Bank of America Discontinued Importing of QFX Files - CC-885 (QMAC)
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Bank of America is still downloading QFX files to my computer — Quicken is just not reading them properly. Since these are just text files, comparing a download from 9/15 to one from today, there is no difference in the header lines for financial institution, only the individual transactions. So, why then can't Quicken just read and process ASCII text?
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Because BoA doesn’t want to pay for that anymore. Ask BoA why they still let you download a file they don’t want to let you use.
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See my previous comment
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Glad i finally found this thread. I did a chat with B of A on 10/13 and they said they still supported Web Connect. Made it sound like it was Quickens decision to change.
I too do not like the terms and conditions of Quicken One Step Update. They do not ask if they could use my data. They just said how they were going to use my data and basically I had no choice if I wanted to download from an FI. I have been a user since 1993.
I deactivated one of my BofA FI accounts and then reactivated it. When I did that, Quicken did not give me any option but WEC+. I then tried a download from BofA and got the same error message, "Quicken is currently unable to verify the financial institution information for this download. Please try again later".
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If they claim to still support it then they need to tell Intuit.
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I would not expect front line support people at a large corporation like BoA to necessarily have any idea why it no longer works or whose idea it was to pull the plug. I would not be entirely surprised if they pointed the finger at someone else just to get you off the phone since they can't do anything about it either way.
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One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. The proof in that is that someone at BofA had to tell Intuit to disable it, but they didn’t even get their website group to remove downloading of the QFX file.
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I would suggest that everyone send an email to Holly O'Neill at hollyoneill.feedback@bofa.com.
Holly reports to Brian Moynihan (the CEO of Bank of America).
Maybe if they receive enough complaints, they'll do something about it.
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The .csv alternative is cumbersome and not practical for individuals. Especially if it cannot update existing accounts. ["Note: Importing a .CSV file will always create a new account with the same name as the imported file. It is not possible to link imported transactions to an existing account."]
What users need is a download process to existing accounts that works as well as the .qfx process did. So, my question is: When will BoA switch to the EWC downloads, and when will Quicken have modified their systems to accommodate the new format.
Thanks
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Hopefully not adding confusion to this discussion but I have no issues with my BofA checking account through Quicken Connect:
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Hi Edmond, Were you previously using Web Connect from your bank and have now switched to downloading through Quicken?
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I also am a longtime Quicken user (1993) and BofA customer (1991) and I've never used the Direct Connect / Web Connect option because I don't like having my login credentials in a third-party app. As others, I've downloaded QIF and QFX files and imported them for years with no issue until this change at BofA. I'm not ready to change banks, but I will stop using my BofA credit card.
Maybe there is a glimmer of hope for BofA to change policy? Yesterday I chatted with a support agent who (a) did not blame Quicken; (b) seemed to be aware of the issue; and (c) said "I definitely understand, and you're not alone. Hopefully we can get back in sync with them soon to be able to keep allowing the options that so many of you have enjoyed."
@NanB, thank you for supplying Holly O'Neill's email address. She is next on my list to contact. Fingers crossed that some of their loyal customers will matter (we can always hope!).
My biggest fear is that if BofA succeeds with removing support for QFX file download and import, other banks will follow. Who really gains from this change? Does anyone here understand why BofA made this change?
I appreciate this forum and thank you for the insights and information.
susan
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Thank you @NanB for posting that email address. I just sent a strongly worded letter.
But Quicken is not off the hook here either. QFX is a TEXT file (actually, XML) and they could import it if they so chose. I do not see any rationale for BofA controlling what text files Quicken imports. Who cares what financial institution it comes from?? If I wanted to write a script to generate a QFX file I easily could. It is none of Quicken's business to suppress these downloads. Now if BofA stopped generating the file, that's a completely different matter… but as of now, they still generate it and thus Quicken should - must - continue to import them.
I insist on a hands-off relationship between Quicken and any of my financial accounts. I do not direct download anything, ever, and never will. I go to great lengths to prevent automated downloads of brokerage accounts (like, munging the stock symbol so it will not be found). IT IS MY ACCOUNTING SYSTEM AND I MUST HAVE FULL CONTROL OVER WHAT I PUT IN IT OR IT IS COMPLETELY WORTHLESS. How would I ever find a discrepancy if I just blindly trusted what the bank fed me? That's the entire point of account reconciliation.
Quicken, are you listening?
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@rgdeen Quicken Inc is bound by contracts, they can't just do anything they like.
A book is nothing but text, but you can't do anything you like with it. Quicken Inc pays Intuit for connection services, which in turn deals with the financial institution which tells them what services they want to provide.
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How would I ever find a discrepancy if I just blindly trusted what the bank fed me? That's the entire point of account reconciliation.
@rgdeen Exactly! If you download transactions, as most people do, then you need to do a reconciliation with a bank statement, brokerage statement, or the financial institution's website versus Quicken to make sure everything in Quicken is correct. If you import a downloaded file, that doesn't guarantee it's any more accurate or inaccurate than connecting directly to the financial institution via Quicken; in both cases, the financial institution has to create a properly formatted and accurate feed of transactions, holdings and balances, Quicken needs to properly import it, and the user needs to reconcile to make sure everything is in order. (By the way, your data already passes through some Quicken servers, even when you import a file, because that's how it handles much of its automatic Payee renaming and auto-categorization.)
Quicken does not, and has never since the advent of online banking, work with financial institutions which don't sign on to work with Quicken (actually with Intuit, Quicken's former parent and current connectivity supplier). Why? I'm sure there are a number of reasons. For example, if a financial institution is producing OFX files which are improperly-formatted in any way (deposits and withdrawals reversed, for instance), or including pending transactions as actual transactions, or any other erroneous situation, Quicken customers will complain to Quicken to fix the problem. But the problem is with the financial institution which has withheld support for Quicken. Intuit doesn't have contact names and numbers of the financial institution's IT team responsible for the OFX file — and in many cases these days, it's a third-party the bank contracts with to massage their data — so they have to start from ground zero to even figure out who to reach out to, let alone whether the other side will care to engage about fixing what's wrong. Quicken is a small company and doesn't have staff to pursue connectivity issues with thousands of financial institutions, and Intuit likely doesn't want to bother fighting upstream with financial institutions whihc have already said they won't support Quicken. You may think things should be otherwise, but I'm just explaining the reality of how this ecosystem has worked for the past 20 or more years.
It's certainly your prerogative to refuse to use the connection method your financial institution and Quicken provide, but your demand that Quicken reinvent its processes because you choose not to utilize that avenue simply won't happen.
You might want to look into whether you can download transactions as CSV files, and purchase a third-party program which can convert a CSV into a valid QFX file. Or you could do a little research on the small distinction between standard OFX and Quicken-supported QFX and decide to edit each downloaded file to insert a magic line of text which will spoof a different financial institution such that Quicken will import it. (I can't discuss those options and further here, since this is Quicken's site, and we're talking about bypassing Quicken's safeguards and procedures.)
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Let me say that you have been missing out of a convenience for many years because you didn't understand how Direct Connect works. With Direct Connect at no time does it share any information with a third party.
Direct Connect for Quicken Mac gets the username and password from the Apple security key system. Then it sends it directly to the financial institution's OFX server using the same secure connection as your web browser uses to contact a financial institution. And that also means that at the transmission of the transactions are only going be stored at the financial institution and in Quicken.
Web Connect/QFX file download is in fact the "response" part of Direct Connect. In other words, Quicken contacts the financial institution's OFX server, login and requests the transactions. What is returned is basically the same thing that is put in the QFX file.
OFX was created do solve a problem, the need for a standardized way of requesting and downloading of the transaction data. This was created by Intuit, CheckFree, and the "financial institutions".
The problem here is term "financial institutions". Whereas there are more than 40,000 financial institutions in the US alone. At its highest only about 4,200 financial institutions adopted it. And our government didn't enforce any kind of requirement to support it.
That brought on what was first called Express Web Connect (which is what Quicken Windows calls it today, but Quicken Mac has lumped both Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect + into the same term).
Since Intuit couldn't get the other financial institutions adopt Direct Connect, the first push to try to automate this was their servers logging in to the financial institution's website and downloading the QFX file. That required less of these financial institution. This is why it was called "Express" Web Connect, the "express" is in the Intuit servers doing the logging in. But even that didn't get that many that would create the QFX files, so Intuit works with each financial institution to get the transactions in some format from their website and then convert it into what Quicken can use. This is where the term "aggregator" comes from. And yes, in this case the username and password along with some time window of transaction are stored on the Intuit servers.
And it is important to note that Intuit wasn't alone in providing this kind of service. There are other aggregators. And they don't all use the same methods when talking to a given financial institution.
Express Web Connect + (which Quicken Mac still calls Quicken Connect) is different from Express Web Connect in two main ways. One is that the username and passwords are gone. You authorize your financial institution to allow Intuit to connect using an OAuth2 rotating security token. This means not only is it using the best way to log in, but it also means that your username and password is never stored anywhere outside of the financial institution, which in turn means no one can hack Intuit and get the ability to log into your accounts and do things like transfers. The second part is now at least between the "aggregator" and the financial institution they are using a standardized protocol instead of just something "aggreged upon". This protocol is called FDX.
I think you can see why the financial institutions want this; they want to get usernames and passwords off of aggregators servers, and they want a standardized protocol to deal with them. The whole industry including our government made this mess and now we have a very complicated system instead of the one that was setup for Direct Connect/OFX.
And the big names are all supporting this, as you can see from the FDX member list at this link:
So, yes this is going to be at least the major financial institutions. BofA is hardly the first financial institution to do this change over. In fact, right now you have major changing over pains from BofA (and Merrill Lynch) and Fidelity, whereas Charles Schwab, Chase, Citi and problem some more I have missed have already been changed over.
But will note that the full path of the data is:
Quicken (the program) → Quicken servers → Intuit servers → Financial institution.
Quite a few years ago Quicken Inc put its servers in between with the statement they did it to help monitor for problems.
Whereas your username and password is now not stored on any of the "in between servers" (for Express Web Connect + financial institutions, which you will be able to tell from Express Web Connect for the very fact that for Express Web Connect + you are taken to the financial institution's website to authorize it) the same can't be said of your transactions. From what has been stated Intuit keeps something like 30 or 60 days of them needed for providing the service. Whereas Quicken Inc has never stated how long they keep them. But for Quicken Inc it is known that they use the same system as "Sync to Mobile/Web" which stores them until deleted by the user, and as such I would have to assume that means that the transactions on Quicken Inc's servers (which BTW are serviced by AWS/Amazon web services) stay there basically forever.
I guess your big question is can a financial institution drop Direct Connect and still keep Web Connect?
Well, it is certainly possible, but it is of course dependent on if they think it is worth the trouble.
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Hi Chris,
Thank you for the long and very detailed explanation of the technology behind the direct connection. I do appreciate knowing what is going on in the background (I'm a technical writer and understanding why/how things work matters a lot).
You've convinced me to reconsider my long-standing method of using Quicken and my concerns about security. That said, I'll try it with an account that doesn't have a lot of activity, not my BofA accounts. Several years ago when I was still on Quicken Windows (now I'm on Quicken Mac), I did try direct connect and it ended up a mess because it created a new account rather than integrating transactions with an existing account. Maybe that was user error or a new service that wasn't quite mature yet, but either way, I've been gun-shy ever since about messing up my financial records with direct connection. Add that experience to security concerns and I've been happy to download and import manually.
Again, I really appreciate the time you put into the forum.
Thanks,
susan
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BofA did respond to my email, and I'm still in discussions with them. There apparently is some fix for the API connection method that is being worked on and possibly out by December 1st. I would still suggest sending BoA an email to the address I provided so that they know how many of us this has impacted.
Susan - - I will probably wait to see what comes of that "fix", although I would be interested in hearing how things work out for you with the method that Chris has described. I also work on a Mac and manage many accounts for clients that use BofA. I'm really nervous about making a change that will mess up years of work.
I appreciate all the helpful feedback on this forum. Has anyone ever considered having a Zoom where we could go through the process together?
Thanks,
Nancy
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Hi Nancy,
That all sounds very promising! I also sent an email yesterday to Holly O'Neill, but have not heard back yet.
Like you, I will definitely wait before making a change to how I manage my BofA accounts. As you said, too much work and history to risk messing everything up. If I experiment with a smaller, less-used account, I'll report back.
I like your idea of a Zoom or even someone recording a video to share the steps for successfully adding the direct connection to an existing account with years of transactions.
Thanks much,
susan
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Quick update: I just had a phone call from a customer service rep in response to my email. According to her, BofA is not going to reverse policy and is going to require Express Connect.
However, I asked her if the IT people had done thorough testing of Quicken transaction databases spanning several years (20-30) that had always been updated either manually or via QIF/QFX downloads and imports to ensure that switching to Express Connect worked seamlessly. That is, no new account created, no duplicate transactions, just the new ones that weren't previously imported by QIF/QFX. She is taking that request back to her manager and IT department and will get back in touch with me.
So, who knows? Maybe they are getting a lot of push back from Quicken customers and will continue to support downloads and imports, but if not, maybe we are least encouraging them to do the fullest possible testing of real use cases to reduce customer pain.
We will see.
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@RobotGrl I did want to say that when a duplicate account(s) is created that is going to be something on the Quicken side, and usually because of user error. In general, this happens because the account is already setup for downloading with a different connection method and Quicken then doesn't present the Quicken account as one that can be connected to an online account. It is best practice that before switching over to deactivate all the accounts for downloading. With that said I think there are times where Quicken will detect the switch over and do it right, but I don't think it can be counted on 100%.
But this problem is definitely on the Quicken side.
Another observation is that BofA/Merrill Lynch seems to be having far fewer problems with the changeover than Fidelity, so they certainly are doing some things better.
One feedback I would give to the people that you are talking to at BofA is "If you are going to discontinue Web Connect/QFX files then you should remove that option from your website so that it doesn't confuse people of what you are trying to support."
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Thanks @Chris_QPW that helps a little. Here's an important question. With the new method, can I download just the date range I want? I enter checks manually from my checkbook and then when importing it matches up the transactions with what I entered (mostly, occasionally it screws up, but I deal with that). I am usually several months behind putting stuff into Quicken. So if I'm working on, say, March, I don't want any "future" downloaded transactions messing up the Quicken register. I want it clean up to the point I'm working it. If DirectConnect can do that, it might be worth a try.
Note that I laboriously type in my retirement account statement every quarter because when I tried auto-download, there was a mismatch between how I do the account and how it wants to that made a horrid mess and I had to resort to backup. That soured me on ever doing auto-download for investment accounts. The bank statement at least matches well enough for QFX to work.I also sent an email to Holly yesterday, no response yet.
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First off let’s clear up a few terms. Direct Connect is the term Quicken uses for the OFX/QFX protocol. That is the one BofA is dropping in favor of Quicken Connect (in Quicken Windows this is referred to as Express Web Connect +, the term in Direct Connect is used in both Mac and Windows for the same thing.)
In both Direct Connect and Quicken Connect unfortunately you can’t specify a date range it will download all transactions up to the present date. And since you are not downloading very often there something else to be aware of. Depending upon the financial institution they might only download 90 days of transactions.
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@Chris_QPW Your explanations in this thread have been very helpful, but the complaint here has not been about BoA switching from Direct Connect to EWC+, but that they have dropped support for Web Connect so users can no longer import QFX files they download from the BoA website.
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@jacobs said:
(I can't discuss those options and further here, since this is Quicken's site, and we're talking about bypassing Quicken's safeguards and procedures.)Well I have no such compunctions. To be explicit: the QFX file is just an XML file, which could be edited with any text editor. It could be hacked to change the financial institution to something on the supported list, and then change the institution Quicken thinks is holding the account to match. Easy peasy, 15-second cut-and-paste each month before import, once you figure out the correct values. I'd try this if I had any confidence that BofA will keep the QFX download option in the long term. But I don't - I would not be surprised if they've already changed it, and they're just waiting for the code change to go through QC before going to prod.
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@Chris_QPW said:
In both Direct Connect and Quicken Connect unfortunately you can’t specify a date range it will download all transactions up to the present date. And since you are not downloading very often there something else to be aware of. Depending upon the financial institution they might only download 90 days of transactions.So… what you're saying is there's absolutely NO option to download my transactions now, because I'm more than 90 days behind. (I am indeed currently working on March). Wonderful. I might have to resort to the above after all.
Any chance of getting a date cutoff implemented, and supporting a longer time? A year would be a reasonable timeframe. (I can't get a year behind since I use it to do my taxes).
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@rgdeen When I said I couldn't discuss how to bypass Quicken's systems, it wasn't because I have some high moral ground ground to stand on, or because of loyalty to Quicken; it's simply because the moderators don't allow such discussions here, and I wanted to avoid having the posts in this thread, or the entire thread, deleted for violating the terms, defined by Quicken, for the use of this forum.
As for being able to download more than 90 days of data, that is determined by each financial institution; Quicken doesn't impose a 90-day limit. So that's something you'd want to take up with BoA support.
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Welp, I can't figure out how to change the financial institution of the account in Quicken itself. Anyone have suggestions?
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