Unable to import Target Red Card transactions via OFX, QFX, or CSV

nedguy

Now that automatically importing transactions from Target Red Card no longer works, I'm trying to import via OFX, QFX, or CSV. Looks like that doesn't work either, I'm getting the following error for OFX and QFX:

Quicken is unable to update this account because Web Connect support for your financial institution has been either temporarily, or permanently discontinued [CC-885].

When I try to import a CSV it says that CSV imports are only valid for Mint.

It's one thing for web connect not to work but Quicken blocking manual imports of transactions because the bank didn't pay them is ridiculous.

jacobs

@nedguy As you may have seen, a fellow user has reported in the other Target Red Card thread:

When you log into the new Target Circle Card account website you should check out their FAQ. It indicates that 3rd party financial software have been cutoff from accessing transactions.

If Target cut off third-party access, there's nothing Quicken can do. Financial institutions need to have a signed agreement with Intuit to allow import of transactions. You're incorrect about this being a financial issue: there's no cost to a financial institution for this. But they must agree to basic terms of service with Intuit, such as providing contact information in the event of technical problems. Target Red Card holders should flood them with complaints, as they are the only ones who can get this changed.

Boatnmaniac

There are a lot of posts about download connection issues for Target cards this month. As I understand it, Target cards are issued and managed by Target National Bank (TNB) which is owned by TD Bank (TDB). TDB made some internal system changes preventing downloads into most financial planning softwares…Quicken included. And it is quite possible that those system changes also applied to TNB.

An Alert has been posted about this but it shows a message from TNB saying the the connection issue should be resolved by 3/18 but we are now past that date so obviously things have not gone as TNB planned.:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7960843/new-3-13-25-target-national-bank-fdp-102-cc-502

jcalisher

QFX FILES ARE STILL SUPPORTED, unless it's a fluke.

The QFX file format is still imported and exported from the current version Quicken.

Financial institutions from my local Credit union, credit cards and my investment firm still export it.

• - - - - - - — —————————————-

NOTE: In general, people have referred to the "download connection issues" they seem to be referring to one-step update.

I started downloading manually from Target when I found that Target announced that they were not supporting the web connect connections.

In February or early March when we received new cards, I found that it did indeed work.

Then comes March 12 - 18 and Target's updates and it stopped working. After March 18 people started posting that the download stopped working.

In addition to not working in one-step, the downloaded QFX from the Target site also stopped working at the same time. This functionality has working since at least 2018. A week or so that functionality stopped and returns with the following message when attempting to open.

Rather than pointing finger, someone (Quicken & Target) may need to start talking with each other.

Andrew B

[Removed - Violation of Community Guidelines] This is a downloaded .qfx file, that Quicken is no longer able to import because of… reasons. Ridiculous.

Chris_QPW

It's one thing for web connect not to work but Quicken blocking manual imports of transactions because the bank didn't pay them is ridiculous.

For what it is worth Quicken Inc gets nothing from the financial institutions. It is their third-party service provider, Intuit that collects the fees. It gets them for Direct Connect and Web Connect/QFX files. It doesn't get anything for Quicken Connect/Express Web Connect/Express Web Connect +.

And people seem to forget that this is a business with contracts and legal obligations. For instance, where you might be able to get free security quotes from a given website, Quicken Inc as business can't do the same thing. Quicken Inc and Intuit don't tell us the details of the business arrangements, so its speculation on what Quicken Inc can or can't do based on the contract they have with Intuit, but my guess would certainly be that they put that into the contract. Intuit wouldn't want to give up a revenue stream.

jacobs

[Removed - Violation of Community Guidelines] This is a downloaded .qfx file, that Quicken is no longer able to import because of… reasons. Ridiculous.

@AndrewB You can belittle my reading comprehension, but I was just trying to explain to you how the Quicken ecosystem works. Importing a downloaded QFX file is part of Quicken's connected services, whether you feel that is ridiculous or not. Every QFX file contains an identifier for the financial institution, and Quicken verifies that the financial institution is a participating partner. Then the data passes through Quicken's servers for payee renaming and categorization before showing up in your Quicken data file.

Why wouldn't Quicken just import any OFX file without caring whether the financial institution is signed up with Intuit or not? I can't answer for Quicken, but I can take a guess at some of the reasons. Let's say the financial institution was producing improperly formatted QFX files: a missing field, or sometimes, just a missing character. Quicken users import the files and then have problems: missing data, duplicated data, transactions with the wrong sign (positive or negative), etc. Users notice the problems and what do they do? They complain to Quicken about error in their data file. So now, it become an issue for Quicken Support representatives fielding those calls; then it gets passed to the programmers to diagnose what's wrong. Eventually, they determine the problem is not with Quicken's code, but with the faulty QFX files. So Intuit, who handles all the connectivity for Quicken, now needs to reach out to the financial institution to tell them they are producing faulty QFX/OFX files. But with not agreement between Intuit and the financial institution, Intuit has to spend time trying to penetrate layers of management and technical support to get to the right person who is actually responsible for their data exports, and then demonstrate to them the problem with their exported files, and then hope the financial institution will (a) care, and (b) take time to fix their faulty programming. Meanwhile, Intuit can't set the financial institution code to be blocked temporarily until the problem is fixed, because the financial institution isn't using a valid code or any code in their files.

The point is: it becomes a headache and time drain for Intuit to deal with a financial institution that hasn't signed on to their terms of service, and a headache for Quicken, who is basically a bystander — with unhappy customers — for as long as it takes for this to play out.

Conversely, if financial institutions have signed on with Intuit, one key thing is they have established communications channels for when there's a problem like the one described above. And Intuit can temporarily "turn off" important from the financial institution until the underlying problem is fixed.

You can wave your hand at this and say it shouldn't work that way; I'm just saying that there are reasons for this approach, and that it's the way Quicken has always worked with importing data from financial institutions.

Chris_QPW

@jacobs Very good points. I would add that I see similar reasons for not supporting CSV formatted files (they made an exception for Mint, for very good reasons that will become apparent when I explain).

CSV standard for Comma Separated Values. So, what is missing if I want clearly to define how to import your transactions?

Basically everything. All you know is that the values are separated by commas. There are a few more rules like that it is one per line and how to escape the comma if needs to be in the field data. But nothing else.

This means that any CSV importing program has to rely on either only importing CSV file from a "known source" like the Mint format or depend on the user to be able to somehow tell the program what field are what. And of course, by supporting the Mint format they helped out a lot of people and increased their customer base at the same time.

Quicken Inc purposely pays Intuit to get their data in properly defined formats so that they don't have to do this on a customer-by-customer basis which would be true if they tried to support all financial institution's CSV formats.

SCBuckeye

Adding my two cents' worth here as well. I have been unable to import my Target MasterCard transactions either through Quicken Connect or by downloading and opening a QFX transaction list for several weeks now. Quicken needs to be more responsive to their users. Please fix this problem!

jacobs

Quicken needs to be more responsive to their users. Please fix this problem!

I understand it's frustrating, but Quicken can't fix the problem if Target Card is blocking them. All Quicken can do is report it to Intuit, their connectivity provider, to have them try to pursue the issue with the financial institution.

Quicken Kristina

Hello All,

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to report this issue, though we apologize that you are experiencing this.

We have forwarded this issue to the proper channels to have this further investigated. In the meantime, we request that you please navigate to Help > Report a problem and submit a problem report with log files attached and (if you are willing) a sanitized copy of your data file in order to contribute to the investigation.

While you will not receive a response through this submission, these reports will help our teams in further investigating the issue. The more problem reports we receive, the better.

We apologize for any inconvenience!

Thank you.    

(CBT-619)

wrb

I am getting the following error when attempting to download transactions from the Target Red Card.

"Quicken is currently unable to verify the financial institution information for this download"

I am using Quicken Web Connect, just like other credit cards.

Thanks.

DBuikes

Same issues. Still not working for target red card download

Andrew B

@jacobs Very good points. I would add that I see similar reasons for not supporting CSV formatted files (they made an exception for Mint, for very good reasons that will become apparent when I explain).

@Chris_QPW Strongly disagree. This is my program; I paid for it. If I want to type out a CSV file (which is literally just a text file) full of transactions, yes, Quicken absolutely should try to import it. Just like I could enter those transactions directly into the GUI one at a time. Or - are you suggesting that Quicken Inc. should get veto power over what I enter into my own data file?

Extend your argument to Microsoft Excel. Would you say that Microsoft should get to do a data scrub on anything you try to import into one of your own spreadsheets?

Target Inc / Whatever Bank is happy to provide me with a downloaded data file. Quicken supports the import of data files. (Or, it did until last week.) Beyond that it is none of Quicken's business.

I'm not sure why exactly you would argue what you're arguing. From over here in userland, this looks like a very transparent ploy to make sure everyone in the ecosystem is stuck paying licensing fees, forever.

jacobs

This is my program; I paid for it.

This is Quicken's program. We all paid to license it to use. They own the sandbox and get to make the rules.

If I want to type out a CSV file (which is literally just a text file) full of transactions, yes, Quicken absolutely should try to import it.

A QFX or OFX file is also just a test file, and Quicken won't import them unless the financial institution has signed one to be a participating partner with Intuit.

Just like I could enter those transactions directly into the GUI one at a time. Or - are you suggesting that Quicken Inc. should get veto power over what I enter into my own data file?

You still can… and many people do. You have control over transactions you enter manually, and Quicken has no interest in controlling that.

But CSV files from a financial institution are a different creature. Users expect to download them and have them import cleanly into Quicken. If a data field is missing, if data is in the wrong field, if the signs of transactions are reversed, if the CSV file has categories which don't exactly match Quicken's categories, if the file won't import at all because it has a missing or malformed header row or data… people will contact Quicken Support, they will be angry, and they will expect Quicken to fix it. So they made the decision they can't easily support unstructured data imports.

Extend your argument to Microsoft Excel. Would you say that Microsoft should get to do a data scrub on anything you try to import into one of your own spreadsheets?

No, because that's not a valid comparison. In Excel, you are the one who constructs the "database" (spreadsheet) however you want, and you are the one who has to troubleshoot and fix it if anything is wrong. Quicken has a complex database which could easily be messed up with a malformed data import, so they lock it down to try to prevent that from happening. (There are still financial institutions which mess up their QFX files, and yes, users yell at Quicken and expect them to gert it fixed.)

We can continue to discuss this if you want, but the reality is that this is the way Quicken has worked for many, many years, and they aren't likely to change it anytime soon.

From over here in userland, this looks like a very transparent ploy to make sure everyone in the ecosystem is stuck paying licensing fees, forever.

Except that's a false premise. There is no licensing/usage fee for financial institutions to support QFX files imported into Quicken, or Quicken Connect direct downloads. (There is, or at least used to be, a fee for Direct Connect, but that's a different matter.)

Chris_QPW

@Andrew B

Your analogy with Excel proves my point not yours. Microsoft choose to support CSV files; it didn't choose to support Lotus 1-2-3 files.

Also, even though Excel supports importing CSV files, it doesn't support importing of formulas from those files. Why not? Well for one reason there isn't any standard of how that would be done. The same goes for Quicken importing CSV files. Importing a CSV file can be done in Quicken, it is called an attachment. You can even import transactions in a CSV file as long as it is in the "Mint format". What Quicken isn't supporting is providing a way to import transaction in arbitrary format, that is Quicken Inc's decision based on what they feel is worth the cost vs reward.

Liz Renninger

I have also been unable to access and download Target Red Card transactions for at least two weeks. Target Red Card recognizes my account when I try to set it up (I reset my online account) and it sends me a 2FA text. But when I try to connect and download I get the message that Target Red Card cannot connect to Quicken's servers. They said to not contact Target Red Card financial institution as it is a Quicken issue. Hoping that Quicken can fix this so that I don't have to manually update my Red Card register.