Creating a repeating payment

Have you looked at this:

Quicken doesn't issue payments.

Prior to the existence of the new Quicken "Bill Manager" (*), only your online billpayer (typically your bank or credit union) could "issue payments". Some of those online billpayers accept instructions from Quicken ... but most do not.

If your online billpayer accepts billpay instructions from Quicken, you can create an online billpay instruction (for a single payment or for a recurring payment) in Quicken and send that instruction to your billpayer.

If you online billpayer does not accept billpay instructions from Quicken (and you can not or will not use Bill Manager), you must setup the payment at your billpayer's web site. Those payments can also be one-time or recurring.

You can also check with the payee; many companies will allow you to setup automatic debits from your checking or credit card account. They will be responsible for making the required debit at the appropriate time.

} Bernie Cosell snipped-for-privacy@fantasyfarm.com wrote: } } >I've poked around with web searches on how to do this and I'm still a bit } >confused. Most all of the places I've found only mention how to set up a } >_reminder_. I don't want a reminder, I want quicken to actually issue an } >online payment at the appropriate time. tnx } } Have you looked at this: }

/B\

} Quicken doesn't issue payments.

Sorry to misspeak -- I do the payments via Wells Fargo.

} If your online billpayer accepts billpay instructions from Quicken, you can create an online billpay instruction (for a single ...payment or for a recurring payment) in Quicken and send that instruction ...to your billpayer.

I has done it in the past, and , indeed, right now i have one "repeating online" bill being paid every month -- I set this up in my previous version of Quicken and now I have Q2020 something like R29;.

} [ (*) If you use the new Quicken Bill Manager, you can - with limitations - schedule online payments. The payments will be made ....from your real-world payment account (typically your checking .....account). I think at this time, only one-time payments can be setup. ... Quicken has indicated they plan to improve Bill Manager capabilities.

I guess if it only does a one-time payment it's useless for my needs. Too bad that it appears that that functionality [repeating online payment] has been removed from Quicken. I'll lookat bill manager and see what it can do, but if it doesn't do repeating it isn't going to help me.

COnsider something simple [that I had done with Quicken for *years*!]: which is to have it do a "repeating online" payment of my rent every month. It was very handy since I didn't need to mess with the register or anything... the bill just magically got paid and entered into my register.

I can see, though, that those "repeating online" payments get recorded when I download transactions from W-F. I know I didn't set it up with W-F -- quicken did all the heavy lifting -- but maybe if I tried to set it up directly with W-F it might work out the same.

Gee. I wish I remembered how I got that set up back with q2016 or whatever previous version I was using.

/Bernie\

Repeating online bill payments have NOT been removed from Quicken.

But Quicken's only role in repeating online bill payments is to send the instruction to the billpayer to setup a repeating bill payment. Even if Quicken did not offer that capability (or your billpayer did not accept billpay instructions from Quicken), you could logon to your billpayer's web site ONE TIME and setup the repeating payment there.

Once the repeating bill payment has been setup with the billpayer, you need do nothing more. Each time a payment is made (and assuming you are downloading from the online payment account), your payment transaction will download.

Not sure how any magic could be involved (and as noted above, you can still do that).

The only way a payment is going to appear to be magically be entered into your register is if you have an auto-enter Reminder setup in Quicken. Quicken automatically enters auto-enter reminders that are due, each time you start Quicken.

Otherwise, as noted above, if you download from the real-world billpay account, your payment transaction will be downloaded too - and the only way a download appears to happen magically is if you have Quicken setup for Scheduled Updates.

I suppose you could tell Quicken to "automatically enter" your downloaded transactions in their appropriate registers, and think of that as transactions magically getting entered, though I've never looked at it that way.

You would be seeing the same thing if you had setup the repeating payment at your bill payer's web site.

I don't see anything like "heavy lifting" involved in setting up repeating online payments ... whether using Quicken or just the bill payer's web site.

But if you want to use Quicken to do it, you WILL need to create a Reminder (that has always been true). When you create a payment Reminder for a Quicken account activated for Online Billpay, Quicken will give you the option to "Use Online Bill Pay" for that reminder, and when you elect that option, you will get another option to "Make this a repeating online payment".

Then your next One Step Update (or Update Now) for the Quicken payment account will send the repeating online payment instruction to your bill payer ... who will create the actual repeating bill payment transaction.

That's what I do. Just set up the recurring transaction through my bank's web interface. Every month the transaction gets downloaded with all my other one off transactions.

} Repeating online bill payments have NOT been removed from Quicken. } } But Quicken's only role in repeating online bill payments is to send the instruction to the billpayer to setup a repeating ... bill payment. Even if Quicken did not offer that capability (or your ...billpayer did not accept billpay instructions from Quicken), you .. could logon to your billpayer's web site ONE TIME and setup the ... repeating payment there.

But it is a lot more convenient for me to be able to see it and edit it and such right in quicken. I've log onto my w-f site once in a while [always a pain: I have to go through entering my user/password twice, then get a 2FA, etc. I don't mind the security when I *have* to mess with it, but it was so nice just having in thje "bill and reminders"/repeating online.

AH!!! I just blundered into how to do it!

I did "Add bill reminder" and filled in the fields and... when I selected my W-F account a "online payment" box appeared. Once I checked "Make this a repeating payment.' and it was done and it appeared just-right in my "repeating online" list.

I figured out my problem: with things like checks and billpay Q defaults to the currently open account. But not with this: it defaulted to my checking account... when I changed that to W-F it all became easy.

Sorry for all the confusion I sowed....

/Bernie\

You need not have blundered: it worked just as I said earlier in this discussion:

"But if you want to use Quicken to do it, you WILL need to create a Reminder (that has always been true). When you create a payment Reminder for a Quicken account activated for Online Billpay, Quicken will give you the option to "Use Online Bill Pay" for that reminder, and when you elect that option, you will get another option to "Make this a repeating online payment".

Glad you got it working.

Thanks for reporting the solution. This may prove helpful to others now, or in the future.

Speaking of repeating payments, I want to have one made every two months on the first Wednesday of that month. If there's a way to do that, I can't find it. Can anyone help?

Setup the basic reminder as desired.

To the right of the "Due next on" date, is a blue link named "Change": click on "Change".

Select the date for the first payment in "Start date".

In the next row:

- in "How often", select "Monthly"

- in "Every", select 2

- in "months on the", select "1st"

- to the right of that selection, select "Wednesday"

If "End date" is pertinent, select your choice.

Click OK.

Thanks very much. Done.

} On Tuesday, October 27, 2020 at 12:07:46 PM UTC-5, Bernie Cosell wrote: } } > AH!!! I just blundered into how to do it! } } > I did "Add bill reminder" and filled in the fields and... when I selected } > my W-F account a "online payment" box appeared. Once I checked "Make this } > a repeating payment.' and it was done and it appeared just-right in my } > "repeating online" list. } } You need not have blundered: it worked just as I said earlier in this discussion: } } "But if you want to use Quicken to do it, you WILL need to create a Reminder (that has always been true). When you ... create a payment Reminder for a Quicken account activated for Online ...Billpay, Quicken will give you the option to "Use Online Bill Pay" for ....that reminder, and when you elect that option, you will get another ...option to "Make this a repeating online payment".

I totally agree - i was kind of an idiot and didn't notice the "account" part of setting it up. For online payments and writing checks it defaults to the current-account and I got so used to that I stopped checking. So when I did what I *thought* was the right procedure, didn't notice that it defaulted to my primary checking account [which is *NOT* online activatable] and then got lost. When I tried it more carefully and

/Bernie\

"For online payments and writing checks it defaults to the current-account ....".

That seems different from what I see.

What's your Quicken year and version? See Help > About Quicken. [I have Q2020 R26.17 and Q2020 R29.22 - both work the same ... as does Q2010 when it comes to default Reminder account selection.]

Also what steps do you take to create a Reminder?

Here's what I see.

If I start in an existing Quicken account register, right-click an existing transaction, and click "Add reminder"; The Quicken add reminder dialog always defaults to the account register I am in. In this case, the Quicken Add Reminder process already "knows" the account, payee ("Pay to"), category and amount ... so Quicken immediately displays the complete "Add Bill Reminder" dialog, which contains all those fields already filled in.

But if I start at Tools > Manage Bills & Income Reminders then click Add > Bill > Manual bill, in the Bill and Income Reminders menu row; Quicken always (ultimately) defaults to the first of my checking account names alphanumerically ... no matter what account register (if any) I may have open. In this case, at this point, Quicken does not know anything about what account to pay from, who to pay, or how much to pay ... so Quicken first opens a primitive "Add Bill Reminder" dialog that contains only one field: the "Pay to" (with a dropdown). Once you enter (key or select) the "Pay to" and click Next, Quicken opens the complete "Add Bill Reminder" dialog, with a From account that is the lowest alphanumeric checking account name.

So, if you typically use the second approach above to add a new Reminder (starting in Manage Bills & Income Reminders), you should be able to force Quicken to use your online billpay account as the default Reminder account by giving that account a name that sorts lower than any other checking account name.

Are you using some different approach?

Or do you get different results when you use either of the above two approaches?

} On Wednesday, October 28, 2020 at 3:30:10 PM UTC-5, Bernie Cosell wrote: } } "For online payments and writing checks it defaults to the current-account ....". } } That seems different from what I see. } } What's your Quicken year and version? See Help > About Quicken. [I have Q2020 R26.17 and Q2020 R29.22 - both ... work the same ... as does Q2010 when it comes to default Reminder ... account selection.] } } Also what steps do you take to create a Reminder?

What I did was go to manage bills and reminders, repeating online, add bill->manual bill. then >next< and the account shown is always my vanilla checking account and I can hit the dropdown. [which is what I didn't notice the first time.] to select the right online account

/B\

When I do that, the default account is a checking account that sorts lowest in alphanumeric order. [Tested today in Q2020 R29.22]

In my test file, that account is named "Checking". When I change the name of that account to "Z-Checking", that account is no longer the default for an online repeating bill; the next checking account in alphanumeric order (it's name starts with an "F") becomes the default account.

That "Checking"/"Z-Checking" account is not even activated for downloading.

Which leads me to this: I don't agree with Quicken's logic in this process: if the user is attempting to setup a repeating "online" payment, only accounts that are activated for online billpay should appear to be selected (and certainly NOT accounts that are not even activated for downloading).