A Tale of Two Checking Accounts

SRC54

Here is one of the challenges that apps such as Simplifi face.

I have 2 checking accounts and each bank has its peculiarities.

Take Capital One 360 Checking (Please!). It immediately downloads and clears Debit transactions with Pin. It doesn't download Pending Transactions, which is fine. I just put them in myself. Normally it takes two days for Pending Transactions to post but on the morning that they post Capital One updates the balance first and then clears the transactions a few hours later! That means that my balance is wrong for a few hours. Or I can clear the transaction myself to bring the account balance back to what it should be. Of course, I could just wait a few hours. No biggie really except that I also use Quicken Classic and it handles it differently so I know which transaction is the culprit, so I just go to Simplifi and clear it there.

Now for my main checking account at a State Bank. It too takes 2 days for pending transactions even those with the Debit Card and Pin. BUT it downloads pending transactions. On the first day everything works great, it downloads and matches any I might have already put in. On the second day, it downloads the pending transaction again; however, it is likely to duplicate the transaction but with that day's date instead of the day before. Merging is often not available. My solution is to delete the duplicate. The next day when it downloads the cleared transaction, it usually matches it just fine. Don't ask me why Merge is so hit and miss with this account cause I don't know. I troubleshot it with Coach Natalie a couple of years ago and for a while it worked better, but now is back to this behavior.

In Quicken Classic, no pending transactions are downloaded so I have no trouble at all with the State Bank. With Capital One, I get a warning that my balance and the bank's balance don't match. I just clear the missing transaction, and it gets fixed in the next download.

I can't really blame Quicken or Simplifi for this. Banks are so stubborn in the way that they do things. I see no reason for my State Bank to change the date of a pending transaction or to redownload them (Simplifi interprets it obviously as a new transaction). I have asked the Bank not to do that. They are oblivious (really they don't care.)

I am sure my banks are not the only ones with such idiosyncrasies. Would love to hear about others.

Flopbot

@SRC54

Interesting observations. I’ve largely lucked out with my personal CHK/SAV accounts (Flagstar) as they play generally well with Simplifi and download without issue in less than 24 hours. My Chase Freedom - and never find it - CC often downloads in less than 2 minutes!

However, for another account I maintain, that person uses a local CU that takes 2-3 days to appear in Simplifi and, more annoyingly, appends 25 opening characters to each transaction’s downloaded name. Since Simplifi only pulls in the first 30 characters of a downloaded name, it makes Payee Naming Rules impossible to use with just 5 unique characters. I’d really love for this person to switch banks just so it syncs better with Simplifi, but that’s a big ask for most people who have been with the same bank for decades.

Still, if you can, getting all your banks switched to ones that play well with Simplifi, it is glorious! On some level, it comes down to a question of who are you more loyal to?

SRC54

@Flopbot Yes, I agree completely about switching to banks that play well. The problem is Capital One has great interest and the State Bank is conveniently located and pays pretty good as well. But I am always looking for banking nirvana.

I did dump AmEx a while back because they flat out told me they weren't going to support Quicken for their savings accounts. They probably backed down but I left anyhow.

Speaking of a Savings Account, I have one that downloads the interest on the first but doesn't update the balance until later! Annoying.