sequence of events for online billpay

To initiate an online bill payment from Quicken (only possible when your financial institution accepts billpay instructions from Quicken):

First, you create, then Send, an instruction to the billpaying financial institution to make the bill payment. The sent instruction contains all the necessary information for the billpayer to make that payment. [The equivalent of you keying that instruction at your billpayer's web site.] In the Quicken update that sends this instruction to the billpayer, the Quicken Send instruction (in your Quicken account register) is often given a check#. See below.

Secondly, sometime later, (during a One Step Update, or an Update Now) the billpayer returns a confirmation of that billpay instruction you sent (I can't say for certain that this is required: I know I get a confirmation from BofA. These confirmations appear in the "Downloaded Transactions" window and just above the downloaded confirmation transactions it says, "Accept payments created outside of Quicken into register"). That downloaded confirmation should "match" the sent billpay instruction in your Quicken register. [I believe you should see the confirmation, even if you created the billpay instruction at your billpayer's web site - if you have Online Billpay enabled for the corresponding Quicken account (and the billpayer sends confirmations).]

Finally (just as when you create the billpay instruction at the billpayer's web site) when the billpay instruction indicates (taking into account the lead time), the billpayer pays the bill.

When the paid bill clears the billpayer, you should receive the paid (cleared) transaction in the subsequent download from the billpayer.

Here's a snippet of the contents of the OFXlog following the Sending of a billpay instruction from Quicken (with sensitive information replaced). What is displayed below was returned by the billpayer, in response to a Sent payment instruction, in the same One Step Update/Update Now in which the billpay instruction was sent (that is: the response here is NOT a "confirmation" transaction).

I don't understand what you mean here.

If your bills are not getting paid, you should be going to the billpayer's web site and looking for their corresponding billpay instruction. If they received the instruction you sent from Quicken, they should have used that instruction to create one of their own instructions ... pretty much the same as if you had keyed the instruction at their web site in the first place.

If they did not receive the instruction from Quicken, you would have to check the OFXlog that should have contained that instruction. Noting whether the instruction was sent; and, if so, was there an immediate response (a response in the same OSU/Update Now) from the billpayer.

Before pushing, I think you will want to insure that the billpay instructions were sent from Quicken, and received by the billpayer. See above. Note: it's much easier to find things in the OFXlog if you Save it to a .TXT file while in Quicken. Help > Log Files > OFXlog > Save as. Then you can examine the OFXlog in any program that can open .TXT files.

If you can't find the old sent instructions in your OFXlog, trying planning on capturing the OFXlog for the next online billpay instruction you send.

To make it simpler to diagnose the situation:

- rename your existing OFXlog just before you send the next billpay instruction

- plan to limit your Quicken session to nothing but creating and sending a billpay instruction

- immediately following the sending of the billpay instruction; open the OFXlog (Help > Log Files) and Save it to a .TXT file

- you can then open the ofxlog .TXT file in anything like Notepad or Word.

Doing the first two steps will insure that you have the least amount of data in the resulting OFXlog, which should make it easier to find the info you need.

I should have included: your OFXlog file is located in the same folder as your Quicken data file (the .QDF file).

If your Quicken data file is named QDATA.QDF, your OFXlog file will be named QDATAOFXLOG.DAT.

You can just use Windows Explorer to rename that ofxlog .DAT file (to any name you choose, though I would retain the .DAT extension).

You can't easily examine that .DAT file outside of Quicken (the contents of that file is what you see in Quicken when you go to Help > Log Files > OFXLog), so when you have the OFXlog file open in Quicken, you should probably use the "Save as" button to create a .TXT file of its data.

} On Monday, February 8, 2021 at 10:50:03 AM UTC-6, Bernie Cosell wrote: } > I'm not exactly sure which agents do what with an online billpay. } > Generally, I open the online center for the appropriate account and enter } > the payment. THEN I do an update. Is that Quicken talking to something } > in quicken-land or to the bank in question? When I get a confirmation [and } > a check #] for a transaction, so that imply that the actions are entirely } > in the bank's hands. And am I correct that that's the same } > bank-paying-a-bill-for-you mechanism as when you log into the bank's site } > and enter the check via their online billpay? } } To initiate an online bill payment from Quicken (only possible when your financial institution accepts billpay instructions from Quicken):

That's what I expected would happen. What I see in the online-update status is that its status changes to "scheduled for delivery...] and the register entry has a check number.

Thanks for the info! /b\

I believe that demonstrates that the billpayer received the payment instruction you sent them (I get the same thing ... and my bills always get paid as "scheduled").

Until you work out the problem with the billpayer: To be absolutely certain the billpayer has treated the payment appropriately at their end, you should logon to their web site and verify that the payment is scheduled there. And make a permanent record of what you find.

If they later claim that Quicken is the culprit in their failure to pay a bill, you should have the evidence you need to refute their claim.

} > What I see in the online-update status is that its status changes to "scheduled for delivery...] } } I believe that demonstrates that the billpayer received the payment instruction you sent them (I get the same ... thing ... and my bills always get paid as "scheduled").

} Until you work out the problem with the billpayer: To be absolutely certain the billpayer has treated the payment ... appropriately at their end, you should logon to their web site and ....verify that the payment is scheduled there. And make a permanent ...record of what you find.

That's basically what I did. and I contacted W-F and *this* time got to talk to the right group and there was no problem: they acknowledged both transactions. Discovered that one [that was only a week late] was actually delivered just that morning [confirmed by a quicken transaction download] and the other has disappeared. I told them that they should stop payment on it and I'll issue a new check and they waived the $25 stop-payment-fee. So all is well and I now understand better how all this magic-seeming stuff works... :o)

Thanks for the help /b\