AceMoney Forums

Has anyone gotten Charles Schwab & Co to work with Acemoney.

Schwab tells me...

"We do not need to activate a thing on our end. the database is open and ready for you to use.
Simply tell Quicken you have an account at Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.
Give Quicken your Schwab log in ID and password, and that's it."

but so far I find it does not work. I saw someone (I think in the Yahoo forum) advised taking out the "hyphen" from the account number, but that didn't solve the problem.

Thx

Did you tell Schwab that you are not using Quicken? AceMoney uses the OFX protocol (commonly knows as "Direct Connect") to download transactions, and although I do see "Charles Schwab & Co., INC" included in AceMoney's list of OFX banks, the details are different than I see listed here. You might want to contact MechCAD Support and ask if their Schwab info is up-to-date.

RLebeau wrote:Did you tell Schwab that you are not using Quicken?.

No, but why would that matter? Schwab doesn't directly support Acemoney. My understanding is Acemoney can emulate various versions of Quicken.

RLebeau wrote:I do see "Charles Schwab & Co., INC" included in AceMoney's list of OFX banks, the details are different than I see listed here. You might want to contact MechCAD Support and ask if their Schwab info is up-to-date

Acemoney doesn't continuously check such things?

The info I got from Acemoney support was not useful, as noted above. It advised me to request Schwab to give me access, and Schwab told me I already had it -- nothing needed to be turned on.

MotoMatic wrote:No, but why would that matter? Schwab doesn't directly support Acemoney.

There is a FAQ on MechCAD's site about that:

My bank tells me that it does not support AceMoney, how come it is in your Online Setup list?

Schwab may not support (or know) AceMoney by name specifically, but it does support OFX (by virtue of the fact that it has an OFX server). If you could get Schwab's current OFX URL and ID numbers, they could be plugged into AceMoney (manually, or submitted to MechCAD).

MotoMatic wrote:My understanding is Acemoney can emulate various versions of Quicken.

It can report different Quicken client version numbers in the OFX messaging, at least. But Quicken's support for OFX isn't very good. In fact, Quicken even uses a custom variant of OFX known as QFX (commonly known as "Web Connect"):

Quicken Support - Open Financial Exchange (OFX)

Quicken wrote:Quicken uses a variant of the OFX protocol, QFX, to update your financial information. Your financial institution must support QFX in order to update your accounts in Quicken.

AceMoney can emulate a Quicken client when talking to an OFX (Direct Connect) server, but AceMoney does not support QFX (Web Connect) as a communication protocol, but it can import downloaded QFX files, at least.

Make sure Schwab understands that you are asking about "Direct Connect" (OFX), not "Web Connect" (QFX).

MotoMatic wrote:Acemoney doesn't continuously check such things?

AceMoney itself, no. But MechCAD does release updates to their database of OFX servers once in awhile, but more times then not it seems to be due to customer complaints when a given bank stops working in AceMoney, or when customers request a new bank be added. MechCAD does not provide a UI in AceMoney for users to make those changes manually (I am working on a utility app that does though, amongst other things).

MotoMatic wrote:The info I got from Acemoney support was not useful, as noted above. It advised me to request Schwab to give me access, and Schwab told me I already had it -- nothing needed to be turned on.

Clearly AceMoney is having an issue communicating with Schwab over OFX, or else you would not be here asking about it. You need to go back to MechCAD and have them troubleshoot the issue deeper.

Clearly AceMoney is having an issue communicating with Schwab over OFX, or else you would not be here asking about it. You need to go back to MechCAD and have them troubleshoot the issue deeper"

I will, but so far the support doesn't seem very impressive. You're saying Ace does not monitor it's own support forum (here)?

If Ace says it supports Schwab it should -- you know -- support it, and all the periodic testing that implies.

MotoMatic wrote: You're saying Ace does not monitor it's own support forum (here)?

AceMoney is the product, MechCAD is the company.

MechCAD does not have much of a presence here, or on the AceMoney Yahoo Group either. They are primarily for peer-to-peer support. MechCAD does monitor them, but their responses tend to be minimal. Official support from MechCAD itself is primarily provided through the MechCAD Support website instead.

MotoMatic wrote: If Ace says it supports Schwab it should -- you know -- support it, and all the periodic testing that implies.

That would, of course, require MechCAD to have accounts with Charles Schwab to test with, or at least for Schwab to provide a testing sandbox. I don't know if Schwab does or not, but I'm sure most banks do not provide that. AceMoney only support OFX for downloading transactions, not QFX. OFX is an open standard, so conforming banks should work with AceMoney. But there are always exceptions and quirks to deal with.