Do I still need Quicken Bill Pay?

What happens when you want to write a check on a different financial institution such as a different bank or a brokerage account?

Paul Anders> I recently moved and changed banks. I paid bills from my old bank

I have not ever had a need to do so, and don't anticipate any future need to be worth $9.95 per month.

Paul

It depends. If you are entering the bills through the Quicken register, and Quicken connects and transfers payments to the bank, you might not be using the free eBillPay option of your bank.

So long as your bank offers integration with Quicken, there is no need for Quicken bill-pay. However, your bank may charge you for initiating payments and transaction downloads from within Quicken, as opposed to using the financial institution's website.

For example. My bank is Wachovia, and for years I have been using Quicken to initiate payments and transaction downloads. I have done this for free, since before Wachovia owned the accounts (previously, it was CoreStates and then First Union).

Awhile ago, Wachovia offered an online bill-pay service, and I have been using it to schedule some vendor payments (Wachovia has special arrangements with some vendors, and the payments are applied faster than if I initiate through Quicken). I was using both types of scheduling concurrently.

I received notification that Wachovia will now charge a fee for Online Banking access through Quicken

I can, however, still access my Wachovia account through the Wachovia website, and can download transactions from there into my Quicken software.

If your bank has a similar policy, you may need to turn off online access within Quicken, and initiate all bill payments and transaction downloads directly through your financial institutions e-bill website, in order for it to be free.

I enter transactions in the Quicken register. When I connect to pay bills, it connects to the bank's system, in a separate category than Quicken Bill Pay, and using my bank username and password.

This is as I suspected, so I will cancel Quicken Bill Pay. I wonder how you do that!

They do not charge today, whether the transactions are entered in Quicken or at their web site.

Hopefully my bank won't do that. But even Wachovia will charge you $5.95 per month, lower than Quicken Bill Pay's $9.95.

Paul

If you look at the Wachovia announcement, all of their "good" checking accounts are exempt from the charge. The charge appears to be for using Quicken at all, not just for using Bill Pay. I've searched for an additional Bill Pay charge and can't find any claim of one for personal users.

I'm in the same boat - I've used Quicken bill pay for years - and now my Wachovia account is doing it for free. So I'll be cancelling - with some regret since Quicken Bill pay is, unlike the rest of Quicken, on of the best companies I've ever dealt with in terms of support.

Did you notice the following -

• Customers who access Wachovia Online Banking directly through personal financial management software and have an active Crown Select, Crown Classic, Crown Banking, Crown Access, Crown Regular, Crown Interest, Custom Banking, Performance Banking or Command Asset Program will not be charged.

If you have any of the above types of accounts you will not be charged. It may be worth your while to look into moving to one of these accounts. In most cases you can qualify based on credit line, like a credit card or home equity line. You do not need to carry any balance at all you just need to have the credit line "available". I have a credit card and a home equity line of credit with Wachovia that I have NEVER used but it gets me a Crown Select account with no fees.

Mark