"Appears on your [...] statement as" Text Download Length

Flopbot
Flopbot Superuser, Beta Tester ✭✭✭✭✭
edited November 4 in Managing Your Transactions

I manage a few different Simplifi accounts and each one uses a different bank.

Both of these accounts purchased something at Tractor Supply Company and those transactions sync to Simplifi from different banks.

For bank one, the transaction downloaded as this…

For bank two, the transaction downloaded as this…

Note that the blue "Appears on your […] statement as" text downloads for bank two with 42-ish additional characters which means that I can easily create Payee Renaming Rules. After the ubiquitous "Point Of Sale Withdrawal" text that's appended to EVERY transaction, bank one only downloads an seven additional characters making Payee Renaming Rules not work.

For awhile, I thought this was a universal thing - every bank downloaded this way. However, the screenshots above show that it's on a bank-by-bank basis.

Any thoughts on what - if anything - can be done to get Simplifi to download the full statement description?

[Edited - Removed personal information]

Chris
Spreadsheet user since forever.
Quicken Desktop user since 2014.
Quicken Simplifi user since 2021.

Comments

  • Flopbot
    Flopbot Superuser, Beta Tester ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November 3

    For additional context, sometimes with bank one - not always - the remainder of the "Appears on your […] statement as" text downloads here (see highlighted section of text). Best I can tell, this doesn't occur all the time and has something to do with how Simplifi decides to auto process the transaction when it downloads.

    [Edited - Removed personal information]

    Chris
    Spreadsheet user since forever.
    Quicken Desktop user since 2014.
    Quicken Simplifi user since 2021.

  • Coach Kristina
    Coach Kristina Moderator admin

    Hello @Flopbot,

    This is probably caused by the way the financial institution sends the data to Quicken Simplifi.

    Is the problem being caused by the truncated payee name being too short/generic to be able to create an effective rule? Have you tried creating a payee rule from the transaction, or do you run into the same issue with it being too generic to be useful?

    I can see there is an Idea post asking for a wildcard feature, which might help with issues like this if implemented:

    I look forward to your reply!

    -Coach Kristina

  • Flopbot
    Flopbot Superuser, Beta Tester ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Coach Kristina ,

    Thank you for your help! The problem is being caused by the truncated "Appears on your […] statement as" text - not the Payee name text - being too short to be useful. More specifically, I'm guessing the shortness might not be that big of a deal if the majority of the words that did show up in the truncated text weren't used up by a generic "Point of Sale Withdrawal".

    I'm assuming that the Payee Renaming Rules are triggered based on the "Appears on your […] statement as" text - not the Payee name. It this correct?

    I'm convinced this has something to do with settings on the bank's end. In working on something else, I noticed one interesting bit of information.

    A Meineke transaction cleared as this on July 12, 2023…

    And this on July 21, 2024…

    And this on September 14, 2024…

    Something happened from the banks end between July 12, 2023 - July 21, 2024. I suspect that "thing" is that the CU transitioned to a new DB on April 29, 2024.

    Chris
    Spreadsheet user since forever.
    Quicken Desktop user since 2014.
    Quicken Simplifi user since 2021.

  • RobWilk
    RobWilk Superuser ✭✭✭✭✭

    It looks like the same bank (or credit union), but the wording and length changed. I would think this would be a bank-specific bug report, though i don't know if they'd have to change anything at your bank vs connector.

    I just checked EVERY one one my online accounts in simplifi (except 1 manual account), and they all had full readable names in the 'appears on your statement as'.

    If I had one 'complaint' it's that amazon cuts off transaction detail:

    That was an Apple Watch charger i purchased for travel, but the transaction detail name got cut off, so clearly there is some max limit here.

    -Rob


    Rob Wilkens

  • Coach Natalie
    Coach Natalie Administrator, Moderator admin

    @Flopbot, I believe this topic is best discussed here:

    Many users have reported this type of behavior and have expressed their frustration over not being able to create Transaction Rules and things of that nature for the truncated "Appears on your statement as…" info. Although I'm not personally sure of a way to work around this since the bank is who provides this data, there may be something in the existing Idea post. Regardless, you can share your experience there so it can be reviewed by our product team. You can then follow the Idea post for updates.

    I hope this helps!

    -Coach Natalie

    -Coach Natalie

  • Flopbot
    Flopbot Superuser, Beta Tester ✭✭✭✭✭

    For what its worth, the bank acknowledged that they had some issues to work through related to Quicken; they were picturing Quicken Classic. They didn't sound as knowledgeable about Quicken Simplifi. I contacted the bank on November 15, 2024 with all the documentation I could provide.

    We'll see where it goes…if anywhere.🤞

    Chris
    Spreadsheet user since forever.
    Quicken Desktop user since 2014.
    Quicken Simplifi user since 2021.

  • Jenny T
    Jenny T Member ✭✭

    I've been noticing inconsistent statement descriptions in Simplifi for the same account and same payee. I haven't watched close enough to determine the actual trend. I feel like in some cases the difference is whether I view on mobile or desktop. I also suspect another factor is whether it was a matched transaction (i.e. originally added as a manual transaction) or if it was originally imported from the bank.

    For example, my transaction from 11/21 shows like this: Appears on your Checking statement as Market on Nov 22, 2024.

    While the transaction from 11/19 shows like this: Appears on your Checking statement as Purch 365 MARKET 888 432-3299 TROY MI *****#### 11/19 03:31 on Nov 20, 2024.

    In this example, these are both from desktop and are transactions from the same week. While I understand that changes on the bank side can impact this, I am not convinced that is what is happening in this case. I will continue to watch this and see if I can get enough information to support reporting an issue.

  • Flopbot
    Flopbot Superuser, Beta Tester ✭✭✭✭✭

    Interesting @Jenny T , do let us know what you find. I haven't noticed that level of variation to the downloaded payee names with any of my banks. My variations are all attributable to a bank software change; downloaded one way before, downloaded another way the day after. Since you've noticed changes within the same week, that pretty much rules that problem out in your case.

    Chris
    Spreadsheet user since forever.
    Quicken Desktop user since 2014.
    Quicken Simplifi user since 2021.

  • RobWilk
    RobWilk Superuser ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Jenny T If you could find a difference (that is, what makes it different), that would be useful I'm sure for them to report this as an actual bug (and possibly get fixed!). There is a weekend skeleton crew watching the forums on the weekend (I think usually @Coach Kristina ) but the regular weekday coaches are more likely to be the ones reporting it if you find out what's going on. Thanks for noticing this—- if true, this would help more than just you.

    One question: Are both charges on the same credit card/bank? That may affect things too, but if not, yes, I'd say you're definitely onto something.


    Rob Wilkens

  • Jenny T
    Jenny T Member ✭✭

    Same debit card and account in this case. I also confirmed with my husband that he always uses his physical card for this particular purchase and not his digital wallet at all to rule out that difference.

  • Jenny T
    Jenny T Member ✭✭

    This particular payee is a snack kiosk at my husband’s office so I have quite a few transactions. Most of them import from bank first, but sometimes (especially on weekends) I manually enter them since my bank doesn’t include pending transactions. I definitely have transactions from the last couple of weeks that don’t show a statement description at all in mobile. I think these are the merged ones but don’t think I’ve been able to confirm with 100% certainty. I’m seeing similar things for other payees but there is more time between the transactions making it harder to prove a possible issue.

  • Coach Kristina
    Coach Kristina Moderator admin

    Hello @Jenny T,

    To further investigate this on our end, we do need some additional information. Which financial institution is this happening with? Have you compared the inconsistent statement descriptions in Quicken Simplifi with what shows on the financial institution statement or website shows (sometimes, the information the Payee sends to the financial institution can be different, depending on what you buy)? We would also need screenshots showing the inconsistent descriptions in Quicken Simplifi, and showing how those same transactions appear on the financial institution website/statement.

    I look forward to your reply!

    -Coach Kristina

  • Jenny T
    Jenny T Member ✭✭
    edited November 24

    It is Emprise Bank and the descriptions are consistent at the bank. Here are screen shots of three recent transactions.

    On 11/12, the mobile description is missing (and it is indeed a merged transaction); on 11/19 everything matches as it should; and on 11/21, Simplifi does not match the bank.

  • Jenny T
    Jenny T Member ✭✭

    I'm looking at other transactions now and am seeing pretty significant differences between bank and Simplifi on the recent transactions, with Simplifi being extremely truncated and only displaying one word from the description in most cases. The bank descriptions all read similar to the above examples. This one is particularly interesting. This one happens to be a recurring transaction and matched to the recur with no issues. The October recur has the full bank description, however I am new to Simplifi and didn't import transactions until late October (after the recur took place in October).

  • Coach Kristina
    Coach Kristina Moderator admin

    Thank you for your replies @Jenny T,

    I suspect the truncated payees you're seeing is a separate issue. I've been seeing the truncated payees issue in my Quicken Simplifi for a few days (happening with Chase and Capital One for me). There's a separate discussion on that issue:

    Thank you!

    -Coach Kristina