CU balance updates but not transactions, make cash flow projection useless
I'm in my second month of using Simplifi and so far it's been great, in particular because of the projected cash flow. It was specifically this feature that led us to choose it over Monarch.
However over the past few weeks I've had several instances where our main credit union account will show the correct current balance, but will not have the most recent transactions that contribute to that balance. The result being that, for example, the projection has a paycheck that's due to be deposited as part of the projection. However that paycheck has already been deposited and is reflected in the balance. So the balance + the "future" paycheck is causing the projection to show as if the paycheck is double counted…making the projection useless.
Obviously, some of the data is making it to Simplifi from the credit union as the balance is correct down to the penny. The transactions however seem to be delayed. Doing a "refresh" from the side menu doesn't bring the transactions in either. This is all despite the deposit clearly showing on my CU website fine.
Is this a bug or user error somewhere? I've tried changing the account from just balance to pending, but that doesn't affect things as it's just a missing/delayed transaction, while the balance is "live".
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@everydave, thanks for posting to the Community!
To clarify, when you say that the transactions don't download alongside the balance updating, are you talking about a few hours or a few days? Quicken Simplifi will only download transactions every 4-6 hours from the time they appear on your bank's website. Some banks also don't support pending transaction downloads — are you perhaps not seeing the transactions in Quicken Simplifi until they clear on the bank's end or anything along those lines?
Also, did this issue just pop up for you, or have you seen it since starting Quicken Simplifi? What bank is it occurring with? Do you have multiple banks in Quicken Simplifi and this is the only one that has this issue? Or do you have multiple accounts with this bank in Quicken Simplifi and only one of them presents the issue, etc.? Providing these types of details can help us narrow down the issue.
Our support article here goes over troubleshooting missing transactions:
And our support article here goes over troubleshooting balance discrepancies:
One thing you can do to correct the Projected Cash Flow aspect is manually enter the transaction and link it to the Reminder. As long as the transaction is 'Cleared' in Quicken Simplifi it won't impact the balance. You can also enter it as 'Pending' and have the account set to "Bank Balance" so the pending transaction isn't counted toward the balance.
We look forward to your reply!
-Coach Natalie
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Thanks for the response Natalie, I'll do my best to answer your questions:
- it seems to be on the order of hours as I just tried to force a refresh and the transaction has now appeared
- this is a cleared transaction that is on the credit union website
- I've only noticed it in the past week or so. It's possible that it's always been there and I just have caught it in the lag time recently, but for the first month when doing my evaluation I hadn't run into it.
- I've only noticed it with one account on one particular account with one particular credit union, but it's the only one we need the projection for. There are other accounts I can compare with going forward.
- I've looked over the troubleshooting things and as I mentioned tried to see if the balance type changed thing, but none of those got the transaction to show up until I recently tried the refresh again.
To be clear, I'm ok with a delay in data, that's not the issue. The issue is that the balance data and the transaction data aren't synced together, and that's the whole problem that's making the projection messed up. It feels like a bug that the system would take a current balance, but then project based on old transactions, this is what causes the error. I'd much rather have older data that can still project correctly, than mismatched data that clearly causes the projection to be in error.
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@everydave, thanks for providing the requested information!
I understand the issue with the Projected Cash Flow. To clarify, the upcoming items you see are Reminders; they do not become transactions until they are automatically or manually linked to a transaction. Since the delay in downloaded transactions is to be expected, and since it sounds like what you're seeing is within that timeframe, you'd have two options:
- Wait the 4-6 hours for the transaction to download.
- Manually enter the transaction and manually link it to the Reminder. As mentioned above, as long as the transaction is 'Cleared' or you have "Bank Balance" selected for the account, it won't impact the balance. Once the transaction downloads, it will match to the manual entry.
Otherwise, it sounds like your bank provides a balance that includes pending transactions, which is something that would have to be addressed with them directly.
Sorry for not having a better answer, but I hope this helps!
-Coach Natalie
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Adding the transaction and linking will help, thank you for that suggestion.
It's still weird to me though. I've never seen a pending deposit in a checking account before. If it something your support folks would like to chase down, to see if there is a way to make sure balance and transaction timing is a aligned, I'm happy to help with any testing or logging as needed.
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@everydave, it's not that the transaction is pending or cleared on the bank's website, it's that Quicken Simplifi will only receive new transactional data every 4-6 hours. The only exception would be for banks that don't support pending transaction downloads, as users would not see the transactions until they clear the bank, which can sometimes take days. Since the 4-6 hour delay is by design, it sounds like things are working as expected in Quicken Simplifi.
I hope this helps clarify!
-Coach Natalie
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Natalie,
I'm not sure how to communicate the issue more clearly, I'm sorry for that. So I'm going to try again, becuase this came up again this morning and in my pre coffee daze had me a little panic:
- Simplifi is reporting that my back balance, for example, is $12,000
- Simplifi is also projecting that I have $2,000 in charges "coming up"
The problem is the $12,000 that Simplifi is reporting is the correct, real time balance for my bank account that already has the $2,000 in charges accounted for. The consequence is that the projection is now show me as $2,000 less going forward.
The issue isn't so much that the transaction data is delayed. It's that the transaction and balance data does not match which completely invalidates the data. The suggesting you make, to add manual transactions to account for the discrepancy completely undermine the supposed automated nature of Simplif.
Additionally, it's up to me to figure out that they don't match in the first place. There is zero indication that the balance data is newer than the transaction data and that they may be out of alignment. The only thing that triggers this for me is looking at the projection and realizing that "it doesn't feel right". Then I have to go login to my CU website to see what balance and transaction it has there. Having to do all of this negates part of the core function of Simplifi, doesn't it?
A couple of solutions come to mind:
- Don't sync balance data if Simplifi doesn't have same timed transaction data. This eliminate the entire problem. I'd rather have old data than mismatched data
- Allow us to force a transaction update. I recognize that due to your agreements with the aggregators/institutions you might not be able to do this.
- Show balance vs transaction timestamps, or at least alert that they are out of sync (balance was updated an hour ago, but transactions 4 hours ago) that would at least give me a clue that they might be out of alignment and that the projection might be wrong.
Without any change, the options you've given me to simply assume that the balance vs transaction will most likely always be out of sync and thus the projection is useless. Forcing me to then load up my CU website to see if that's actually the case, and if so, to manually enter the transactions….All of which should be unnecessary for an automated system, I would think.
Thanks,
Dave
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Natalie,
A quick follow up. I just tried to make two new manual transactions to link the projected items. But it won't let me link (or even find) them. I tired having the manual transactions as both pending and cleared. I made sure the payee, category and amounts were identical, still no luck.
I'm at a loss here,
Dave
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@everydave, to link a manual transaction to a Reminder, you must do so from the Reminder directly:
As for your other suggestions, the best way to request a change or enhancement to the design of Quicken Simplifi is to create an Idea post for each request so other users can vote on it and our product team can review it.
For your third suggestion, I think this existing Idea post mostly covers it:
I hope this helps!
-Coach Natalie
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Natalie,
I was able to get a manual transaction linked to a reminder. My problem was that I kept going inside the transaction, missing the "link to recurring" on the first "page" of the transaction detail. Then inside it I only saw "mark as recurring" which isn't what I wanted, not realizing there were further options in there. Thank you for that guidence.
And while that does allow me to correct for the discrepancy it still is kind of a big problem: 1st I have to recognize there is a discrepancy, then I have to figure out which transactions are out of sync, then I have to manually create those transaction. This can all be avoided if the balance is only updated with the transactions.
I'll file a feature request, though this really is a bug. But I have little faith considering the sync date/time issue has bene open for almost 5 years and was only "submitted for review" 7 months ago…and it's still not addressed.
This is disappointing.
None the less, thank you for your guidance,
Dave
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