From: "Glenn Meadows" 

Ellen,

Typically, at the company you're payings site (Dept. store, CC, Utilities),
the option for auto pay IS to pay the full amount on a specific date
(typically the due date) with no option on your part to modify that date or
amount.

IF you use the service that your bank provides (Bank of America is free, as
are many of the national banks now), YOU setup the payees, by either
picking from their already established EFT hookups (electronic funds
transfer, which they've typically done for all the local and national
accounts like CC's, Utilities, department stores), and for others, you
enter the info for sending a check.

Then, when you're ready to budget/assign payments, YOU pick who, the
amount, and the day to send the payment.  And, if I recall when I was at B
of A, you could pick which account you had with them to pull the payment
from.  You then submitted the list for payment, and those checks became
"Pending".  At any time up to the "pay" date you've
selected, you can go back in and modify, cancel, change dates to earlier or
later, your call.  Or, you can choose to pay nobody that way that month.

It is great for constant recurring payments, like mortgage.  Most banks are
now moving to some form of Free, sometimes coupled with other things, for
instance, you need to have one Electronic Deposit per month (I get paid
that way on the 5th and 20th except when those dates are on a weekend, then
it's the Friday before the weekend date).

The plus on the bank side, even though they're paying the stamps and costs
to process the payments that aren't EFT's, the DO debit your checking
account the day that they mail the checks, so they're getting the float for
those few days.  In those instances, use the bank for those that are EFT's,
and send your own checks.  Depending on you account balance, and if it's an
interest bearing account, I doubt that the "interest" would be
worth the extra effort. I know for me, it is much handier to have the bank
send all the checks out.

--

Glenn M.
"Ellen K."  wrote in message
news:jb9sq1du4iloil4vlqkkupe84v010p7jrh{at}4ax.com...
> I'm with you.  And anyway IIRC there was a scandal awhile back where
> Intuit was using the information in customers' electronic checkbooks.
>
> I use a homegrown thing to manage my money.  I can see income and
> expenses without regard to payment method (cash/check/debit card/credit
> card) while still maintaining running balances for individual accounts.
> Have budgeting built in so I know in advance what to pay each week, plus
> other custom reports.  Don't have many bills.  Pay credit cards online,
> everything else by check.  Last time I looked at electronic payment
> options for other stuff it seemed inflexible, i.e. you had to sign up to
> pay automatically with no chance to review the charges or anything --
> should probably check again, I would just as soon pay everything
> electronically, although I get my checks free and don't pay any service
> charges, so my only cost is the stamps.
>
>
> On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:09:46 -0500, "Geo"
 wrote in
> message :
>
>>"Gregg N"  wrote in message
>>news:43a9869d$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>>
>>> Every time you do an online update, the first thing it does is retrieve
>>> software and financial institution updates for the Quicken program from
>>> Intuit. These updates can disable the online functionality.
>>
>>I'm not sure if I would want something like that. I like the idea that my
>>electronic checkbook is separate from the internet functionality.
>>
>>Geo.
>>
>

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