Invesco 16503 Error

I have no clue about what's wrong with Invesco… I just wanted to note that the error code displayed doesn't always tell us much about what the actual under-the-hood problem is. A 16503 error means there's some problem in communication between Quicken and the financial institution, but there could be many different causes.

If your error persists for another day, you should use Report a Problem to send a report to Quicken, and/or call Quicken Support to get them to verify it and create a support ticket for it.

Since a similar Vanguard issue had to get resolved via a Quicken update, I wonder if that is true for Invesco, too. Coincidence or a backend issue triggered by something Quicken did that's causing a handshake issue with these companies' servers?

@AZCoder1959 First, the Vanguard issue was something Vanguard changed with their servers, not “something Quicken did that's causing a handshake issue”. The original outage was resolved — by Vanguard — without a Quicken program update. The second outage was also caused by Vanguard. Vanguard should have fixed that too, but apparently told Quicken it was going to take them a long time, so the Quicken Mac team came up with a way to work around the issue which required a change to the program.

I have no insight into what the actual problem is with connecting to Invesco, but just because it’s the same error code, it doesn’t mean it’s the same problem, nor that the solution will be the same.

@AZCoder1959 I'm sorry you took my reply that way. I was just trying to provide some insight into the Vanguard issue (to clarify that it was caused by changes in Vanguard’s end) and say that it’s not likely the same issue with Invesco even though the error code is the same. No spice! 🤣

it would be great to have an update on the status of this issue.

@AZCoder1959 Quicken rarely posts any updates on connectivity problems. If the problem is with the financial institution, they won't throw that institution under the bus; if the delay is waiting for Quicken connectivity provider Intuit to complete code changes to overcome changes made by the financial institution, Quicken won't throw Intuit under the bus. Quicken often doesn't know when one of the other parties will complete their work to fix the issue. Also, the causes of these issues are often too technical to boil down to a brief public explanation. So Quicken posts an Alert message to acknowledge that the problem is known and being worked on — by one or more parties — and there's usually no further information until one day things suddenly start working again. Frustrating for users? Yes, but that's just how these connectivity issues are handled.

it's been broken since April 9, which is a lifetime in technology years

It's been 8 days. My observation from reading many such connectivity problems on this site is that they often take 2-3 weeks to get fixed; some take even longer if the financial institution has to make programming changes on their servers. (For instance, the first Vanguard disruption last month took several weeks before Vanguard fixed the problem it had created.)

If Quicken can't convince their business partner that eight days and counting is unacceptably long to resolve a technical issue…

Unfortunately, these aren't truly "business partners"; Quicken provides no service or revenue to financial institutions. The reality is that Quicken is actually a small side issue for some financial institutions, and often their IT staffs have higher priorities. Some financial institutions may have fixed schedules for developing, testing and deploying any code fixes on their servers.

Quicken Support (who monitor these threads)

Quicken Support actually does not monitor this community forum. There are a handful of Quicken-employed moderators who can often provide help/answers with user questions or problems and pass issues on to others in the company, but they have no insight into what is happening to resolve a particular technical issue.

I firmly believe that 8 days is a lifetime in technology terms. Whether or not that is the standard for these outages is irrelevant; however, we are at a disadvantage if our financial management system relies on constant service. In my view, eight days or more is simply too long. Furthermore, it reflects poor system management to disrupt a live system (no matter who is to blame) and then not prioritize its repair.

Okay, fine. Have you taken your position to Invesco? Or are you just wanting to bash Quicken irrespective of who caused the initial problem?

True partners in business or not, that distinction is trivial. My main argument is this: whenever there's a system interface, a relationship exists in some form. When a financial organization offers a service, it should commit to providing it consistently, or address any interruptions promptly when they do occur.

Again, have you been making this point with Invesco?

– – – – –

In any case, I wasn't replying to defend Quicken, nor to justify the status quo, only to explain how these connectivity disruptions typically play out. It's not irrelevant when I say many of these connectivity problems take 2-3 weeks to get resolved — that's simply fact. Some get fixed more quickly; others take even longer. You can rail against it if you want; I was just stating that this is the reality. Go to the main Alerts page and look at how many are New, Updated, or Closed (which, in Quicken's oddball system, means the problem is not yet resolved but they closed the alert message because of a lack of ongoing/recurring user complaints.)

I wish there were a better system to insure no, or only short, disruptions between financial institutions and third-party software applications like Quicken and others. But financial institutions always prioritize their security and anti-hacker systems first, and the functionality of their website for their customers second, while maintaining connectivity with third-party systems is a much lower priority. And even with standards like OFX, programmers at financial institutions make mistakes which break connectivity. (I know of one recent outage which affected Quicken users that was caused by a coding error by the financial institution's IT team… who was then slow to implement a fix.)

As for communication from Quicken, they've tried it a number of ways over the years. For a while, they had the moderators update every Alert once a week to say they were still working on it, but that proved to be a lot of work, a lot of messages, and not particularly helpful to users. If you look at some of the Alerts currently, they have been updated with the same stock language: "We do not have an ETA at this time for a resolution for this issue, though our teams continue to work towards a solution. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience." I don't know how much that helps since, by their definition, any alert not marked as Resolved means someone somewhere is working on it (or has it in a queue to work on).