One step update not working for American Express card

jdparker225 · October 11

My wife and I have American Express cards. When I do one step update, I only get my card's transactions. If I go to the American Express website, I can see all transactions and when I download the qfx file, my wife's transaction are included.

Using Quicken Classic Premier for Windows, Version R64.30 Build 27.1.64.30. We've had the cards for quite some time but I only recently added them to Quicken. I say "them" but at least in some sense it looks like I only added mine. How do I fix this so I can get both my transactions and my wife's transactions through one step update.

Quicken Anja · October 11

Hello @jdparker225,

Thanks for sharing these details!

Just to confirm, are both cards under the same American Express account (for example, one primary cardholder and one authorized user), or are they two separate Amex accounts with their own logins?

If they are under the same account, could you also let us know who the primary account holder is—you or your wife? This will help determine how Quicken should be linking the transactions for both cards.

Thank you!

jdparker225 · October 11

I am not sure I know the answer to your questions. The first 10 digits of our credit cards are the same. The last 5 digits are different. We have had the cards since 1999. The bill is addressed to me. When I log onto the account, the last 5 digits of my card are shown on the web page. So I guess I am the primary account holder but I can't find anything in the account at the American Express website that acknowledges that there is another card with a different number in that account except that

the charges she has made are shown in the recent activity
there is a note that a card has recently been shipped and asks if I want to activate it. That would have to be a new card for my wife since hers expires 11/25 while mine expires 11/29. It has not arrived yet.

As I said, the qfx file does have her charges. It is just one step update data that does not.

More tid bits of info: In Quicken's account details, general tab, the account number is the last 4 digits of my card. Also, I only fairly recently created the Quicken account and we do not use American Express very much and she uses it less frequently than I do. She was forced to use it recently because her other credit card got hacked and needed to be replaced. That's when I noticed that her charges were not showing up in one step update. So I don't know how long this has been a problem. It really is the first time she has used the card since I set up the account in Quicken.

Thanks

Jim

jdparker225 · October 12

Additional details and correction:

I looked at the history and found that the earliest charge is in March of 2024. Since we do not use that card very often it is hard to say excatly when I created the Quicken account but it is likely not very long before that.

I also found that my wife's charges from May and June of 2024 are in that history and, based on how those transactions appear, it is very, very lilkely that they came from one step update. All the entries in that time frame have the same information in the memo field: "XXXX-XXXXXX-Xnnnn" with nnnn being the last 4 digits of the card - either mine or my wife's. The recent qfx downloads for my wife's transaction have much different information in the memo field from the information in the memo field for my transactions which came from one step update. The memo field of my wife's transactions have her name, last 4 digits of her credit card number and information about the store where the charge was made. The memo field for my transactions simply have "XXXXnnnn". So one step update was very, very likely working at least through May of 2024. (So the correction is: It is not the case that "It really is the first time she has used the card since I set up the account in Quicken.")

Thanks

Jim

jdparker225 · October 13

Hi @Quicken Anja. Just learned how to put someone in a post.

I hope the previous posts have provided you with the information you need. My wife will be using her American Express card again soon so there will be another opportunity to test one step update if you want me to try again and report a problem with log files. I will hold off downloading qfx file.

Thanks

Jim

jdparker225 · October 13

Updated data for @Quicken Anja

As noted above, my online account showed that a new card had been shipped but I had not received it. Well, it arrived today and, as I suspected, it was a replacement card for my wife's card which is about to expire. In activating the new card, I was forced to create a new online account for my wife. Different user id, different password.

At this point the current transactions, which were all made by my wife, show up in both online accounts .

Now what? Ideally what I want is one Quicken account that gets transactions from both cards with one step update just like it worked in June of 2024.

Thanks

Jim

Quicken Anja · October 14

Hello @jdparker225,

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you—I was out of the office. Thank you so much for all the detailed information; that’s really helpful!

From what you’ve described, it sounds like this may be an authorized user setup, where you’re the primary account holder and your wife’s card is issued under the same account. In that case, the Quicken connection should be made using the primary account’s username and password, which should download transactions from both cards into the same account register.

When you log in to the American Express website under your credentials, do you see both your and your wife’s transactions together in the same view, or do you need to switch between accounts to see them separately?

That will help confirm how the cards are linked on Amex’s end.

Thank you!

jdparker225 · October 14

@Quicken Anja,

In my account I can see transactions for both of us. The display changes a bit depending on whether I am looking at "Since Last Statement" vs. looking at some past date range such as "2025 Year to Date". In the "Since Last Statement" display my wife's initials are next to the amount of each transaction listed. In the "2025 Year to Date" display each of our names is in the "Card Member" column of each transaction with a green dot next to my name and a red dot next to hers.

In my wife's account I can only see her transactions.

Thanks

Jim

jdparker225 · October 14

@Quicken Anja,

Another thought: You might want to hold off on any further investigation to wait and see what happens when my wife makes a charge with the newly activated card. That may not be for a day or two.

,

Quicken Anja · October 14

@jdparker225 let’s definitely wait to see what happens after your wife makes a new charge with the newly activated card. Once the transaction appears on the American Express website, please try running One Step Update again and let me know the outcome.

Thanks again for keeping me updated!

jdparker225 · October 17

@Quicken Anja,

My wife made a charge on her American Express card on Oct 15, 2025 and it went non-pending at my American Express account sometime today. I tried a one step update and her charge did not download.

I submitted a probem report with logs referencing this discussion.

Thanks

Jim

jdparker225 · October 18

@Quicken Anja,

I did another one step update today (about 8:22 PM) and my wife's charge and a charge that I made a day after she made hers and was still pending yesterday came through. I am guessing that the one step update I did yesterday was after her charge went not pending on the American Express web site but before they had updated the data on the EWC server.

However, the date on her charge is Oct 17, 2025 while the date on my charge is October 16, 2025. Hers was made on Oct 15 ansd went not pending on the 17th. Mine was made on the 16th and went not pending on the 18th.

What I see in the JSON data in ther Cloud Sync Log for these transactions are:

For my transaction:
1. postedOn": "2025-10-16"
2. "txnOn": "2025-10-15"
For my wife's transaction:
1. "postedOn": "2025-10-17"
2. "txnOn": "2025-10-16"

The dates on these transactions on the American Express website are:

My transaction: Oct 16
My wife's transaction: Oct 15.

So the dates on the American Express website are correct as far as when we actually made the transactions. The dates in the one step update down load don't seem to make much sense especially the dates of my wife's transaction. The dates on the American Express website should match the dates in Quicken.

I also down loaded the qfx file from the American Express website and the dates for the two transactions in the qfx file are:

My transaction: <DTPOSTED>20251016000000.000[-7:MST]</DTPOSTED>
My Wife's transaction: <DTPOSTED>20251015000000.000[-7:MST]</DTPOSTED>

So the qfx file has the right date.

Note: I don't know what you know about another thread I started a while back related re-authorization of Merrill Lynch accounts and everyone being forced to switch from Direct Connect to EWC+, but one of the issues there is that sometimes dates are bit off since the switch to EWC+.

Since American Express connects via EWC+ it seems that EWC+ has a problem with dates.

The bottom line is that getting the transactions downloaded is a bigger deal than getting the dates right, getting the dates wrong is still not good. That needs to be fixed.

Thanks

Jim.

jdparker225 · October 19

@Quicken Anja,

I thought of another possability: it was the presence of a charge on my card that, once it had cleared, triggered the download of my wife's transaction. In the situation that drove this thread my wife made charges over a period of slightly greater than a week (9/26/2025 - 10/06/2025) and none of them were downloaded. The most recent transactions by me were a charge and payment in April. On September 29 and October 9, I downloaded qfx files to get those transactions because they were not coming in with one step update. The Oct 9 qfx file picked up charges that had been made between Oct 1 and Oct 6.

This calls for another experiment: get my wife to make another charge and have me not make a charge for enough time for her charge to get through everything to get into one step update. One interesting potential wrinkle is that the statement comes out on October 20 and I will be making a payment once the snailmail bill comes and my check goes out by snailmail. My payment may be enough to trigger the download.

Thanks

Jim

jdparker225 · October 21

@Quicken Anja,

Amost ready to close this. My wife made a charge on her card on Oct 19 and it appeared in the American Express website on that date as a pending charge. It remained pending until this morning the 21st and nothing downloaded with one step update. Sometime later in the morning or early afternoon the transaction cleared and American Express closed the billing month out with that charge in the statement. When I tried a one step update, the transaction did download but with the wrong date of Oct 20. So we have examples of transactions on my card downloading without any other activity on the account but we don't have any examples of my wife's transactions downloading without any other activity on the account. What I hope to be able to do is get my wife to do another charge and get it cleared and downloaded before my payment hits the account.

Assuming I can do that and the download works, that would just leave the date on my wife's transactions being a problem. Not as big a deal but still a problem.

Thanks

Jim

Quicken Anja · October 21

@jdparker225 Thank you for all the detailed updates and testing you’ve done—this information is incredibly helpful!

From what you’ve described, it sounds like the issue may be related to how American Express is transmitting the transaction data through to our aggregation servers. Since these types of cases often require deeper log review and sometimes coordination with our connectivity teams, I recommend reaching out to Quicken Support directly.

They have the tools necessary to collect and review your log files in real time, escalate if needed, and track the issue more closely to ensure it’s properly reported and investigated.

Thank you!

jdparker225 · October 21

@Quicken Anja,

There's a new pending transaction on my wife's card and the current payment isn't due until Nov 14 so it looks like there is plenty of time for it to clear and for me to try one step update with only that transaction in the pipe. I have never contacted Quicken Suppport before. How does that actually work? I tried the link in your post but I didn't want to go too deep.

Speculating a bit, and assuming that one step update will not work for that transaction, I suspect that with EWC, financial institutions have some kind of "bucket" (or collection of buckets) of data that needs to be sent to the Quicken server and data is put in that bucket based on some triggering activity in some account. At some point the data in the bucket is sent to the Quicken server where it is available for generating data for one step update. For my account that triggering activity does not include charges by my wife but charges by me or closing out the monthly billing cycle are included. A triggering activity somehow does result in all data being put in the bucket regardless of whether or not that data was the result of a triggering activity. Letting my mind wander a bit more, I wonder why the closing of the monthly billing cycle would be a triggering activity except to ensure that all data is picked up at the end of the month in case something got missed. If anything is added to the bucket soley because of the closing of the billing month, then doesn't that mean that something was missed? Couldn't you then use that information to detect errors before users see them? Of course that would not appear in any log that would be generated by the Quicken application. It would be something probably on the financial institution's server.

Thanks

Jim

Quicken Anja · October 22

@jdparker225 Thank you again for your continued testing and detailed observations!

Here’s another support article that provides more in-depth information about how to contact Quicken Support: How to Contact Quicken Support. It outlines all the available options—including chat (available 7 days a week from 5:00am–5:00pm PT) and phone support (Monday–Friday, 5:00am–5:00pm PT). Support can securely review your log files in real time and, if necessary, escalate your case to the proper team for further investigation.

As for your speculation—you’re definitely on the right track in thinking that there’s an underlying data aggregation process involved. With EWC connections, transaction data is transmitted through an aggregation service, and the timing of when data becomes available for download can depend on how and when the financial institution updates that information on their end. This can sometimes explain the behavior you’re seeing with your wife’s card transactions.

Please go ahead and contact Support when you have a moment—they’ll be able to gather the technical details needed to investigate this more deeply. And if you’d like, feel free to share your new findings here after the next transaction clears; it could help others following the thread as well.

Thank you again for your thoroughness and patience!

jdparker225 · October 23

@Quicken Anja,

OK, my wife's transaction did download once it cleared. So that issue is closed. It looks like my activating my wife's new card and/or creating an online account for her fixed that issue.

But the date is still wrong. The date in Quicken is 10/22/2025. The date in the American Express website is Oct, 21. The dates in the Cloud Sync Log for that transaction are:

"postedOn": "2025-10-22"
"txnOn": "2025-10-21"

In this case at least the log had the correct date in txnOn. What are those two dates supposed to mean? And which one should Quicken be putting in the date field of its transaction register? There seems to me that there are three dates of interest:

When the transaction was made between the consumer and the business
When the transaction arrived at American Express
When American Express paid the business (transaction cleared or went not pending)

As the consumer in these transactions, I care about the first one.

Thanks

Jim

Quicken Anja · October 24

@jdparker225 Thank you for the continued follow-up! I’m glad to hear that your wife’s transaction is now downloading correctly.

Regarding the dates you’re seeing in Quicken:

txnOn reflects the date the transaction actually occurred between the consumer and the merchant (what you’d consider the “purchase date”).
postedOn reflects when the transaction cleared or was processed by the financial institution.

Currently, Quicken defaults to using postedOn as the date displayed in the register. We understand that from a consumer perspective, the purchase date (txnOn) is often more relevant, especially for tracking expenses accurately. Your observations are valid, though changes to which date is displayed would need to come from updates to how transaction data is handled through the aggregation service.

At this time, there isn’t a setting available to change this default. However, if you’d like to request a setting that allows you to choose which date is displayed, you can create an idea post. This allows other users with the same or similar requests to vote, and our Development and Product teams frequently review these posts when considering improvements and new features.

Hope this helps!

jdparker225 · October 24

@Quicken Anja,

Thanks for the idea. I did that. See

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7967473/add-option-for-what-is-displayed-as-date-for-credit-card-transactions

I have a couple of other ideas I think I will added:

Add capabilty to restore selected accounts from a backup file leaving unselected accounts (mostly) as is.
Improve the UI display of placeholder transactions - it is hard to tell where one ends and the next begins thus making it too easy to make an error particulary when deleting them.

Thanks

Jim

Quicken Anja · October 25

@jdparker225 You’re very welcome—and thank you for taking the time to submit that Idea post!

You’re absolutely welcome to add as many Idea posts as you’d like for additional feature requests. The more details you include about how those improvements would help your workflow, the more helpful it’ll be for our teams and other users who may want to vote on them.

Thank you!

One step update not working for American Express card

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