Citibank direct connect

Posted by Phyllis on May 5, 2006, 3:03 pm

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Until now, I'd been using Web Connect with Citibank. After the ordeal
of signing up for Direct Connect, I started using it, but I'm still not
sure what to expect in certain areas.

With Web Connect, I saw what was on the website, and the download was
pretty much the same info, except for the pending transactions which
would show up the next day. With direct connect, what got downloaded
was pretty much what I expected, except that for any accounts with no
new transactions, Quicken said that a zero balance was reported, so
presumably that's what Citibank was reporting. That straightened
itself out once there was at least one transaction in each account, and
at least for now, the balances agree.

What's not clear to me is what is/will be going on with transfers and
payments that originate from Quicken. For starters, I tried
transferring money from one account to another. Quicken now shows that
transaction in one register with the lightning bolt, and if I click on
the transaction, it shows the word "status" underlined right under
where it shows OCfr and the lightning bolt. I have no idea what that
means. It looks sort of like a link, but is not clickable.

I suppose that the rule is that the lightning bolt shows up in the
account that the money comes from, and not the one it goes to, and if
that's how it works, that's fine. What I didn't know is whether the
transfer would show up with a "c" since the bank presumably knew about
it, but it did not have that. That's fine too since I would not have
seen it until the next day with Web Connect, but now it's the next day
and I still don't see it as cleared. On top of that, I don't see it at
all if I go to Citibank's website. It wasn't there yesterday or today.
I made some other transfers at the website yesterday, and of course
saw them there when I did it. They also showed up in the download
today, but the one done from within Quicken still is not showing as
cleared and is not showing up on the website.

I'd like to have an idea of what's going on and how this works. When
do these transactions get posted? When should I expect to see them at
Citibank? What various things will Quicken show me at different points
in the process?

Posted by Marc Auslander on May 5, 2006, 8:19 pm

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Not sure how citibank works - but in general if you enter a
transaction in Quicken, then when the same transaction is posted and
downloaded quicken will "match" the download to the entry already in
the register. When you download, you want to check that new
transactions which should match do, and that those that are really new
don't accidently match the wrong thing. When you match, quicken marks
the entry as cleared ("c").
--

Posted by Han on May 5, 2006, 9:55 pm

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In addition to what Marc said, be advised that the Direct Connect download
from Citibank is often 12-48 hrs later than what you can deduce from the
website. It's like the alerts you can set with Citibank: You get the
alert at least 1 day after the balance has dropped below the limit you have
set. To me that's close to useless, although it may be inherent in the way
the banking system is set up. I would like to know today that today my
balance has dropped to below the limit, so I can do something about it,
without triggering the "ready credit" or whatever the overdraft protection
is called.
--
Best regards
Han
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