What’s Going On Between Fidelity and Quicken?

@Desiree said:

None of these options worked. I removed the connections, re-added them numerous times, and ultimately contacted the Quicken help desk.

The support representative attempted a few steps but was puzzled when both the “Simple” and “Complete” tracking options were grayed out and unavailable. Seemingly, this was an issue he hadn’t seen before. That’s when I was told to contact Fidelity directly.

If both Simple and Complete tracking options are grayed out it means that the account is still connected to Fidelity Investments. This financial institution supports only Simple so the Tracking method cannot be changed and both options to do so will be grayed out.

Please clarify: After you deactivated the accounts, did you immediately try to set up the connections, again? Or did you first go to the General tab of Account Details for each account and try changing the Tracking method from Simple to Complete before you tried to set up the connections, again?

It is important to deactivate all of your Fidelity accounts first and then change the Tracking method for each of those accounts. Only after the Tracking method is changed to Complete should the new connection setups be attempted.

Also, make sure you do not try to set up the new non-401K connections with Fidelity Investments, again. If you do, you will likely be changing the Tracking method for those accounts back to Simple and will then need to repeat the steps above, again.

That email you received said we would be notified within the next 30 days of when it's time to make the switch. It is not yet 30 days since that email was received. We should be getting an update soon provided that the implementation is still on schedule.

But the bigger question is why haven't you been able to download anything from Fidelity for 4 months? Please provide some additional information:

• Which "Fidelity" have you been trying to set up for downloads? Using the wrong one for your account(s) will fail to set up and download.
• Have you seen this Announcement regarding Fidelity financial institution name changes and have you tried setting up your download connections per this Announcement?: Fidelity Account Name Changes
• What type of Fidelity account(s) do you have?
• When you try to set up the download connection or try downloading with OSU, are you getting any error messages or error codes? If so, what are they?
• On the Account Register(s) for your Fidelity account(s): Directly beneath the Account Name above the transactions register what do you see for the last download date and time as well as for the connection method? If your account(s) are connected, you should see something like what is highlighted in yellow in this picture:

Of course, instead of answering these questions and trying to get your downloads set up now you could just wait a while longer and see if the new EWC+ connection method resolves the issue for you.

In my main data files I have Fidelity set up with DC which just in the last couple of days appears to have been changed from Fidelity Investments - DC to ZZZ-Fidelity Investments - DC. As you mention the ZZZ- is a sign that DC is about to be deactivated but provided that the accounts are not deactivated they are still updating via DC. But as mentioned by @NotACPA this ZZZ-Fidelity Investments - DC financial institution does not appear in the FIDIR List which is certainly very odd.

In a test file I was able to Reset Account for one of the DC connected Fidelity accounts. The DC connection and Complete Tracking remained intact.

However, once the DC connection is deactivated it can only be set up, again, with Fidelity Investments which is now EWC+ since neither Fidelity Investments - DC nor ZZZ-Fidelity Investments - DC appear as options in Add Account. This also applies to adding new Fidelity accounts in Quicken. There is no way, that I found to be able to establish a DC connection, again.

Very disturbing to me is what you found regarding the EWC+ connection: Complete Tracking is no longer available and only Simple Tracking is available with no ability to switch back to Complete Tracking. It was my understanding that Complete Tracking is to still be available with EWC+ so either that information was inaccurate, Fidelity needs to make a correction on their end or Fidelity has changed their plan regarding this.

Whether or not Complete Tracking is available for a FI is not a bug. It is the FI that decides what they will support. There are a few investment companies that support only Simple Tracking. The first one to do this was Schwab (I believe they were the very first FI to implement EWC+) but after much uproar from their clients they soon added support for Complete Tracking, again.

That Simple Investing (Tracking) Preference setting applies to new investment accounts. There are some users who really do not want or feel they need to see Complete Tracking. All they are interested in is the high level Dashboard data. Checking that box ensures that when they add new investment accounts they will automatically be set up with Simple Tracking by default.

BTW, I seem to recall when that Preference setting was added to QWin it was thought by some Quicken folks that Simple Tracking is what most QWin users wanted to see (based upon posts here in Community and other feedback to Quicken) so it was initially checked by default. It was soon apparent that most QWin users are rather detailed folks who want Complete Tracking so that default was removed but it was kept as an optional setting.