Online services boil down to three electronic tasks. Quicken can handle all three, but not all banks do. Bank policies vary widely, so contact yours directly to get all the details. If your bank doesn’t offer a certain service—online bill payment, say—you can purchase that option directly from Intuit (see the box on Section 6.1).

Chances are you told Quicken about your Internet connection when you installed the program. Online banking aside, Quicken does plenty every time it goes online: It can update your version of the program, show you information about financial services, convey feedback to Intuit, and connect you to support options like the Quicken Forum (see Appendix B).

If Quicken isn’t already going online, start by choosing Edit → Preferences → Internet Connection Setup. The first screen of the Internet Connection Setup wizard has three options, which cover all possibilities for Internet access, as shown in Figure 6-1.

Figure 6-1. When you first set up Quicken to go online, you tell it which connection you want it to use. If you have several ways to connect, you’ll see them all listed here. (If you don’t have an Internet connection, click Cancel and get your PC online before launching the Internet Connection Setup wizard again.)

After you choose your connection option, click Next or Done to complete the setup of your Quicken Internet connection. Testing your connection is as simple as launching one of the helpful hints that takes you to a Web site. For example, choose Help → Ask a Quicken User to see if the program reaches the Quicken Support Forums Web site.

Connecting the accounts you have at financial institutions to your Quicken accounts is a little more like matchmaking than personal finance. You must first prepare both participants for the relationship, and then introduce them. When you first create an account, as described in Chapter 2, Quicken asks you for the name of the financial institution and whether you want to set up the account for online services. If you took care of setting up your account then, you can skip to “Downloading Transactions” on Section 6.5. If not, then read on.

Before you embark on a mission to connect your account with online services, you must first see if your financial institution works with Quicken’s services. For accounts listed in the Quicken Cash Flow Center (including checking, savings, and credit cards), the account Overview tab is the fastest way to do this. In the Account Bar, choose the account and then click the Overview tab. Figure 6-2 shows how you can tell which online services a financial institution offers:you’ll see Available (or Not Available) listed for the services your financial institution provides.

Figure 6-2. Top Left: Next to the names of services like Transaction Download and Online Payment, the word Available appears if it’s compatible with Quicken. If the box reads Not Available, you can’t use that feature with Quicken. Top right: Savings accounts don’t include an Online Payment through attribute, but you can still pay bills with funds from the credit card account using Quicken’s bill payment service. Bottom: Investment accounts tell you that they handle online services by displaying a Set Up button in the register window.

Your financial institution takes the lead in communicating with Quicken. Financial institutions that use direct connections can do more than those that use Web Connect. As a result, you do less work to link those accounts to Quicken’s. Here are the two possibilities:

Online financial services are about convenience, so why download transactions and send payment instructions one account at a time? In Quicken, the One Step Update automatically downloads transactions and sends payment instructions for every account you’ve set up for online services.

It should come as no surprise that this convenience requires some setup. The time you save is well worth the few minutes you need for the setup. To get started, choose Online → One Step Update, which opens the One Step Update dialog box, shown in Figure 6-6.

Although One Step Update can perform all of the following tasks in one session, you can tell it to perform only the tasks you want. For example, you can turn off the Quotes option if you want only your downloaded transactions.

When you’re ready to update your accounts, click Update Now. A status dialog box appears, showing you which account it’s updating and how far it’s progressed. If an emergency arises, click Stop Update. You can run One Step Update later when things have calmed down.

When all of your accounts are up to date, the Online Update Summary window opens. As you can see in Figure 6-7, you can quickly review an account’s current balance and whether it has any new transactions. To check the details of downloaded transactions, click Go to Register (for bank accounts) or Go to Account (for investment accounts).

Figure 6-7. If you want to see the transactions that One Step Update downloaded, click the account’s Go to Register (or Go To Account for investment accounts) button.

Most financial institutions offer to download transactions in one way or another. With a direct connection, you can download transactions with a single click. Using Web Connect takes a few more steps, but you still get the records from your financial institution long before the statement arrives.

With the One Step Update, you don’t need to settle for downloading transactions for just one account at a time. However, if you’re worried about your cash flow and want to quickly check whether a certain deposit cleared, you can download transactions for only one account. This section explains how to download transactions using direct connections and Web Connect.

Downloading Transactions via a Direct Connection

For financial institutions that support direct connections, you never have to leave Quicken to download your transactions. In the Account Bar, select the account you want to update. The register for the account appears in the top half of the window, and tabs for downloaded and scheduled transactions appear in the bottom half. On the Downloaded Transactions tab, click Download Transactions, as shown in Figure 6-8. The Online Update dialog box opens.

If you use the PIN Vault to store your PINs and passwords, Quicken automatically fills in the PIN text box (with asterisks to hide your actual PIN) and turns on the checkboxes for the online services you’ve activated. All you have to do is click Update Now. If you don’t use the PIN Vault, type your PIN or password in the PIN box.

Figure 6-8. Top: Click Download Transactions to get the transactions that cleared at your bank. If you use online bill payment, you can click Make an Online Payment to pay a bill. Bottom: In the Online Update dialog box, click Update Now to get your transactions.

A dialog box then displays the status of the communication between Quicken and your financial institution. When the two finish talking, your downloaded transactions appear at the bottom of the register window, as shown in Figure 6-9.

Downloading Statements with Web Connect

The register window doesn’t look any different for an account that uses Web Connect. You still see a Downloaded Transactions tab, with a Download Transactions button. The big difference comes when you click that button. Quicken opens a browser window, which in turn displays the Web site for your financial institution.

Figure 6-9. Downloaded transactions appear at the bottom of the register window. Depending on your financial institution, you can download transactions from up to 90 days ago. See “Reviewing and Incorporating Downloaded Transactions” on Section 6.6 to learn how to accept downloaded transactions into the register.

Unfortunately, Quicken can’t help you find the button or link on this page that downloads transactions. A button or link labeled “Download to Quicken” is a likely candidate, but your financial institution may use a different label or a separate Download page. If you can’t find the link, call your bank’s customer support for assistance.

Once you find and click the button or link, the browser downloads a file with a .qfx extension. The qfx stands for “Quicken file transfer,” and it indicates a Web Connect transaction file. You may have the option to save or open the file, depending on your bank. To download your transactions, click Open. When the program finishes downloading the file, you can review and accept the downloaded transactions as you would for direct connect downloads, as described in the next section.

If you record transactions in the account register prior to downloading them, you have only to match the downloaded transactions to the ones you entered and then correct any discrepancies. On the other hand, if you don’t record transactions in the register—whether due to laziness or a trusting nature—you accept downloaded transactions to create new transactions in the register. You may have to fill in the category or other fields if QuickFill hasn’t already done so.

As Figure 6-10 illustrates, the Status column tells you whether Quicken has matched a downloaded transaction to one you entered. Here’s what each status value means:

If Quicken matches every transaction and you agree with the program’s judgement, your work’s almost done. In the bottom right corner of the Downloaded Transactions tab, click Accept All to accept the program’s decisions. In the account register in the Clr column, you see a lowercase “c” for every accepted transaction. The “c” indicates that your financial institution has cleared the transaction but you haven’t yet reconciled it. (See Section 7.4 for more information on reconciling.) If you’d like to examine the Match and New transactions individually, see the next section.

Figure 6-10. A status of Match tells you that Quicken’s already matched a downloaded transaction to one in the register. If the program can’t find a matching transaction, the status is New.

Matching Transactions When Quicken Can’t

If you see a downloaded transaction that should match one in the register—but doesn’t—chances are a small mistake in the transaction you recorded is the culprit. You may have assigned the wrong check number in your Quicken register or typed a 3 instead of an 8. Or you recorded several separate deposits, but your bank consolidated them into one. Whatever the reason, you can manually match a downloaded transaction to one or more transactions in the register.

If a downloaded transaction doesn’t match, try scrolling in the account register to the transaction you entered. If your transaction amount doesn’t agree with the bank’s, adjust the register amount to match the bank’s value. When you click Enter and record the updated transaction, Quicken automatically matches it to the downloaded one.

Note

Quicken doesn’t match a transaction you recorded if you set its transaction date later than the date it cleared at the bank. For example, if you recorded a transaction with a date of March 6 and the bank cleared it on March 1, change the date in the register, to agree with the bank. Quicken then considers the two transactions a match.

To do your own matching, in the Downloaded Transaction tab, select the transaction, click Edit, and choose Match Manually. The Manually Match Transactions dialog box, shown in Figure 6-11, appears. Turn on the checkbox for each register transaction that you want to match to the selected downloaded transaction. Quicken adds up the amounts for each transaction that you turn on. When the total for the register transactions equals the amount of the downloaded transaction, the Difference value becomes $0.00, indicating a match.

Figure 6-11. When the value of Difference equals $0.00, you have a match between the downloaded amount and the total of the transactions that you selected. Click Accept to record the match.

Note

If you match more than one transaction to the downloaded transaction, Quicken creates Split entries for each matching transaction.

One drawback of downloading transactions is the incomprehensible payee names that financial institutions often choose. A simple transfer between your checking and savings account may show up as “INTERNET PYMT TO TXSA 472GP952.” Or a gas-station credit card charge downloads with the station’s ID number—“Conoco #00092372918027.” You want payee names that make sense, like “Savings Transfer” or “Gasoline.” Quicken understands: its renaming rules feature lets you replace downloaded payee names with something short, sweet, and meaningful.

Out of the box, Quicken comes with its “Downloaded transactions” preferences set to automatically create renaming rules if you change the payee name for a downloaded transaction. Trouble is, the program doesn’t always create useful renaming rules.

For example, the last renaming rule in Figure 6-12 is one that Quicken created automatically. If you change a downloaded payee name “LOAF N JUG #9000845453” to “Gas,” the program creates a renaming rule that looks for a payee name that is equal to “LOAF N JUG #9000845453” and changes it to “Gas.” But if you charge a gas purchase at a different Loaf ‘N Jug station, like “LOAF N JUG #1000234901,” the renaming rule doesn’t catch it. And if you replace this name with “Gas,” the program creates a second renaming rule for that gas station.

Figure 6-12. Quicken creates renaming rules that check for exact matches with payee names. Editing renaming rules to use a “Contains” or “Starts With” test makes the rules more useful.

Consider creating more flexible renaming rules that catch more of your payees then Quicken’s exacting rules. As illustrated by the first four renaming rules in Figure 6-12, you can choose “Starts With” or “Contains.” With the “Starts With” test, the downloaded payee must only start with “LOAF N JUG.” The “Contains” test looks for the name anywhere in the payee name.

To work on your renaming rules, at the bottom of the Downloaded transactions tab, click Renaming Rules. (You can also choose Online → Renaming Rules.) In the Renaming Rules for Downloaded transactions dialog box, shown in Figure 6-13, you can create, edit, or delete rules.

Figure 6-13. To create a renaming rule from scratch, click New. To edit an existing renaming rule, whether one that Quicken created or your own, select the rule and click Edit. To delete a rule you no longer need, for instance for your old mortgage lender, select the rule, and then click Delete.

At the bottom of the Renaming Rules for Downloaded transactions dialog box, you can turn two options on or off:

Before your online bill payment service can send payments, you have to tell it who to pay, where to send the payments, and how the payee will know who the payment’s from. In Quicken, Online Payee records include all of this information. Here are the steps to setting up an online payee:

Once you’ve added an online payee, you can automatically pay its bills, but Quicken won’t automatically update the payee information. Be prepared to maintain this information as necessary, as discussed in the box on Section 6.9.1.

Whether you use the bill paying service that your financial institution offers or you subscribe to Quicken Bill Pay service, you don’t have to use special dialog boxes to make electronic payments. Online features are accessible throughout the program.

Setting Up Online Bill Payments

Quicken gives you three ways to create online bill payments. As described below, you can choose one based on how you already prefer to record payments.

• Cash Flow Center. In the Account Bar, click Cash Flow Center to display the Cash Flow Center window. At the bottom of the window, the Bills and Scheduled Transactions section lists all the payments to send. By clicking Enter or Edit in the row for a scheduled transaction, you can record or edit that transaction.

• Account register window. If you usually record payments in your checking account register, there’s no reason to change. In the Num field, choosing Send Online Payment turns a transaction into an online payment.

• Write Checks. In the Write Checks dialog box (Section 4.3.2), turn on the Online Payment checkbox.

• Online Center. In the Online Center window (choose Online → Online Center), click the Payments tab. At the top of the Payments tab, shown in Figure 6-16, fill in the text boxes as you would any payment transaction.

  Fill in the Delivery date text box with the date that you want the payee to receive the payment. Typically, you’ll want to set the Delivery date a few days early, for instance to the date that you’d mail your paper check. If the due date’s coming up, you can also choose ASAP to tell your financial institution to process the payment as quickly as it can.

Figure 6-16. Filling in an online payment is almost exactly the same as making a regular payment. The biggest difference is the Delivery date, which should be a few days early to ensure that your payment arrives on time.

Note

You don’t have to worry about filling in the Processing date field. In most cases, your bank sets that date based on the Delivery date you specify.

You can set up online fund transfers in Quicken, as long as both accounts are at the same financial institution. Quicken can’t transfer funds electronically between different banks. Also, you need to set up both Quicken accounts (checking and investment, say) for the online service.

The register is the easiest place to record an online transfer. Here are the steps:

Suppose you sent an online payment for your cable TV subscription, but have decided that your library card is a more cost-effective way to find entertainment. With enough lead time, you can cancel an online payment. Unlike paper checks, which require a stop payment from your bank—at an additional cost—canceling an online payment doesn’t cost you a dime.

How much lead time you need depends on your bank, but in general you can cancel any time before the Processing date for the online payment. To find out whether an online payment arrived, or if you want to see if you have time to cancel a payment, click the transaction in the register. Below the Num field, you see a Status link, which you can click to view the payment, including its processing and delivery dates.

How you cancel a payment depends on the type of online payment. No matter which type of payment you cancel, you must click Update/Send to send the cancellation instructions to your financial institution. Here are the options: