Issue with Merrill Lynch account since reauthorization - account balance is wrong [Edited]

@jdparker225 So all these issues are not consistent, not specific to one transaction type, not consistent to one user, and not consistent with one download type. This makes the Quicken and Merrill Lynch transaction download issue very difficult to troubleshoot.

I wish Quicken the best and I hope they resolve the issues soon because this is costing me, and I'm sure everyone, time and money, and that is never good for the customer…in addition to Quicken just asked me to renew my subscription on 10/23/25, with an increase in price over 2024…

@jdparker225

Quicken Enhanced Web Connection Plus (EWC+) is generally considered more secure than Direct Connect (DC).
Direct Connect allows for direct communication between Quicken and the bank, but it stores user credentials on the bank's server, which raises security concerns.

Quicken Enhanced Web Connection Plus uses secure tokens exchanged via OAuth2, ensuring that only Quicken can generate and use these tokens, thus protecting user credentials.

Additionally, EWC+ is becoming increasingly popular among banks, indicating a shift towards more secure connection methods.

For me, I was able to reconcile my Merrill accounts in Quicken via the Merrill Lynch 10/31/25 statement tonight, albeit with some effort (1.5 hours). Three different Quicken files and 14 Merrill Lynch accounts. In some, not many today, but still adding time, I had to add memo information, verify transaction downloads and change some transactions to match the statement (Interest versus re-invested interest). Some odd things.

The easiest path for me, like every other investment account other than Merrill Lynch today, a direct Quicken download makes my life easier (Direct Connect, EWC or EWC+). Manually comparing transactions adds time, although EWC+ for Merrill Lynch is not giving me clean data like other investment banks. If I do the QFX manual file route via the Merrill Lynch web site, I have to do each account separately otherwise I get data targeted for my other two Quicken data files, but today, this is still my best downloaded Merrill Lynch data, but I also have to do the QFX download before I do an EWC+ download.

Nothing is best case scenario today for me with Quicken Merrill Lynch transaction downloads. Quicken still has work to do. I'm still surprised that Quicken would have forced the transition before fully testing all this out.

FWIW, the CC-501 errors disappeared yesterday (11/1), but as of this morning (11/2), I have not gotten the usual end-of-month transactions in 6 out of 7 Merrill accounts. Only a CMA account got transactions. The post-OSU screen shows those account updated, but with zero transactions.

I may end up grabbing my statement and adding those manually because I want to get a true net-worth balance for October. They're a small number of transactions, but gosh, entering investment transactions by hand is so last century.

I switched to the new EWC+ method in late Oct. and found that most things are working to some degree. Many of the transactions are coming in with the memo field and category field blank. Buys/Sells/Dividends/Interest transactions seem to be functioning correctly. Principal payments from Bonds are just recorded as a deposit without a category. Foreign Tax Withholdings are showing up as Withdrawals and blank memos. Since the memo field is blank, these transactions have to be compared to the Merrill Lynch statement or the Online Activity screen to properly categorize the transaction.

Unfortunately, the share balance for mortgage backed bonds (FNMA and FHLMC) are incorrect. My US Treasury Bonds and Notes are working correctly. In the past, under the previous method, when there was a Principal Payment from the mortgage backed bonds, I would enter a Remove Shares transaction reducing the share balance matching the Return of Capital (RtrnCap) for the Principal Payment and to balance against the reported share value by Merrill Lynch. More recently, under the previous method, I would only have to due the Remove Shares occasionally and only in whole share amounts. This would balance the shares and keep the bond value inline with what Merrill Lynch reported.

After switching to EWC+, the share balance reported by Merrill Lynch is the original purchased quantity (in whole number of shares), which does not match the value in Quicken, but the Market Value of the Bonds are very close to what I see at Merrill Lynch Online. If I go back to Quicken and delete all of the "Remove Shares" transactions that I manually entered, the share balance will match, but the Market Value in Quicken is significantly higher than what I see in Merrill Lynch Online.

I'm not sure what the best method to handle this discrepancy. If I leave the "Remove Shares" transactions and I just ignore the share balance for these securities, I might miss an true transaction error. If I delete all of the "Remove Shares" transactions, then my account balance will significantly over estimated.

(I'm using updated Windows version of Quicken and have been using Quicken since Microsoft stopped supporting their Money product.)

@jdparker225 This may be a total waste of time for you, but I'm throwing it out there anyway. I also was having some issues with downloads not receiving transactions that should have been there, getting a strange CC-505 from Merrill accounts, etc. I called the Premier support line and they suggested the following, and it actually worked. Your mileage may vary. They asked me to sign out of the Quicken account: Edit — Preferences… — Quicken ID & Cloud Accounts — Sign in as a different user, then to sign back in as the same user as usual. Be sure you know which email address and password you use before you sign out. They explained that this action resets the Quicken servers. I was then able to run a normal OSU, and it completed successfully. In fact, it pulled down some transactions from the past 6 months that I had deleted the first time they were downloaded because they were the monthly account fee waiver for zero dollars. I was surprised to see them again, but I just deleted them again. Everything else was current and correct. Not real confident this will work for you, but here's hoping.

@jdparker225 & @WoodCountry this is what Quicken support had me do, and although it helped with my CC-501 errors, the inconsistent transaction issues persist…

"Quicken Support did appear to help my Quicken to Merrill Lynch EWC+ connection issues today (CC-501). Interestingly, I had to log off and then back on to my Quicken account and then, although I don't use the Quicken Sync, I had to turn on the Quicken Sync, reset the Sync, download my Merrill Lynch transactions, test the success, and then turn the Sync back off. I seem to be, finally, two steps forward on the Merrill Lynch EWC+ connection success. I'll continue to test as month end produces many transactions that will need to be downloaded. We see how the transaction downloads go and the viability of the proper data and transaction account locations."

My experience (so far) with ML EWC+

I cut over my 6 accounts (2 brokerage, 4 IRA) on Oct 27. It went surprisingly smoothly. No dupes, placeholders or unmatched securities. All balances tied out. Since then, I've received every transaction posted to the accounts, about 40 total. They've included Buys, Sells, Divs, Div Adjustments, Div Reinv, Int and Transfers to/from BOA checking. All have come through as they should have. Cash, so far, is tracking as it should. I have not received any CGs, foreign txns of any type, RMD transfers or tax pmts yet, so it remains to be seen if there are any problems with those.

There are 2 positive surprises: (1) Div Reinvs are now coming in as one txn (like Fidelity does) instead of the old div/withdraw/add combo, which required manual adjustment to add the price into the add txn. This is a real time saver. (2) Interest transactions to my brokerage cash sweep positions IIAXX never downloaded. I always got a red flag, but nothing was there. They worked for the first time this month.

At one point, I was receiving Pending transactions, which was not such a bad thing with buys, sells and divs, since it kept Q exactly in synch with the ML site. That seems to have stopped, not sure yet.

Today, I ran into my first issue. I downloaded the monthly account fees. The Payee field was loaded with the memo info which was truncated, so the acct # was missing, and and the Memo field was blank. Not serious, but an error nonetheless. I submitted a Problem report.

One other thing. ML, for a long time, has not provided a cash balance on the Update Cash Balance dialog, and there is no "Cash Representation" button there as there is in Fidelity accounts. Is anyone seeing anything different?

All in all, so far so good. I will post an update with additional results when they occur.

@jdparker225 If what you say about the pending buys & sells pans out, that'll be positive surprise #3 in my book. I could swear I saw the same with non-reinvested divs, but I'm not sure. I have 1 account that trades actively and when it increases and/or decreases positions, there are multiple buys/sells over a period of several days, making it hard to keep Q in synch. The downloaded pendings help a lot in this situation. Divs too. We'll see.

@Quicken Kristina just to be clear, it wasn't "my" suggestion — I simply relayed a suggestion that Premier Support gave me. It worked for me, so I passed it along. @jdparker225's point is correct — Quicken should not have gotten itself into the situation that we have experienced by jumping into making a significant change (to the daily processing that we rely on) without performing sufficient testing to assure that it wasn't going to fail like it did. As others have stated in this thread we're paying customers and we're not getting what we're paying for: accurate, reliable, proven financial management software and services. We're still not back to the point where we were before this mess started (07/18/2025). I'm getting downloads, but I'm still not getting the memo field on any transactions, and I'm getting a new strange blue pencil on a few downloaded transactions that should actually be matching up to previously entered transactions. Even Support couldn't explain that one. Your point about Problem Reports is disappointing and concerning. Sending a Problem Report is not simple, involves a good bit of work on our part, and then it sounds like it's mostly ignored until you get a bunch of them reporting the same problem?? Does that make sense to anyone? It makes me think that submitting a PR is a waste of my time, and that I should just call Premier Support for everything going forward. At least they do try to resolve the problem - even though it's pretty clear that there isn't a direct connection between the folks in the call center and the developers working on the software.