Quicken Bill Manager - Setup & Usage

My test results showed Quicken got a grade of 25%. I had four eligible accounts (American Express, Barclaycard, Discover Card and Paypal. The only account that I was able to add successfully was Barclaycard. The other three got a dialog box saying "Still Connecting:".

@AbhishekV - As you suggested, I clicked on the Update button and that resolved the issue for the Discover account. However, the American Express now shows a triangle to the left of the account. Clicking on it displays a dialog box stating that account is locked (although it is not as I logged onto the account without issue).

The Paypal account still has the clock icon to the left and clicking on it shows Additional Information Needed.

There are three main questions in my mind about using quicken bill pay:

1. Can quicken reliably get my bills paid?
2. If so, is it easier than the alternatives?
3. What happens when it fails to pay my bill correctly?

I think that bill pay first requires the Link-To-Biller feature to reliably get the billing information. Two years ago, I tried Link-To-Biller. It seemed like it would save effort and errors by updating my reminders automatically. That, in turn, would keep up the projections of my checking account balance. Good promises. I tried it. There were many problems, so I gave up. Last year, I tried again for several months. My final conclusion was that "Link To Biller feature is overall difficult to understand, error prone, buggy, and time consuming. It should be reworked into a simpler, sustainable interface."

Projecting my cash balance is essential for me in retirement. As bills get paid, the balance drops, and I need to transfer enough money into the account to avoid overdraft. The consequence of some errors are additional charges from my bank and from billers. I came very close to overdraft because of bugs in quicken. One time, I had to rush to the bank and deposit all of the cash from my wallet to cover a bill.

The alternatives to quicken bill pay are either to have creditors pull funds from my checking, or to have my bank push payments. Setting up auto-pay with my many billers has been fairly easy and extremely reliable. If they make a mistake, they are not going to charge me a fee for it. My bank has an easy and extremely reliable system for paying bills. I just need to set proper dates and amounts.

I decided that "manual link" to billers is easier and more reliable than letting quicken do it.

If you are going to work on bill pay, please clean up Link-To-Biller first.

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Here are some of the specific problems I had with Link-To-Biller:

1. I cataloged eleven specific cases where bill reminders for credit cards and utilities were wrong or missing. Many indicated "Awaiting Next Bill" in the BILLS & INCOME page.
2. Previous bills are not recognized during some time period before they are paid. So, the payment is not scheduled for the correct date and amount (amounts are zero). This may only occur when the bill link is first set up, but it distorts the spending projections.
3. Refresh Bill does not always reference the latest bill. PG&E reverted to the Dec bill, then a repeat updated to the Jan bill.
4. Bill cannot be changed, not visible in bill list. I linked Fidelity Rewards to the bill on the same day it was due. Quicken cannot get the current bill amount. The entry is not in the bill list, so I cannot unlink, edit, or delete it. The Home graph shows it, however, with the current account balance (much larger than the current bill). The bill shows in the Bills and Income page when sorted by biller name. It indicates "Awaiting next bill". There is no way to edit or delete it. Workaround: go to Home > Calendar > click on day for previous linked payment > Edit - can unlink and set the day to the next payment.
5. "Needs Attention" and "Awaiting Next BILL" are indicated in the "Bills & Income" page, but not shown on the home page. This presents risks of inaccurate reminders and projections of account balance on the Home page. It is hard to know and work around the billing errors.
6. Duplicate entries are created. It seems that one is created first by a reminder entry, and the second by the biller, and linking does not merge them. Then it gets confused about where to apply the payment. It seems that the biller needs to be entered first (with no reminder), then a new reminder added from the biller linking popup.
7. Graphic corruption on the BILLS & INCOME page makes it hard to enter and check bill reminders. Many actions including opening popups and mouse over buttons cause gross screen distortion.
8. Adding and deleting billers is obscure. The controls in the BILLS & INCOME tab disappear (part of the flaky graphics on this page. There is a "+" for add. Delete requires going into the gear icon to Manage Online Billers (later it seems to have moved to the "Enter" pull-down).
9. Linked reminders are not clearly indicated in the list. Have go down into the reminder or account info to see an indicator.
10. There were difficulties getting transactions to match with the reminders. I tried re-entering the transactions with the exact payer, date, and amount, but some still would not. The result is that the projected checking balance includes double charges.

Terms of Use dialog never loads (constantly spinning circle). Can't test if I can't agree to the terms.

Steve