it. So at least there was an official acknowledgement of the problem shown in the program.
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Some have asked, "Why this this Vanguard/Quicken Direct Connect breakage going on for weeks?" Here's my .02 from working decades in various IT operations for how things should have worked. I have no direct knowledge of Vanguard's IT operations. What I do have is decades of seeing how changes should be planned and executed - especially for financials which operate with even tighter change restrictions.
BLUF: Change control and change management seems not have been planned and executed properly for this Vanguard IT change event.
Why? With proper change control, there should have been a validated, documented and tested back-out plan to undo whatever change Vanguard IT did with the top priority being to restore downed or barely functioning services ASAP WITH ZERO to MINIMAL CUSTOMER IMPACT. Even the time window to recover services would have been required to be estimated (and tested) before the change would have been approved to implement. I'll add that for "high risk of breakage or loss" changes, the change owner would have had to document potential company financial impacts as well!IT Change Management is a ISO documented proven process to moderate change risks. From the customer's vantage, Vanguard IT has created a significant service outage for what should be a FAILED IT change by whomever is running Vanguard's IT. This is basic change control rigor 101. The "workaround" Vanguard is offering customers is manual, time consuming and not the standard level of services Vanguard / Quicken customers expect.
Vanguard's IT should have tested this change with ALL vendors on DEV/TEST systems BEFORE unleashing it into production and breaking access as we see. My gut says it is highly unlikely a Change Control Board would have approved a risky change without all the i dotted and t's crossed when risking a multi-week high impact outage which is potentially costing Vanguard clients, unwelcome eyeballs, incident tickets, help desk calls and 1000's of registered complaints that will likely require an RCA by the change owner. Something's not quite right b/c if the above had been done, this escalating thread would have never existed. Just my .02. Peace.
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Same problem here…
Vanguard and Quicken Support Teams - please fix this ASAP.This is seemingly identical to the one I had with BECU last year, that took months and months to fix.
That was lame turnaround time to fix a bug…please do better.
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Re. the workaround. I tried downloading all of my accounts at the same time. It appeared to work insofar as downloadng transactions where they belonged, etc. HOWEVER, I also noticed that the next time I ran a OSU, Vanguard had disappeared from the list of accounts to be updated. (I had expected it to still be there and throw an error as before). Editing each vanguard account continued to show it as Direct Connect which raised concerns as to what I was going to need to do once Vanguard fixed the problem, i.e. disconnect vanguard entirely, reset, etc? So, today I restored an earlier backup and ran each account one at a time using the workaround. That seems to have eliminated the problem of Vanguard disappearing from the OSU list. BTW, I also noticed that treasury note prices from yesterday's close were not updated to yesterday, but instead were incorrectly put in as todays prices.
Quicken Business & Personal Subscription, Windows 11 Pro
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Due to the possibility of "something" going sideways while using the Vanguard Workaround, I make a full backup of Quicken PRIOR to using the workaround. In the event of a hiccup of any origin/cause, I simply restore the Quicken version from my most recent backup. This is definitely a bit more work than should be needed, but provides an insurance policy against an unexpected corruption of Quicken data.
I also do this prior to making any significant change to my Quicken data—such as when adding a new account, changing mutual funds classifications, improvising the recording of a distribution from a traditional IRA brokerage account to a taxable brokerage account, etc.
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I don't understand how 2 multibillion companies and in Vanguard's case has trillions under management IT departments; can't figure out what recently happened (2 weeks not a short period of time). This was not new process which has been in error. Sure, there is a workaround but shouldn't be necessary to take extra steps.
[Merged Post]
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I hate to say it, but maybe they really don't care.
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Is there any indications of an estimated fix for this issue?
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I don't understand how 2 multibillion companies and in Vanguard's case has trillions under management IT departments; can't figure out what recently happened (2 weeks not a short period of time). T
Note that Quicken Inc. is no longer part of Intuit, and thus is not a multibillion dollar company. As a private company, they do not publish financial information, but apparently they have about 270 employees and revenues in the $10 to 50 million range.
QWin Premier subscription1 -
Not yet, but if you follow this thread/convo, I'm sure you'll see a slew of people saying it works!
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Hello Everyone,
We understand how frustrating this issue has been, and we truly appreciate your patience as we continue working with Vanguard to find a resolution. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have an estimated timeframe for a fix.
In the meantime, you can manually download your Vanguard transactions and import them into Quicken by following these steps:
- Log in to your Vanguard account.
- Go to the Activity tab.
- Click on Download Center.
- Locate the Quicken data download option.
- Choose a date range for your transactions. We recommend selecting Custom and setting the start date to 7 days before your last successful download.
- Download the .QFX file and open it in Quicken to import your transactions.
Once imported, please review your transactions in Quicken to ensure there are no duplicates.
We know this isn’t an ideal solution, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience. Please know that we’re actively working to get this resolved as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding!
(Ticket #11601449 / CTP-12250)
-Quicken Jasmine
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Vanguard has taken ownership of this issue, a necessary first step.
As it's a problem on Vanguard's end, how is Quicken involved in the resolution? Does Quicken's involvement indicate that Quicken was a participant in whatever caused this service disruption?
Just trying to see where the fault actually falls?
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@Quicken Jasmine Thanks for posting the workaround once again.
Is the official recommendation to download one Vanguard account at a time, or is it safe to select several accounts and download all at once with the expectation that the transactions will end up in the correct accounts in Quicken?
Does it matter which account is selected in Quicken when you download via Web Connect?
After downloading, should users go to File > import to import the data, or can they (double?) click on the downloaded file to initiate the import? Or maybe they should they initiate the download from the Online Center, as the Help says?
After downloading by Web connect, will users be able to seamlessly switch back to Direct Connect when it is available again, or is there a risk of duplicate transactions when we switch back?
These questions have all come up in the discussion above, and I have not seen any definitive answers. Given the number of users affected and the risk of transactions being duplicated or ending up in the wrong account, I think it is important to provide this information.
Update based on testing with my data. YMMV. I still want a response from Quicken.
I went to Tools > Online Center, selected Vanguard as the financial institution, and clicked on Update/Send. This attempted a One step update, which failed as expected. It then displayed the message "Some accounts are set up for Web Connect … Continue?" and I chose Yes. This opened my browser and went to Vanguard.com, where I logged in. I navigated to the Activity page, where it displayed all the accounts that I normally see and download transactions for. Accounts that you have hidden in your customized view on the Vanguard website are not shown. I selected all 5 accounts in the list.
This is probably the same as logging in to the Vanguard directly, as shown in @Quicken Jasmine s list. I will try that next time.
Make sure the account numbers in this list match the account numbers in the Account Details for your Vanguard accounts in Quicken. One of mine did not match and I had to correct it before it would download that account. If you go through the linking process and guess wrong here, you will probably end up with transactions in the wrong Quicken accounts.
Be sure to select the rather confusingly named "Quicken: all funds in a single account" option in Step 1. Until very recently, there was an additional Quicken option the would put each security in its own account in Quicken. I think very few users have things set up that way and that option was even more confusing, which is probably why they removed it.
To avoid duplicate transactions, I selected a custom date range from 2/21, when the Direct Connect failed, to today.
Click on Download and after you confirm the name and location for downloaded file, the QFX file will be sent to your computer. I clicked once on the downloaded file and almost immediately the transactions were sent to the correct accounts. There is no confirmation that the import is complete and if you click twice you may get an error message that is displayed behind the active browser window.. The transactions matched to the transactions I had entered manually and I accepted them, just like after a One Step Update.
On the Online Services tab for these accounts, the connection method still shows as Direct Connect, so hopefully when that starts working again I will not have to re-connect. There is a chance, however, that it may download duplicate transactions.
QWin Premier subscription0 -
Thanks for asking these questions. I have reached out to my team for more information!
-Quicken Jasmine
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I have the same investment in three of my Vanguard accounts, and when I try the manual solution, it assigns transactions to the wrong account, and then I cannot fix it without jumping through hoops. Fix the Direct Connect!
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Fidelity is an excellent company. I have accounts with them too. Just saying.
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What is really sad about this is that even when it works, it works poorly since LT and ST gains are miscategorized as div reinvestements.
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7958448/incorrect-category-for-investment-transactions
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@Jim_Harman et al. Partial answers and certainly unofficial
Is the official recommendation to download one Vanguard account at a time, or is it safe to select several accounts and download all at once with the expectation that the transactions will end up in the correct accounts in Quicken?
I was able to download for a collection of 7 accounts with one QFX file. I had to rematch two of those accounts since the account number I had in Quicken was different than the QFX download was using. That issue ties back to moving the accounts from Vanguard's MF platform to the Brokerage Services platform.
Does it matter which account is selected in Quicken when you download via Web Connect?
I'm not sure what that question is asking. I took the importing route via File / Import Files / browse to the QFX file. Quicken then asked me (for two of the accounts) if Quicken should create a new file or did I want to link to an existing file. As I indicated above, for those two accounts, I successfully linked to the correct file.
After downloading, should users go to File > import to import the data, or can they (double?) click on the downloaded file to initiate the import? Or maybe they should they initiate the download from the Online Center, as the Help says?
As just noted, I used the File > Import process successfully.
After downloading by Web connect, will users be able to seamlessly switch back to Direct Connect when it is available again, or is there a risk of duplicate transactions when we switch back?
Can't answer that. Of partial concern in that direction from my side is that in the case of those two files - Under Direct Connect an account was Identified as account '1234'; for the QFX file, that account is now using account number '5678'. That may create a problem if Vanguard restores the Direct Connect download process.
I'll also add that on the Vanguard site, I was working from a page that allows you to a) select the date range (I selected one month) and b) select the accounts (I selected 7 even though only four had transactions in the last month). Those selections may have minimized the possibility of getting duplicate transactions. I had no duplicate transactions. All but one transaction matched existing transactions in my Quicken file, likely because I had already manually entered all the transactions. But also to that point, I do not have Quicken automatically entering downloaded transactions; I prefer to control the process myself. That, too, cuts the risk of duplicate transactions slipping in.
After a debate with myself, I decided to restore the backup made prior to the QFX import. It was easy enough to do the QFX import that I am not concerned about going that route again, if need be. These are not accounts that get actively traded. I am hopeful that by not introducing the QFX into the mix, the restoration of Direct Connect service at Vanguard will be as seamless as possible.
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@q_lurker thanks for that info, it is basically the same as I got by using the Online Center. My account number mismatch was because one account still had a number beginning with 40V, from the old Pershing brokerage platform.
QWin Premier subscription0 -
Did either of you ( @Jim_Harman, @q_lurker ) happen to notice if Vanguard disappeared from your OSU list? Could be something amiss in my file, but strange that doing one account at a time did not cause Vanguard to disappear from the OSU list, while multiple accounts did.
Quicken Business & Personal Subscription, Windows 11 Pro
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@Bob_L I did not lose Vanguard from the OSU list either. It is still present and checked, and when I did the Update/Send in the Online Center after fixing the outdated account number, it tried again the do an OSU with Vanguard.
I have not reset or deactivated any of my Vanguard accounts.
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Thx guys. Strange would just affect me. I did it twice and same thing both times! I'm staying with one at a time to be safe.
Quicken Business & Personal Subscription, Windows 11 Pro
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I agree. And will add all this assumes that Vanguard cared. Perhaps they don't value this subset of their client base. If they did, would this not have resulted in a24/7 "all hands on deck" approach to get it resolved? I have no idea what they are doing now, but it doesn't feel like they have a sense of urgency.
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We're probably a small subset of their overall clients so they may not care but I'm sure there are some people working on the problem. They can't be happy that a change to their software broke something. Whenever it does get fixed, they're not going to implement it without making sure they don't break something else that's even more important than 3rd party access.
If they eventually decide to let go of us Quicken users. We'll have to move to a brokerage that wants us. We'll have to keep doing that until we run out of options. By then, we'll have our AI assistant collect and aggregate all of our financial data (I'd guess that could happen within 5 years).
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Has anyone noticed the "Aggregation service security" section on Vanguard's Profile / Settings screen? The description says "Add your Vanguard accounts to a third-party aggregation service". Clicking on it brings you to a very plain page devoid of any VG branding, content etc. Just a plain white screen saying Vanguard doesn't provide this service/ability. Is this new??
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For many of my VG accounts / transactions, it has been that way for years, even with One Step Update.
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One at a time has worked perfectly for me since all this started. I simply choose the One Month option. Only the new, unprocessed transactions show up — I never have had a duplicate.
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I for one am hoping this will be fixed shortly enough so that I do not have to deal with transactions manually. We've been warned to be on the guard for duplicates. On the other hand, it might be that only those transactions that occur after they fix the issue will be pulled in via OSU. We'll see. Should be interesting.
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This Vanguard statement regarding aggregation applies to softwares that use aggregators to get our financial data. So, this would apply to QMac's implementation of EWC+ (i.e., Quicken Connect in QMac). It refers to the process in which we get pushed by Quicken to the financial institution's website where we log in and authorize (or reauthorize) the financial institution to download our financial data to Intuit/Quicken (Intuit is Quicken's aggregator). The financial institution then issues that security token to Intuit which Intuit uses to download data. Quicken will also then be included in the 3rd party aggregator list.
But this does not apply to this OL-295-A downloading issue from Vanguard because the EWC+ connection method is not used. It uses the DC connection method which connects directly with the financial institution and does not use aggregation nor aggregators. So, for our DC connected accounts, Intuit/Quicken will never be listed there.
Quicken Classic Premier (US) Subscription: R61.20 on Windows 11 Home
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