Express Web Connect doesn't pick up Bill Pay Transactions

I don't have any Express Web Connect accounts that use Online Billpay, so I can't give you useful evidence for what happens with other financial institutions.

But, first, you didn't name your credit union, so others using the same CU could chime in with their insights.

And, just to make certain: hopefully you are referring to transactions that began life as billpay "instructions" to your billpayer, but have now actually been paid ... and cleared your real-world payment account?

If that is the case, it sounds very much like your downloaded transactions are being selected and formatted by Intuit, when they screen-scrape your credit union's web site to create the OFX data to download.

Screen scraping is when a computer logs on to your real-world account as if it were you, then tries to navigate around the web site, locating, selecting, and formatting those web site transactions for downloading.

If the now-cleared used-to-be billpay transactions that are now cleared transactions, are located in a different place on the web site than cleared transactions that did not start live as billpay instructions, or are formatted differently by the financial institution than non-billpay transactions - that might confuse the screen-scraping process.

If your financial institution only recently began offering Express Web Connect downloads, Input may not have had time (or input from disgruntled users) to determine how to locate the now-paid billpay transactions.

I suggest you contact Quicken support: they know how to contact the right people at Intuit for such problems.

Thanks for your insight John. So here are the specifics:

"But, first, you didn't name your credit union, so others using the same CU could chime in with their insights."

--> Hudson Valley Credit Union, formerly the Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union

And, just to make certain: hopefully you are referring to transactions that began life as billpay "instructions" to your billpayer, but have now actually been paid ... and cleared your real-world payment account?

--> Exactly. I authorize the payment from the CU website, they cut the check, and it has cleared my account. It doesn't show up on the OSU, but the online balance has been decremented, leading to the mismatch (and subsequent need to select the transactions) when doing the reconciliation.

If that is the case, it sounds very much like your downloaded transactions are being selected and formatted by Intuit, when they screen-scrape your credit union's web site to create the OFX data to download.

Screen scraping is when a computer logs on to your real-world account as if it were you, then tries to navigate around the web site, locating, selecting, and formatting those web site transactions for downloading.

If the now-cleared used-to-be billpay transactions that are now cleared transactions, are located in a different place on the web site than cleared transactions that did not start live as billpay instructions, or are formatted differently by the financial institution than non-billpay transactions - that might confuse the screen-scraping process.

--> Yes,that's what I think too.

If your financial institution only recently began offering Express Web Connect downloads, Input may not have had time (or input from disgruntled users) to determine how to locate the now-paid billpay transactions.

I suggest you contact Quicken support: they know how to contact the right people at Intuit for such problems.

--> OK, I will do so. I will wait for this to happen the next time (I don't cut that many online checks...and I need to see if this is really for just CHECKS, or ACH Payments as well (it is the same interface on my end, but believe for formatting of them is different on the backend).

That sentence should read, "If your financial institution only recently began offering Express Web Connect downloads, INTUIT may not have had time (or input from disgruntled users) to determine how to locate the now-paid billpay transactions."

Running Quicken Premier for Windows (subscription), version R28.18.

I've had a similar problem in recent weeks. What was happening was that when I downloaded transactions via Express Web Connect (EWC) from my BOA checking account, most transactions that were marked as "Cleared" at the bank's web site, were not cleared in the Quicken register after the download (not marked with the 'c' in the Clr column). Previous to the past few weeks, this had not been a problem. I say that while acknowledging that there have always been occasional glitches with EWC, ever since I've been using it. But never anything like I saw during the past few weeks.

Best I could tell, all of the transactions that did not get cleared in Quicken when they should have been, were ones that I had entered manually into the Quicken register (e.g. bills that I paid at the BOA web site, automatic deposits, etc) prior to when I ran OSU to download them. Those transactions that I did not enter manually in Quicken before the OSU download (which is a small percentage of my transactions) did get recorded and cleared correctly.

In any case, I worked around this for the time being by manually clearing these transactions in the Quicken register after the OSU. However, as of this week, this issue seems to have been fixed. For the past several days now, all transactions that should be cleared after the OSU, have been cleared, with no manual fix-up needed afterwards.

Just offering this as a data point for other users. I don't claim to know either what caused the problem, or what (apparently) has solved it.

Not going to argue with success! Perhaps some generic fix that can help all of us that are forced to use EWC.