Bank Updating Problem(s)

[rikmar67]

Is it just me, or are there some serious issues with Money Plus updating bank
information? I have been using Money 2006 successfully for several years now
and have been forced to upgrade or lose my bank updating ability. So I
updated. Now nothing but trouble.

1. I updated early last week. For the most part things worked well except
for poor matching against my existing entries. But I'll get to that later.
What really peeved me was coming in this morning and sometime over the
weekend it downloaded 245 transactions dating back to early 2007 from my
bank. Took me a long time to re-reconcile and get things back in order.

2. Now I can't update at all. On the Banking tab under the To Review column
it says "Update in progress" for every bloody bank account. Yet it isn't
updating! Above it shows the little red triangle with white question mark
showing there is a problem. My Call Summary Messages state that the accounts
are being updated, please try again later. I wait, wait, wait, reboot once,
twice, three times. Still nothing. It thinks that my accounts are being
updated, but they aren't. And I haven't been able to update since.

3. One of my banks (Bank of America) no longer allows me to use the updating
abilities of Money. Fine. I don't use BofA anymore. But since upgrading (and
I use that term loosely) to Money Plus it now shows the last time I updated
that account (back in 2007) and the bank balance at that time. Money 2006 did
not show this when I no longer had updates enabled for the bank. Just a
cosmetic issue, but annoying having this negative bank balanace staring me in
the face every day when I know that it isn't true. Sure, I can close the
account in Money so it doesn't show anymore, but it isn't really closed. I
just don't use it at the time.

4. Matching against the existing entries in my register is terrible. As an
example, my entry is on 8/10/08 for The Gas Co for $32.00. What gets
downloaded is 8/12/08 for The Gas Co for $28.00. The day is off by 2, the
amount is off by $4. But the payee name is EXACTLY THE SAME. Why isn't it
smart enough to realize this is the same entry?

Ok, that's enough venting. You can gather than I'm not too happy about
having to "upgrade". Thanks Microsoft!!

[Cindy Conover]

As for paragraph 1, Money downloads what your bank lets it.
As for paragraph 4, Your examples are not the same entry. They have
different dates and amounts.

Cindy

"rikmar67" <rikm...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:4FCBA570-265D-4A77...@microsoft.com...

[gmobone]

You're not alone! My BofA account says "updating in progress" for the last 2
weeks. I can't get any of my transaction automatically downloaded from BofA.
I am also disappointed in this product.

[Art McClinton]

rikmar67 - when you switched from Money 2006 to Money Plus Bank of America
switched from a third party screen scraper to a direct connect. Bank of
America charges for the direct connection. This has been discussed within
this newsgroup and also on the BoA website.

Concerning the issue referenced in 1. It probably was caused by the switch
and depends upon the FI. When you open an account you specify as to how
much old data you would liked downloaded the first time. Should not occur
again unless you are accessing through the indirect screen scrapper.

I hope your problem in item 2 is resolved. If not I recommend reporting it
directly to Microsoft. Prior to that you might want to set up a test
account and see if the same experience occurs in a new database.

gmobone - which state is your BoA located in? Which version of Money are
you using?
I do not see this problem, but then I am using a direct connection to my BoA
account in VA, but BoA in CA, ID and WA apparently can be accessed via
screen scrapper with known difficulties similar to what you report.

Art

"gmobone" <gmo...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:0223293C-BF11-4264...@microsoft.com...

[gmobone]

Thanks for the reply Art. I live in California and my BofA bank branch is
located in California. I'm using Microsoft Money Plus Deluxe Version
17.0.120.1415. Again, I really enjoyed the automatic features, but was
extremely disappointed when I couldn't download my BofA transaction
automatically. I hope they fix whatever problem they have soon. I wasn't
aware that BofA charges a fee to automatically download transactions. How
much?

[Art McClinton]

My experience is with BoA in VA and what is said within Money. I assume
that you have selected Bank of America (CA) as your FI. This uses a screen
scraper to download the information instead of a direct connection to the
Bank's server and an OFX download. It is my understanding the Yodlee is
providing the service. Changes with the Website appearance breaks this until
Yodlee fixes their connection. Earlier when I was using an older version of
Money that did not support I was extremely frustrated by the Yodlee
interface and I simply shifted to logging into the BoA site and manually
downloading the OFX file.

Concerning the monthly cost for direct connection, if available, it is
dependent upon the state, the type of account you have, and how much you
have on deposit. My account provides it free for maintaining 5K at the bank
in qualified accounts. Looking at CA they do not list it as available.

For more information from BoA, go to their website and type Microsoft Money
into the search box.

"gmobone" <gmo...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

news:757B20F7-52D6-44CD...@microsoft.com...

[RichG]

[RichG]

My guess is that BOA and many other banks are requiring that you authenticate
with a test question (ie. Your favorite color?). Money doesn't have this
built into it.

[SteveBell]

RichG wrote:

> My guess is that BOA and many other banks are requiring that you
> authenticate with a test question (ie. Your favorite color?). Money
> doesn't have this built into it.

Money supports the multi-level login, but it seems to take the banks a
while to get it working. If a third party provider is involved, it's
much more complicated.

I use Chase Bank. Their data is pulled by a third party, in this case
Yodlee. When Chase converted to the multi-level login a year or so ago,
it took them a few tries to get it right; they kept changing the web
site. Every time Chase changed something, Yodlee had to change their
code that reads the screens. For a while, Chase repeatedly changed the
order in which they asked for the three pieces of personal information.
Every time they did that, Yodlee had to spend a week analyzing the
changes, modifying their code, testing the code, and implementing it.
By that time, Chase had changed the web site again. It took a couple of
months, but it all finally settled down and hasn't changed since.

Give the financial institution some time to get the changes
implemented. In the meanwhile, download your statements manually.

--
Steve Bell
New Life Home Improvement
Arlington, TX