Transaction downloading OK, but cannot create/delete payees for bill payment
tony.p
via web
I am in the process of migrating from Quicken 2008 to Moneydance 2010. Almost all of the migration processes have gone quite smoothly. So far, a fine product.
IMPORT OF DATA: STATUS: OK: The export/import process for data records and accounts has been successfully completed with very few issues, and no issues relevant to this inquiry.
ONLINE BANKING: STATUS: OK: The establishment of online banking for all of my accounts - checking, savings, credit cards and retirement accounts - has also been successfully completed with no relevant issues. All of these accounts properly direct connect to the FIs and properly 'direct connect/download' transactions into the accounts for reconciliation.
ONLINE BILL PAYMENT: STATUS: PARTIALLY COMPLETE: Online bill payment was indeed implemented in Quicken 2008 via the BoA checking account. When I pull down the “Online” menu in Moneydance and choose “Online Bill Payment,” Moneydance successfully retrieves and displays the current set of payees and pending payments (as previously established via/within Quicken) with no errors. Even recently canceled payments and deleted payees (as accomplished via Quicken prior to the migration effort) appear correct. So far, so good.
SPECIFIC PROBLEM/ISSUE: I am unable to delete existing payees … or even add a brand-new payee … via the Moneydance Online Bill Payment dialog box. As stated above, all information in the box appears current. Moneydance allows me to enter, say, a new payee completely. However, after I push the “Done” button and the entry box closes, the new payee does not appear at all, as though I had done nothing. There are no error messages, etc. I have not yet attempted to actually establish any bill payment, since this issue is clearly prerequisite.
I DO see Internet activity in my network connection immediately after pushing the “Done” button. And I have opened the Console Window and I do see OFX chatter that suggests that Moneydance is indeed formatting and transmitting the new payee request. When attempting to delete a payee there is an OFX line in the console stating “setStatus(Removing payee..., -1.0).” A refreshed list of current payees from the FI does not reflect any changes.
The information in the “Setup Online Bill Payment” dialog box appears correct … and it must be correct ... if it is correctly direct downloading checking account transactions into the register.
Since Moneydance is successfully communicating with the checking FI (in fact ALL the FIs) in other respects, my first guess is that, for some reason, BoA is rejecting and/or ignoring the new payee request. Is it possible that such changes are being ‘locked out’ if not originating from Quicken’s intermediate servers? Or have I simply overlooked a required setting somewhere else within Moneydance?
I will certainly contact BoA to see if they can shed any light on the matter. However, it also seems likely that I am not the first user migrating out of Quicken who online bill-pays with BoA, hence this issue has likely been raised here - and hopefully solved here - before.
XP w/ SP2. Java 1.6.0_18. Moneydance is licensed.
Thank you in advance for your time & effort toward this issue.
Support Staff 2 Posted by Jessica Little on 18 Aug, 2010 06:19 PM
Hi Tony,
This might be a bug in the way Moneydance deals with payees, but I'll need more information to figure this out for sure. Do you still have access to a copy of Quicken? If so, do you think you could send me the logs that Quicken generates when you attempt to add, edit, or delete a payee? You can get the logs through the following steps:
1) In Quicken, try modifying a payee you have set up at Bank of America.
2) Next, go to the help menu and click on Product and Customer Support.
3) In the window that pops up, click on the OFX Log link and email that file directly to me at ***@moneydance.com.
Do not attach the file to your response here, since this thread is public and the logs will contain your account information. To be safe you should redact any account info in the debug logs. Just replace it with something like "ACCOUNT NUMBER HERE" and it should be fine.
I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your help in troubleshooting this problem.
Jessica Little
Moneydance Support
3 Posted by tony.p on 29 Aug, 2010 09:54 AM
Jessica,
Sorry for any concern my delay might have caused you. My profession is demanding a good bit of time and attention at the moment. Well, actually, it always does.
I suspect this will be the easiest ticket you work today!
The next time I worked on this issue, that being the afternoon of Friday, August 27, 2010, THE PROBLEM WOULD NOT REPLICATE.
I WAS, without incident, able to change a payee via Moneydance as well as delete payees and create new payees. To confirm, I exited Moneydance, opened a new session, that ‘watched’ them retrieve from the BoA OFX server in the correct condition. I’ve also been able to transact on-line payments against the payees. Further, I worked with Moneydance steadily during the day Saturday and again early Sunday morning (when servers are generally least durable) and encountered no issues I could not comprehend and/or resolve.
My intuitive guess is that the mid-August issue was a transient issue residing within the BoA OFX server - - that for some reason, it was only allowing reads of, but not writes to, payee records. Even though it persisted over a two-business-day timeframe. Perhaps Quicken’s ‘mediating’ server has been ‘hiding’ from me this kind of BoA OFX server issue in the past.
I certainly didn’t suspect the root cause to be the Moneydance product. And I don’t suspect the Quicken server since, if Quicken HAD had some kind of ‘holds’ or ‘flags’ on the payee records, well, they would still be in place. On the other hand, I HAVE observed a steady increase of all kinds of little ‘system glitches’ within BoA over the past several years, which I suspect are attributable to ‘merger pains,’ staffing reductions, et. al.
I DID actually complete the task you assigned me, ie, using Quicken to change an existing payee and then capturing the resulting Quicken OFX log/chatter. It was when that change transacted without any problem that I was inspired to once again try using Moneydance for payee add/deletes/changes, to “see how it would go.” And, fortunately, it went just fine.
I don’t see any point forwarding the OFX log to you, given this situation has ‘self-resolved.’ But I do have it should it (ever) be required.
JFYI, with a bit of planning, the OFX log I created was much shorter, much easier to read, and required a lot less work to obscure all the sensitive data:
(1) I first did a Quicken download to ‘close any outstanding business’ such as transaction downloads.
(2) I went to the folder where the Quicken data resides and renamed the existing Quicken OFX logs, QDataOFXLog.Dat and QDataOFXOld.Dat, so that Quicken would create “clean” logs just before submitting the payee change.
(3) I did not use Quicken’s “one-step update,” which connects to all financial institutions, but rather I used “Update Now” within the checking account register’s menu, so as to communicate with only the one FI.
(4) When offered the Quicken dialog box regarding what I wanted to happen during the online session, I only checked "Bring my payment information up to date," as that activity is, apparently, where the payee updating transactions reside.
Thank you very much, Jessica, for the knowledgeable time and attention you devoted to my inquiry & issue.
tony.p
Support Staff 4 Posted by Jessica Little on 31 Aug, 2010 08:27 PM
Hi Tony,
Glad to hear it's working for you again. In my experience doing support for Moneydance, I've definitely noticed that BoA's server do seem to be buggier than most. At least it's working now.
Let us know if you have any further problems, and thanks for using Moneydance!
Jessica Little
Moneydance Support
5 Posted by tony.p on 14 Sep, 2010 11:20 AM
UPDATE: [Tuesday, September 14, 2010]
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The problem eventually DID replicate, I found a solution … and I have at least some degree of decent rationale regarding the root cause. The solution was to log on to the BoA website, enter its Online Bill Pay area, and then edit a payee. That validated action canceled the payee-edit lockout.
DETAILS: Shortly after I wrote to say the problem would NOT replicate--problem solved, that being around August 30th, I used Quicken one last time. To delete all of my outstanding repeating payments. (I waited to do that until I knew exactly how to handle all my payments via Moneydance and confirmed everything worked.)
Moneydance does not facilitate control of repeating payments, and if BoA Online facilitates it, I don’t really know how … so I used Quicken for executing the cancellations. I have not ever once opened or used Quicken since then.
I immediately returned to Moneydance and used it to confirm via the Online/OnlineBillPayment menu choice that the various repeating payments reflected as canceled. They did. Then - guess what – all of a sudden I could NO LONGER add/delete/edit payees !! And that situation remained unchanged for the next two weeks, regardless of how I used Moneydance and BoA online access. (For example, I made payments to payees using both … and without incident.)
This morning [Tuesday, September 14, 2010], I realized/noticed that my list of payees within the BoA website’s Online Bill Pay area matched exactly (to a tee, recent spelling corrections and all) the list of payees as I left them via Quicken and as they appeared in Moneydance. I HAD been operating under the assumption that the data in BoA’s own Online Bill Pay Services were not quite so directly connected to the data within the Quicken Bill Paying Services (handled via the BoA OFX Server).
Recognizing that there was actually only ONE payee list, I tried something simple. I used the BoA website to slightly edit one of the payees. I observed the edit ‘take’ in the BoA website. Then I immediately logged-off. And then I immediately opened Moneydance and - guess what - I was able to edit payees via Moneydance again, no problem. And each editing transaction - - both at the BoA website and that conducted via Moneydance - - was confirmed by email from BoA within minutes.
NOW my educated guess as to this phenomena is: Something triggered the BoA software to suspect a security issue and to lockout the payee list. That trigger MAY have been observing change requests routed from the Quicken server (a known, valid source) immediately followed by observing change requests NOT routed from the Quicken server (a situation that BoA would reasonably consider unusual).
Then, this morning, when I logged on to the BoA website, validating through several layers of security to do so, THEN requested a payee change, THAT request was known to be valid, and so the BoA website removed the lockout and executed the change. With the lockout canceled, I was able to again edit payees via Moneydance.
On the first go-round, I must have done something in the BoA Online Bill Pay area that, unbeknownst to me, canceled the lockout. Or that first lockout simply timed-out according to the pre-set criteria for the particular trigger.
Too bad I wasn’t advised by a BoA email that the payee list WAS locked out, or why, or what could be done to unlock it. Whatever.
Fin (hopefully) !
Support Staff 6 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 14 Sep, 2010 11:12 PM
Tony,
Wow, that is a doozy! I'm glad you figured out the solution, and it's certainly a fix we'll keep in mind for the future. Thank you for your detailed description of what seems to have gone wrong and how you fixed it, this information is very helpful to us as we work to improve our software. On a less formal note, as a fellow BoA user I really appreciate you sharing these tips!
Let us know if you experience any other occurrences, and I hope your transition goes more smoothly from here!
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Customer
7 Posted by tony.p on 07 Nov, 2011 04:43 PM
Over a year later, I believe I can summarize the phenomenon and solution succinctly. Sometimes I cannot alter BoA Bill Pay payee account information from inside Moneydance. This is a BoA problem, not a Moneydance problem. The solution is to sign into my BoA Online banking and alter the payee information there. Also, BoA Bill Pay will not allow the alteration of the payee name or the payee account number, even inside BoA Bill Pay. In such cases, I create a new payee inside BoA Bill Pay, then delete the old payee inside BoA Bill Pay.