Re: Intuit & bank ditching Quicken 2008: Effect on Moneydance?

At 3/27/2011 08:39 AM -0700, Larry Tesler wrote:
>WF is upgrading to a new system that will provide all users of the 
>online features of Quicken and QuickBooks a few improvements.

Since my only contact with WF is web based and since I don't use 
direct connect banking at all, what follows is all conjecture. 
Informed conjecture perhaps. OK, poorly informed conjecture.

Looking at that WF page, the PDF "guide" linked from it, and Intuit's 
announcement at

http://quicken.intuit.com/support/articles/buying-and-billing/discontinuation/3876.html

I conclude that WF is combining two issues: Quicken support and a 
front end change. Although they are certainly confusing technical 
people by this combination, my guess is that they figure for many 
customers they will reduce two problems to one. Actually on the web 
page, the two issues are listed separately, but being linked from a 
single letter, and inadequate headings to make the distinction clear, 
strongly leads the reader to think the issues are related.

The guide linked from the WF page has this interesting bit:

>Important Note: The Steps in this guide pertain only to accounts 
>where the Financial Institution is shown in Quicken as "Wells Fargo 
>- Banking & Bill Pay" or "zWells Fargo - Banking & Bill Pay." If the 
>Financial Institution is shown as "Wells Fargo Bank" you do not need 
>to make any changes for that account.

I'm guessing that "Wells Fargo Bank" identifies a new front end. 
Later, the instructions tell you to be very careful to reconnect to 
"Wells Fargo Bank".

The Quicken announcement verifies that support for Q2008 is being 
discontinued and that online operations will cease to function. 
That's ALL online operations. That is just Intuit's infamous sunset 
policy. There's nothing that would lead me to believe there's a 
protocol change.

That same WF guide actually ONLY discusses the server migration. It 
does not even mention Q2008. It just says to upgrade to the latest 
version of Q before starting. One comment in the middle of the instructions is

>Click the Online Services tab and click the Deactivate (or Remove) 
>button for One Step Update (or Transaction Download). This breaks 
>the link between this account and the old Wells Fargo platform.

"Old platform". Linking the platform to which you connect with the 
back-end database. So it seems these instructions are for a platform 
migration. That COULD include a protocol change, but I don't find any 
implication that it does.

Furthermore, July 7 is not a magic date for Quicken 2008. The only 
magic date cited in the Intuit announcement is April 27. (And May 31 
for QuickBooks 2008.) So July 7 is purely a WF date.

The fact that QE for Mac continues to work also agrees. Note that 
even QE/Mac users have to go through the WF platform conversion. The 
explanation that the WF change is only a platform change, not a 
protocol change, is a simpler explanation than thinking that 
QE/Mac/2007 already had a newer protocol than Q/Win/2008.

Thus my (very tentative) conclusion that the two changes are 
independent and that WF figured combining them would be convenient.

Take it for what it's worth ...

Edward