Workaround for Quicken 2005 inability to use multiple credit cards from a single financial institution

We previously noted a limitation for users with more than one credit card from a single financial institution, introduced in Quicken 2005.

Quicken 2005 allows only one ID number per financial institution (confirmed by Quicken tech support). Therefore, only one credit card per financial institution will download your transactions into Quicken 2005. This causes problems for users with two or more credit cards at the same financial institution."

MacFixIt reader Franklin Tessler reports a potential solution:

"I may have a workaround for users who can't download transactions for two MasterCard accounts into Quicken 2005. If the financial institution's Web site allows you to manually download QIF files for each account, you can import the transactions into his Quicken registers that way. If the site only supports QFX file downloads, you can use QIF Master to convert the transaction files to QIF.

"This requires more steps than doing everything inside Quicken, but I actually prefer it this way, since QIF Master allows me to categorize most transactions automatically. For more information, see my article in the August issue of Macworld."

UPDATE: Intuit spokesperson Chris Repetto has sent us the following clarifications:

• Quicken for Mac has always had a limitation on the number of customer IDs you could have per financial institutions that connect via Direct Connect (one customer ID per financial institution). We did not make any changes in this aspect of the Quicken 2005 product. The customer is either mistaken or figured out a way around this limitation in 2002.
• All Web Connect Financial Institutions (1000 of the 1100 FI's that connect to Quicken for Mac) allow multiple customer ID support.
• Quicken 2005 for Mac did not sunset QIF imports and still supports this format. Quicken 2005 for Windows did however discontinue support of QIF imports.

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