Updating Transactions and Balances From Financial Institutions

Once your investment and banking accounts are set up, and you've activated online services, you need to keep your account information current. Updating transactions and balances from your financial institution saves time and improves the accuracy of your record keeping. The easiest way to do this is to use One Step Update.

One Step Update is a single access point for almost all online features; you can download transactions and send online payment instructions for multiple accounts, download security quotes, and obtain product updates for your Quicken software.

Click a link below for a brief overview of the different ways that Quicken's online features will help you to work smarter.

• Understanding how Quicken protects your privacy and security
  The privacy and security of your personal financial data is of the utmost importance. Learn more about the measures Intuit takes to ensure the privacy and security of your personal information, and about additional steps you can take on your own.

  • Learn about security and online features.
  • Learn about the way Quicken protects your financial information.
• Updating all my transactions and balances

  Whenever you use One Step Update, you retrieve information for all online activated accounts at the currently selected financial institutions.

  Transaction information is updated directly into Quicken, and then you can compare your financial institution's records to your own. Typically, when a checks clears the bank or when a credit card purchase is processed, you find out about it the next time you go online. With One Step Update, you can:

  • Update the latest cleared transactions and balances for online-enabled bank, credit card, investment, and 401(k) accounts.
  • Update the latest cleared transactions and balances for online-enabled bank and credit card accounts.
  • Send pending and recurring payments, cancel payments, or update payment status instructions (not all features are supported by all financial institutions).
  • Simplify reconciling your monthly statements.
  • Send pending online transfers between accounts at the same financial institution.
• Managing my financial institution passwords

  Your financial institutions may require you to use passwords to access online services. There are two methods of managing financial institution passwords in Quicken. You can enter each password individually (least convenient), or manage multiple passwords in a vault (most convenient and secure).

  Quicken's Password Vault is a secure and convenient way to store multiple financial institution passwords that you can then access with a single master password.

  • You can open the Password Vault to add, remove, or change stored passwords at any time.
  • When the Password Vault was developed, it went through a rigorous security review.
  • The Password Vault uses industry-standard encryption to save your passwords, and it is careful to remove them from memory when they are no longer being used.

  Depending on your financial institution, you may be required to change your assigned password the first time you connect to your financial institution. Your assigned password is the one your financial institution sent to you after you signed up for online service. Some financial institutions require multiple passwords, depending on the services and the accounts you use. If yours does, you'll be prompted again to change the next assigned password.

• Working with the Password Vault and with stored passwords

  You can change the Vault password or stored (financial institution) passwords at any time. If necessary, you can also completely reset your Password Vault.

• Providing additional authentication requested by my financial institution

  As a defense against phishing attacks and other online scams, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) has released new guidelines that require financial institutions to strengthen their customer authentication measures for Internet banking transactions by the end of 2006. As a result, many financial institutions are beginning to require identity verification beyond a customer ID and password when customers request online account access. This additional information is sometimes called multi factor authentication.

  When you go online to update your transactions and balances in Quicken, your participating financial institution may request similar identity verification. When you use online setup to add your accounts, Quicken can store the verification information for you to make the download experience more convenient.

  For security purposes, financial institutions change the type of authentication they request from time to time (for example, a bank might request you to enter your postal code instead of the year in which you were born). When these changes occur, Quicken prompts you to enter the new information.

  Tell me how to do this

• Printing downloaded transactions

  From Quicken's Online Center, you can print a list of:

  • Current transactions (downloaded transactions not yet compared to your account register or transaction list)
  • Historical transactions (you can include any transactions you have downloaded into the current data file, even if they do not appear in the Online Center).
• Customizing online update options

  Select the specific accounts, securities, and other items you want to include in your One Step Update session. You can also use One Step Update to change your Quicken.com password and member ID.

• Communicating with your financial institution
  If you have questions about your downloaded transactions or about any of your holdings and balances (for investment accounts) contact the financial institution directly. You can call your financial institution, or you can send e-mail from the Online Center (if your financial institution supports the e-mail feature).

• Can I use Quicken to pay my bills online?

  Yes! Online payment saves time during every step of your regular bill-paying chores. With just a few keystrokes, you enter a payment transaction in Quicken and then send it electronically.

  Online bill payment is available for checking accounts at participating financial institutions (including cash management accounts at participating brokerages).

• How often can I update transactions and payment information?

  Some financial institutions limit the number of times per month you can update transactions without incurring additional charges. If your transaction information is current, you may want to clear the download transactions instruction check box when you use One Step Update to send transfer or payment instructions.

  You can update payment information as often as you like (at no extra charge). This update includes information about payments, transfers, and e-mail. To update payment information, be sure to send the Bring my payment information up to date instruction each time you connect.

• Why do I see transactions posted on the banks website but they're not updating in Quicken?

  Depending on how Quicken is setup to connect to your financial institution (FI), there may be a delay between the time the transactions are posted to your account and when they appear in Quicken.

  If your FI uses Direct Connect, Quicken will receive the transactions directly from the FI when the FI sends them. Some banks only update (aggregate) accounts once every 24 hours while others update several times per day.

  If your FI uses Web Connect, you're downloading transactions from their website so there should be no difference between the posted (cleared) transactions.

  If you have activated Express Web Connect (aka Improve Connection), transactions will be updated once every 24 hours.

• Why should I update transactions in Quicken if I am using my financial institution's Web site?

  Many financial institutions let you bank or manage your investments online using your Web browser. However:

  • Web banking generally can't provide a complete picture of your finances unless all your accounts are at a single financial institution. Quicken can combine information from all your real-world accounts, so you see the total picture of your cash flow and net worth.
  • When you assign Quicken categories to your transactions, you get much more information out of your data than just the transaction history and cleared balance that is available from most financial institution Web sites. Using the reports and graphs, long-term planners, alerts, reminders, and tax features in Quicken, you can save time and make informed decisions that will affect your financial situation for years to come.
  • You can use One Step Update to update account information from several financial institutions at once, and conveniently and securely store your passwords and other authentication information.
  • When you update transactions and accept them into your register, Quicken marks them as cleared. This simplifies reconciling your account with your online balance or paper statement.
• What if I'm updating for the first time?

  Follow the instructions found in the Getting Started section of Help.

• What currencies are supported?

  Online account services are available only for U.S. dollar accounts; if an account is based on another currency, you will not be able to activate that account.