Chapter 6

Online and In Charge

In This Chapter

Defining Online Account Access and Online Bill Payment

Paying bills with Online Bill Payment

Transferring money and downloading statements with Online Account Access

Most banks now offer some form of electronic banking service. And some banks even provide a pretty impressive variety of online services to the general consumer (you and me). This chapter briefly covers the Online Account Access and Online Bill Payment features that Quicken comes with so you can fully exploit the power of online banking.

What Are Online Account Access and Online Bill Payment?

I’m going to start with the basics — a definition of these two services.

Online services allow you to connect your computer to your bank’s computer electronically through your Internet connection. You may think that doing so sounds scary, but Online Account Access and Online Bill Payment provide some very neat benefits:

• With Online Bill Payment, you can tell your bank or (in a pinch) the Intuit online financial services unit to make payments to specific individuals or businesses. In other words, rather than providing all this information in the usual way (on checks), you send the same information — the payees’ names, their addresses, the amounts, and so on — and then the bank writes the checks. You can tell the bank to make automatic recurring payments for bills that you pay on a regular basis, such as a rent or mortgage payment. You can use Online Bill Payment at any bank.
• With Online Account Access, you can get transaction information — such as information about which checks and deposits cleared your account and what bank service fees you’ve been charged — from the bank’s computer. You can also transfer money between accounts — such as from your savings account to your checking account and from your checking account to your credit card account (to pay a credit card bill). To use Quicken for Online Account Access, you must make sure that your bank supports the Quicken Online Account Access service.

Wise Whys and Wherefores

Neither Online Account Access nor Online Bill Payment is difficult to use. And despite the nightmares that people with delusional paranoia may develop about electronic banking, the service is safe, secure, and very solid. Nevertheless, before you, too, jump onto the Online Account Access and Online Bill Payment bandwagon, you should probably consider these points:

• As I note in the preceding section, if you want to use the Online Account Access feature, your bank must be part of the Quicken Online Account Access program. (See the next section for details on how to find out whether your bank qualifies.)
• To sign up for and use Online Account Access or Online Bill Payment services, you need an Internet connection.
• You should be fairly comfortable with Quicken, especially with account transactions and transferring money between accounts. (Therefore, if you’re new to Quicken, you should at least record a handful of checks, make some deposits, and reconcile your account before venturing into Online Account Access. This ramping up of your Quicken skills should take…oh, I don’t know, about two weeks.)
• Make sure that your records are completely up to date and reconciled with the last statements you received from the bank.

This stuff usually ain’t free. I can’t tell you how much these two services will cost because your bank sets the charges. A good guess is $10 to $20 per month — and that adds up over the course of a year. But in choosing to use Online Account Access or Online Bill Payment, do consider all the hidden costs of the normal way of banking and paying bills. Gasoline, time, and postage can all add up, and these almost-hidden costs may make the costs of the online services appear more reasonable. (Besides, you won’t have to deal with all that nasty glue on your tongue from licking envelopes.)

My personal experience with online banking goes like this: The online banking stuff is great for any bank account you use a lot. But for those accounts with very low activity, the service (at least at the banks I use) is just too darn expensive.

Banking with Online Account Access and Online Bill Payment

To begin using either the Online Account Access or the Online Bill Payment service, you have to sign up. If you want to use Online Account Access, you sign up with your bank. Just visit your bank’s website or call your local branch and ask someone whether the bank supports Online Account Access with Quicken. (If your bank doesn’t support Online Account Access, you can still sign up with Intuit for Online Bill Payment; choose Tools⇒Quicken Bill Pay⇒Learn About Quicken Bill Pay for details.) Then do whatever the folks at the bank tell you to do to sign up. You’ll probably have to fill out an application, agree to pay some extra fees, and then wait a few days for a customer identification number and a PIN (personal identification number).

After the bank does its preparation and sends you its welcome letter, you can set up Quicken for Online Account Access. To set up Quicken to use Online Account Access or Online Bill Payment services, display the account for which you want to activate online services. You can do this, for example, by following these steps:

1. Click the account’s hyperlink on the Accounts bar.
2. Tell Quicken you want to set up online banking or bill payment.

   Click the Actions button and choose the Set Up Online command, shown in Figure 6-1. Quicken begins asking for information about the account (such as the name of the bank), and it may display an Account Setup dialog box that asks which version of your bank’s online banking service you’re already set up to use. You answer the questions Quicken asks. Then you click Next.

   

3. Identify yourself.

   When Quicken displays the Quicken Account Setup dialog box that asks for your login information, supply your customer identification number and PIN.

Let me say a couple more quick things about setting up Online Account Access or Online Bill Payment. Your bank or the Quicken folks may, as part of the application process, send you a letter asking for more information, a canceled check, or a signature. (If they do, of course, be sure to respond.)

Using Online Account Access and Online Bill Payment is extremely easy. You pay bills in pretty much the usual manner. You make account transfers in the same manner. And then you reconcile transactions with a mouse click.

Finding an online bank — online

You can determine which banks support Online Account Access by using your Internet connection. To do so, open your web browser and then enter the following web address in the browser’s address bar:

https://quickenonline.intuit.com/quickenweb/external/fi-select.jsf

Enter the first part of the bank’s name in the text box provided. You can enter a partial name to get a list of potential matches.

Paying bills

You have three ways to record online payments. If you’re comfortable using the Write Checks window, you write a check in the usual way. You enter the payee name, an amount, probably a category, and so on. Just make sure that you select the Online Payment check box. The Online Payment check box appears in the lower-right corner of the onscreen check form after you set up online banking for the account.

If you have questions about how the Write Checks window works, Chapter 5 shows you — among other things — how to use the Write Checks window to describe checks you want to print. You use the same basic procedure to describe online payments that you want to make.

If you’re more comfortable using the register to record payments, you can make online payments with that, too. In the Num column, just specify the payment number as Send.

If you have questions about how the register works, you may want to read Chapter 4. Chapter 4 describes — in some detail, I might add — how the Quicken register works.

By the way, the first time you make an online payment to someone, Quicken asks for some information in the Set Up Online Payee dialog box: where the person lives or where the business is located, and what account number Quicken can use to identify you or your business to the person or business you pay. You can also describe online payees by choosing Tools⇒Online Payee List, which displays a list of online payees. Then click the New button, which displays the Set Up Online Payee dialog box.

After you record a payment, you send it to the bank. To do so, choose the Tools⇒One Step Update command.

Quicken connects, through the Internet, to your bank’s computer. As part of making this connection, you need to provide a PIN. When Quicken finishes sending your payment instructions to your bank, it displays a summary that basically says you’ve connected to the bank’s computer and sent it some payment instructions. At this point, you’re done.

Note: The first time that you use Online Account Access, Quicken asks you to change your PIN.

Note: You can have Quicken update your account information regularly. To do this, choose the Tools⇒Schedule Updates command and follow the onscreen instructions.

I need to make an important point here: You must send your payment instructions to the bank several days in advance of the time the bill needs to be paid. For obvious reasons, the bank needs a day or two to process the bill. And then the check very possibly has to go through the U.S. Postal Service. (I say “possibly” in the preceding sentence because some of your payments get made electronically and then some get turned into paper checks that get mailed.)

Transferring money between accounts

As you may expect, you record Online Account Access transfers the same way that you record regular transfers — or at least in almost the same way. For online transfers, you can use the register in the normal way, but you need to specify that the transaction is an online transfer. You do this by activating the Num drop-down list box and selecting the Online Transfer entry.

If you have a credit card with a bank that supports Online Account Access, and if you also set up the credit card for Online Account Access, you can pay your credit card bill by transferring money from a bank account to your credit card account. You probably already thought of this if you have a credit card account. But I thought I’d mention it anyway. (For more information about credit card accounts, see Chapter 11.)

Updating your Quicken accounts

One major advantage of Online Account Access is that you can get the most up-to-date information regarding your accounts. Let me explain: When you use the Tools menu’s One Step Update or Schedule Updates command, your bank automatically sends current transactions to your computer. If Quicken can match the bank’s records with your records, no problem. Everything is fine.

If Quicken can’t match the bank records with your records, however, it lists the mystery transactions on the Downloaded Transactions tab of the account register window. Then you can examine them before they go into your records. You can add downloaded transactions from the bank’s list to your register by clicking the transaction and then clicking the Add to Register button.

By regularly downloading transactions into your online accounts and matching transactions between your Quicken records and the bank’s records, you make reconciling your bank accounts a snap. In effect, by downloading and matching transactions, you get information about checks and debit card transactions that you’ve forgotten to record much earlier (because you don’t have to wait until the end of the month). Note, however, that you should still reconcile your account n the usual way (described in Chapter 8).