Issue with Merrill Lynch account since reauthorization - account balance is wrong [Edited]
Comments
-
More testing. I reset all of my Merrill Lynch Quicken connections in my main data file (Except my LMA Account for which is still at EWC+) and Quicken kicked the connection type from "EWC+" back to "Direct Connect". My other Quicken data files are still set at EWC+. Nothing to download today, so I'll test tomorrow, 9/3/25, when I know there are a good many transactions to download. Let's hope this works, and if it does, I suspect Quicken is still trying to resolve the EWC+ connection issues. If it does work, that will potentially eliminate my need to stop downloading Merrill Lynch transaction via Quicken all together in favor of the manual Merrill Lynch transaction downloads via the Merrill Lynch web site (QFX). If it doesn't work, I'm in for a lot of manual transition imputing.
MEL0 -
Quicken Kristina, for me at least, the issues since re-authorization have
- Never been failue to download transactions (well, maybe, sort of…)
- Never involved account types not supported
These are the issues I have seen:
- the balance is wrong in my brokerage account because most of the cash is counted twice. This occurred with the first OSU after reauthorization. My two cash "holdings" in that account were added to the the list of holdings and the combined value of the of those two holdings was not subtracted from cash. Thus the accont balance is inflated. If the two cash holdings are going to remain in the list of holdings then there is going to be needed transactions moving cash from cash to those two holdings (thus the "well, maybe, sort of…). The cash holdings in my IRAs were not added to their holdings lists so the IRAs are not affected by this issue. It is unclear to me what the intent is - include the cash "holdings" in the holdings list or not. This is the issue that drove me to start this thread.
- Interest earned in IRA accounts is now simply a deposit rather than Intinc. Interest in the brokerage account is still Intinc. (Oddly the interest payment transactions for IRAs were never downloaded prior to re-authorization. The first one after re-authorization was Intinc, the second was just Deposit. So for me, failure to download transactions was (partly) corrected by re-authorization.)
- One of my IRAs is managed by ML and they charge a monthly fee. Since re-authorization the montly fee transaction has been slightly mangled. Well, there has only been one since re-authorization and it was mangled. I am waiting for this month's transaction to be able to capture the data needed to report the problem. This is a minor problem.
- Since re-authorization every transaction involving a security (buy, sell, and dividend are the kinds of transactions I have seen since re-authorization) results in a popup asking me to match the security to one in the security list. I think I sent a problem report for this. The name of the security that I am supposed to match starts with the name of the security but then has some gobbledygook added that includes date which makes it unique for each transaction.
That's what I can remember off the top of my head. Others have posted their own, sometimes different, experiences. The common thread is that they all started with the need for re-authorization and switch from Direct Connect to EWC+.
To add a new wrinkle to this: I have been looking at the OFX log and I can find the ML transactions from before re-authorization. There are buried in that log in Quicken's variant of Open Financial Exchange format which is used for qfx files. I can't find any ML transactions in the log since re-authorization so I don't know what good sending problem reports with log files would do. Are they somewhere else? In a differenet format? Am I going crazy?
Thanks
Jim
2 -
Testing today, 9/3/25 - Big download day for my Merrill Lynch transactions. As I reset all my Quicken Merrill Lynch accounts and they all converted back from "EWC+" to "Direct Connect", things only got worse. Bad data, "Null" downloads without memo fields, trying to record investment reinvestments as stock splits, etc. Useless data downloads in most cases. With two of my data files, I needed to completely manually re-create the transactions from the Merrill Lynch web site. For my big Quicken data file, luckily, I could download each account transactions via the Merrill Lynch web site Quicken data download (QFX).
Quicken, this is beyond frustrating and time consuming. Please give me a realistic status of the efforts to make this right, or please start to compensate me for my time, testing, subscription service and possibly further action.
I'm trying to help, but I'm getting zero communication in return. I have filed internal Quicken application reports, buts it's unlikely that you can decipher what I am experiencing. You all should see it.
MEL0 -
I've been having weirdness too. Sometime dividends are reported as 'deposits' and not as 'dividends.' Sometime a dividend is report as both, resulting in duplicate transactions, and one has to be deleted. It's causing a huge headache and taking a significant amount of time to clean-up these errors and reconcile. Please help.
1 -
And the beat goes on…
To add to item 2 in my list of issues encountered above, I just noticed today that long term capital gains (CGLong) are also now deposit transactions. Unlike Brian, dividends are still dividends (so far).
1 -
Regarding the logging: it appears to me that since re-authorization and switch from Direct Connect to EWC+, the logging of the Merrill Lynch transactions went from OFX Log to Cloud Sync Log and the format is very different. In the OFX Log the transaction are in OFX format like the qfx files which I can mostly understand. In Cloud Sync Log they are in something like CSV file format but not really that. Trying to figure out how to parse the stuff. Anybody looked into that stuff and have any understanding of it?
This is case for investment accounts. The OFX Log still has transactions for my Ameriprise accounts which is on Direct Connect. The Cloud Sync Log only has transactions for Merrill Lynch. Can't find the transactions for bank accounts and credit cards.
Thanks
Jim
0 -
Tried again today to re-add EWC+ to my investment accounts, hoping that Quicken had made progress on correcting the issues. Nope - still broken. BoA RASP still showing as a deposit instead of IntInc. Existing security name still being downloaded with the Memo field in the Name field which causes Quicken to think it's a new security. Cash accounts still not reconciling correctly.
Is anyone at Quicken looking into this at all?
1 -
Hello @WoodCountry,
Thank you for sharing your experience. Some similar issues, such as securities mismatch prompts, have been reported, but I'm not seeing any open tickets that exactly match the problems you describe.
I recommend that you contact Quicken Support directly for further assistance, as they have access to tools that we can't access on the Community and they can escalate the issues as needed. The Quicken Support phone number can be found through this link here. Phone support is available from 5:00 am PT to 5:00 pm PT, Monday through Friday.
I apologize that I could not be of more assistance!
Quicken Kristina
Make sure to sign up for the email digest to see a round up of your top posts.
0 -
Kristina, I am not looking for support, I am looking for a fix. (Do others feeel the same way?) Without a fix, there is nothing "support", as I understand it, can do until the software errors are fixed. Then I might need support to straighten out the mess my accounts are in. Further, if any one of us on this thread were to call support, the best any one of us could do is provide them with a microscope's view of some small part of an elephant. My suggestion is that someone from Quicken Support (assuming that "Quicken Support" includes the engineers responsible for maintaining the product) read this thread thoroughly. If they have questions, ask them on this thread. I have sent in at least one problem report siting this thread.
2 -
I totally agree with above. Those of us on this thread are taking our time to report issues as we see them. We believe we're reporting to Quicken so someone can be assigned to research and correct the issue. But you're making it sound as if this forum is being monitored by a separate department (or company??) that doesn't even talk to the developers or support team. You're asking your paying customers to do the job that we expect you to do. Please explain how it could possibly be better for a small number of us to make separate calls to the support line rather than someone (you?) informing Support of the existence of this thread so they can take the time to read all of the reports we've made, and as jdparker225 said, they can ask their questions here and we'll respond.
1 -
Quicken Kristina @jdparker225 and @WoodCountry bingo! Many issues have been reported on this thread that are not getting fixed. There has been no communication from Quicken regarding the progress on this issue. When I reset my Quicken accounts connected to Merrill Lynch, it won't even reset to the EWC+ interface it keeps putting me back on the Direct Connect interface and then it keeps telling me to re-authorize my accounts. I've reported via the Quicken interface. I'm spending time test for a product I'm paying a yearly subscription for. The issues are all of the board. My other investment accounts that use Direct Connect, EWC and EWC+ are all functioning correctly at this time, including Bank of America, the Merrill Lynch parent company. I have not changed my investments or accounts post transition to the Merrill Lynch EWC+.
Problems happen, but this is becoming toxic for Quick.
MEL0 -
Related to a previous post made about transactions since switch to EWC+ being in the synclog in some CSV-like format rather than in OFXLOG in Open Financial Exchange (OFX) format: that CSV-like format is JSON. If you edit synclog in notepad++ with its JSON Viewer plugin and you ask it to format JSON it will display the JSON data in a more readable format, i.e., breaking up the single line JSON data into key/value pairs each on a line by itself.
So if you are of a mind to poke at that kind of stuff, have at it!
0 -
Correction: you need to pick off the JSON stuff into a separate file and format that in JSON.
0 -
OK, still learniong how to use JSON VIewer plugin. Select a line of JSON and press ctrl+Alt+Shift+M and it will format that line.
0 -
More Quicken Merrill Lynch connection transaction download testing as of 9/9/25. All my Quicken Merrill Lynch accounts have now been reauthorized back from EWC+ to Direct Connect connections by Quicken and Merrill Lynch. We'll see how my next batch of transactions look when they become available. Hopefully things are at least back to what they were…but it would be great if they could make the downloaded data even better, like my other financial institutions.
MEL0 -
9/9/25 Update: I reauthorized all ML accounts via EWC+ today, and reviewed the downloaded transactions. All security names (except cash funds, more on that later) were downloaded correctly, i.e., security names were in the Name field, and memo descriptions were in the Memo field. Since I had previously received a bunch of transactions with the memo description in the Name field I had to manually edit each of those transactions to restore the proper security name so that Quicken would agree with the reported holdings from ML.
At this point, the remaining issue is concerning the mutual funds and interest transactions that ML considers to be "Cash", but Quicken is now treating them as securities - hence the cash amount in the Quicken account doesn't balance to the ML statement. This is an old issue that I had resolved years ago, but have since forgotten how to handle that (it's a setting in Quicken somewhere), so I will call Support to walk me through that.
This is all based on one day's activity, so I'm not ready to declare mission accomplished just yet. We'll see how it goes over the next few days/weeks and through month-end.
0 -
Perhaps this is the setting you're looking for?
Preferences —>Downloaded Transactions —> Checkbox: "Never Interpret Downloaded MM Funds as Cash
Unfortunately, its a global setting, so if you're using other brokerages, it might break something there.
0 -
Thank you! In my settings the checkbox is not checked, so I interpret that to mean that Quicken should interpret MM funds as Cash. If I'm recalling correctly, there is a security level setting that is tricky to find, and once set is very difficult to un-set. I'll call Support tomorrow for more help.
0 -
@WoodCountry - Let us know what you find out. Might be a bunch of us who may need to use it.
0 -
I spoke with Quicken Premier Support. I'm not sure the rep fully understood what I was asking about, BUT, she did acknowledge that they are having problems with Merrill (and she also said BofA and Fid.) The problem report was dated 9/4/2025 and resolution is expected 9/22/2025. She sent me a link to their alert message from @Quicken Anja that is already on this thread, but for reference here it is:
The rep explained that updates would be posted there, and suggested clicking the bookmark ribbon icon under the title of the post to be notified of new posts.
To me, what the rep said is not what the post says. The post is referring to the forced cutover from Direct Connect (DC) to Express Web Connect (EWC+). The rep stated that they have a known problem with transaction downloads. She had me check Settings —→ Edit Account Details and to verify that the Tracking Method (in the box at lower left) was indicating Complete. Mine is set that way so that I get transaction detail.
In summary, my call today did not resolve (or even address) the problem that I called about.
On a side note, each time I call the rep asks if I will share my screen with them. I always say "no" out of concern for the privacy of my personal financial data. Does anyone share their screen? Am I being too protective?
Update: I tried ChatGPT. It gave very clear step-by-step instructions, but the menu choices didn't line up with current Quicken Premier menus, so it wasn't very helpful. So, I called Support back and got a different rep. Explained the question, he put me on hold for about 4 minutes, then came back and asked me to share my screen. When I said no, he said "if you don't want to share your screen, then there really isn't much I can say to help you." So I hung up.
0 -
I'm also very leery about the "share your screen" because once, when I allowed it, the support person took control of my mouse and started clicking around. I ended the session immediately.
Tell me what to do so I can give each step the smell test, and then do it myself, but I will <never> let a support person control my system.
1 -
I did not change my Quicken Merrill Lynch connection from EWC+ to Direct Connect, this was forced by Quicken when I did a reset/authorization of my Merrill Lynch accounts because it kept asking me to reauthorize. The transaction downloads, for me, as so messed up that currently, it's just easier to use the manual QFX transactiuon download via the Merrill Lynch web site or enter the transactions manually. In addition, my Merrill Lynch stock and mutual funds prices can and have been off from the actual Merrill statements, so when I reconcile my monthly statements to Quicken and they don't balance I have to check each stock and mutual fund for the correct pricing. Another frustration.
This DC to EWC+ Quicken Merrill Lynch cutover has been a disaster… My other financial connections work much better, with much better transaction download information, including Bank of America with is the parent company of Merrill Lynch. For me, given I made no changes in my core Merrill Account structure, the cutover should have at least been consistent with the previous Direct Connect data…and it was not. At a minimum, Quick should have been ahead of the issues with communication, and that has even been a disaster…
MEL0 -
You wrote:
"I did not change my Quicken Merrill Lynch connection from EWC+ to Direct Connect, this was forced by Quicken"
I assume you meant from DC to EWC+?? I'm not aware of anyone being forced back to DC.
I'm sorry this is going so poorly for you. I haven't done the cutover yet and am dreading it. And I've got the same thing going on with now Fidelity with too. I think that, unfortunately, Quicken doesn't have the depth of talent needed to keep up with all the changes and demands that are coming from financial institutions as well as the competitive pressures to earn new customers and keep the current base happy. It's too bad bc there's really not another program with the breadth of functionality it offers.
1 -
Not sure if this will be helpful to anyone, but here goes: I too was experiencing being "forced" to Direct Connect back in mid-to-late July. When I contacted support they instructed me to do the following:
- Deactivate download on each account.
- Go back to Edit Details and delete both the Financial Institution name and the Acct # in the fields near the upper right of the box. Save.,
- Then, go back to one of the accounts to Reactivate download. At one point, It was bringing up a box with a small link to "Advanced something" and I was instructed to click that. It brought up a box where I could choose EWC or DC. I chose EWC and got the box to search for Merrill.
Currently, I've noticed that I don't have to click Advanced, and it still allows me to choose EWC. Not sure why it's different, but just putting this out there for what it's worth. YMMV….
1 -
@ mrzookie Quicken forced all of my accounts back to "Direct Connect" from "EWC+" when I reset/reauthorized. That lasted for a week or so. Tonight, Quicken just forced the "Direct Connect" back to EWC+ for all of my Merrill Lynch accounts, except one separate Quicken data file. They now see my Loan Management Account (LMA) as a credit account instead of the investment account, so I had to rebuild that in Quicken, and my memo fields on downloaded transactions have disappeared again. I had to manually add the memo via the Merrill Lynch web site or use the QFX file via a manual transaction download from the Merrill Lynch web site.
This Quicken Merrill Lynch "Direct Connect" to "EWC+" is only going sideways for me and adding more work. Little to no Quicken communication makes this frustrating, time consuming and honestly, given that I've been working on this nearly a month now, a disaster. I look forward to Quicken giving me a one year credit on my subscription service given all of the testing I've done and given that Quicken hasn't performed in a manner that I paid for.
MEL0 -
Quicken forced all of my accounts back to "Direct Connect" from "EWC+" when I reset/reauthorized. That lasted for a week or so. Tonight, Quicken just forced the "Direct Connect" back to EWC+ for all of my Merrill Lynch accounts, except one separate Quicken data file. They now see my Loan Management Account (LMA) as a credit account instead of the investment account, so I had to rebuild that in Quicken, and my memo fields on downloaded transactions have disappeared again. I had to manually add the memo via the Merrill Lynch web site or use the QFX file via a manual transaction download from the Merrill Lynch web site.
This Quicken Merrill Lynch "Direct Connect" to "EWC+" is only going sideways for me and adding more work. Little to no Quicken communication makes this frustrating, time consuming and honestly, given that I've been working on this nearly a month now, a disaster. I look forward to Quicken giving me a one year credit on my subscription service given all of the testing I've done and given that Quicken hasn't performed in a manner that I paid for.
MEL0 -
More testing, more frustration. Last night (9/12/25), while working in my main Quicken data (I have 7), Quicken yet again, wanted me to reauthorize my Merrill Lynch accounts. The "EWC+" connection was working, although the data transferred was still less than perfect and required a manual effort to correct it. Yet again, Quicken reauthorized and rolled back all of my Merrill Lynch "EWC+" put everything back to a "Direct Connect". Then add, because "EWC+" categorizes accounts differently, like my Loan Management Account (LMA), I have to, in this case I didn't, rebuild the account from a Credit account (EWC+) to a brokerage account ("Direct Connect).
This morning, 9/13/25, Quicken yet again asked me to reauthorize my Merrill Lynch accounts. Yet again, the connection was pushed from "Direct Connect" back to "Express Web Connection+" (EWC+). I re-built all of the existing account connections. I then go and do another update immediately after rebuilding the connections and I get this message from Quicken: "CC-506 - Quicken is unable to update your account. This may be because the account was closed, or its nickname was changed."
When will this all end?
[Removed - Rant]
MEL0 -
I just got back from a short trip so I have not read all the latest posts on this thread (Since 9/11/2025).
I just started Quicken and that triggered an update to Version R64.25 Build 27.1.64.25. I did an OSU and see things have changed that represent signficant progress on the issues I have raised here. There are a couple of issues that I cannot verify until later this month or early October when the transactions that triggered problems recur. And I can't speak to the issues that others have raised.
First, the issue with needing to match a security to one in your security list has been solved. I had a few new dividends that I was able to accept without getting the popup asking me to match them.
Second, the brokerage account no longer includes my 2 money accounts among the holdings. However, when I went to look at that account after the OSU, I got a popup about checking the cash balance in that account at the ML website and enter the correct balance into that popup. Then I changed focus from the Quicken window to my desktop and the system crashed with some kind of kernel security issue and restarted. When I restarted Quicken, I did not get that popup again even with retrying the OSU. I did notice that there are two placeholder transactions, dated 9/14/2025 (yesterday), that reduce the number of shares of my 2 money accounts to 0. This is the first time I have ever seen a placeholder transaction that did not result from my response to a Quicken popup noting a difference in the number of shares of something between what is shown in Quicken and what is reported by the financial institution. In fact my brokerage account has a number of them for the 2 money accounts starting when they were first added to holdings and for every time money was added to them since as a result of dividends or interest. So I guess I can delete them all now that they no longer are in my holdings. My question is: What do I do to accomplish what the popup would have accomplished had I been able to do it? I did check the website and my cash balance is a lot closer than it was with the 2 money account holdings added to it but it still is a bit off and it was not off pior to this re-authorization.
Thanks
Jim1 -
Thank you for the follow-up @jdparker225,
If I'm understanding correctly, you're needing to adjust how cash is handled in the account? If that's the case, you may need to change the Money Market representation for the problem account(s). You can do this by clicking the Cash link in the problem account or by clicking the gear icon, selecting Account Details, then going to the Online Tab and clicking the “Reset Money market securities/cash options to trigger the choice of cash or security again.
Please let me know how it goes!
Quicken Kristina
Make sure to sign up for the email digest to see a round up of your top posts.
0
Categories
- All Categories
- 56 Product Ideas
- 36 Announcements
- 223 Alerts, Online Banking & Known Product Issues
- 22 Product Alerts
- 701 Welcome to the Community!
- 671 Before you Buy
- 1.2K Product Ideas
- 53.7K Quicken Classic for Windows
- 16.3K Quicken Classic for Mac
- 1K Quicken Mobile
- 813 Quicken on the Web
- 111 Quicken LifeHub