Bill Reminder Issues when Using Bill Manager Quick Pay

Question

Hello,

I have set up monthly Bill and Income Reminders so I can project my daily checking account balances.  I have also set up Bill Manager so I can pay all upcoming bills using either Quick Pay or Check Pay.  And, I have linked Bill Manager to my Bill Reminders.

When using Quick Pay, once the payment is processed the amount for the next Bill Reminder is changed to zero after I run One Step Update.  It is important to note that the next Bill Reminder amount does not change to zero when I set up Quick Pay.  It only changes to zero after the Quick Pay payment is processed.  Each time this happens I change the Bill Reminder back to the correct amount, and each time I run One Step Update the next upcoming Bill Reminder amount changes to zero (Bill Reminders beyond the next upcoming reminder are not changed to zero and maintain the correct amount).  This leads me to believe that once the current amount due is paid, the biller’s website shows a current balance due of $0.00.  Then when bills are updated through One Step Update, Quicken sees a $0.00 balance due on the biller’s website and changes the next upcoming bill reminder to $0.00.

In previous postings on this topic on the Quicken Community site, we have been told to uncheck “Sync to the Quicken Cloud” under One Step Update Settings.  We have also been told to disable the Mobile & Web sync option under Preferences.  I have never used Quicken’s Mobile & Web apps and the sync option has never been turned on in my settings.   So, that solution does not work for me.

I have been using Quicken for over 25 years and know the software quite well.  I hope this issue is resolved quickly.

Thanks,

Steve

Mick · Answer

I don't use bill pay but I want to link my recurring bills so that I can monitor what money I need in my checking account to pay them. For the past few weeks this has been linking different bills to incorrect accounts. Water to phone, gas to Internet, etc. [Removed-Rant/Off Topic]

shshoemaker · Answer

Thanks for your comments.  I guess I will just unlink the reminders from Bill Manager.  I don't understand why Quicken would include a feature that is obviously faulty and, apparently, has been for a while.

Chris_QPW · Answer

That is impossible (resolved quickly) since the problem has been going on since the day they introduced "Online Bills" in Quicken 2015.

It is one of the main reasons I dropped trying to use the Online Bills.

From day one what it has done is the Online Bills overrides the "next instance" with the date and amount of the bill.  So far so good.  But at the same time they disable/ignore any of the "estimate" options.  What's more for some bills they go into a "Awaiting Next Bill" state where basically Quicken isn't feed any information on the bill and it then sets it to zero!

Note what happens really depends on the biller's website.  The third party system is looking at it for the bill.  With some sites they keep your last bill up, and that system picks that up. For others once it is paid the amount goes to zero, and guess what it does!

When you think about bills the only time they are accurate is the period from when they are posted to when you pay them.  The rest of the time they are "unknown", and Quicken should instead go into "estimating", but that isn't how the system currently setup.