Linking Transactions to Bill Reminders
In a prior discussion I started, it was mentioned by another user that linking a bill/reminder to a transaction has been broken for quite some time, and that we need to start at the transaction and link it to a bill/reminder.
Today, I had a pending transaction auto populate that is the utility bill I paid today for my primary residence. This bill isn't due until the 28th, but I went ahead and linked it from the transaction. As usual, it didn't show as paid, and remained in the queue for future payment even though it was paid
For some reason I decided to unlink it, and try to link it from the reminder to the transaction. It worked! It not only worked, the bill shows as paid and is no longer in the queue for payment on the 28th.
Anyway, I thought y'all would like to know. Hopefully it wasn't a fluke.
I have another bill that I paid today for a rental property that hasn't hit my bank yet, when it does I'll follow up with the info on that transaction.
Comments
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Here is an update.
The utility bill that I was able to link to a transaction from the bill has un-linked itself 2 times since I initially linked it from the bill. When it has done this, the transaction dates have also changed to the date the refresh occurs. This transaction has yet to be cleared by the bank.
The other transaction for a utility bill on a rental property finally hit my bank this morning as pending. Simplifi populated this transaction as pending, and I was able to link the bill from the bill to the transaction.
In the past, I have been unable to link from a bill to a transaction. I could only link from the transaction to the bill. The ability to do this is great because the bill also falls out of the queue when linking from the bill to the transaction when the bill is for a future date. Doing it the other way around, from the transaction to the bill, required me to change the due date of the bill to the date of the transaction for it to fall out of the queue. Otherwise, it would sit there until its due date even though it was paid.
2 bugs still occurring -
Un-linking on its own is still occurring as I have reported in the past
The dates of pending transactions are changing with daily refresh
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I'm not sure about this because I usually manually enter transactions (in some cases) before they download - - but my understanding from a recent reading is that if the transaction downloads -from- the bank, you should be able to link from the bill to the transaction. If it is manual, then you have to link from the transaction to the recurring reminder. That does seem odd to me, but it's how they (coaches, from memory) explained it recently.
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Rob Wilkens1 -
@RobWilk This has been my experience as well, so I quit manually entering transactions. Less frustrating that way.
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Circling back to report this as a bug.
With a downloaded transaction that is pending that is also something in my list of bills/reminders, I can go to the bill and link it to the transaction. This is great, and seems to be working as intended.
However, if this transaction does not clear overnight, the date is changed to the current date and the bill is unlinked.
I'll link it again, and if the transaction clears overnight all is well.
If it does not clear overnight, the date is changed to the current date and the bill is unlinked again.
Thanks in advance for looking into this.
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Hello @TheReal702,
Thanks for reaching out. It is definitely strange that the transaction is becoming unlinked while the transaction is still pending. Can you provide an example of this occurring within Quicken Simplifi? Additionally, is this happening with a single bank/account, or multiple accounts?
-Coach Jon
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Hello @Coach Jon
This is occurring only with my BofA checking account, which is the account I use to pay monthly bills.
I'm not sure I understand what you are asking for in terms of an example, but this occurred most recently with 2 different utility bills.
From memory, they were both paid on the 21st of January, then populated overnight as pending in both my bank account and in Simplifi. At this time I linked them both. I believe it was on the 23rd, they still showed as pending, came unlinked and the pending date changed to the 23rd. I linked then again. The same thing then happened on the 24th, and I linked them again. On the morning of the 25th, they had both cleared my bank, the dates had reverted back to the 21st, and remained linked in Simplifi.
If you're looking for something else, I'd be happy to try and provide what you need.
Thanks very much.
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Hello @TheReal702,
So from what I understand, the transaction itself changed the pending date multiple times, which caused the transaction to become unlinked. If you wait for the transaction to leave the pending status and then link it to the reminder, does the same issue occur?
-Coach Jon
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I have not waited for the transaction to clear, then tried to link it from the reminder. In the past, this has not worked and I've been told that method is broken.
But for clarification, what I am reporting here is that I am linking the reminder to the pending transaction. I have only recently discovered this is possible.
All of the previous times I have linked a transaction to a reminder and they have stayed linked. However, the reminder stays in the queue until its due date as unpaid. For example, a bill/reminder with a due date of the 15th, that is paid/cleared on the 10th, will stay in the queue to be paid unless I change the due date to the date the transaction cleared. This seems like odd behavior too, but is separate from the bug I am reporting in this thread, and I believe I have reported this behavior as well.
I hope I am not making this more confusing. 😁
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Hello @TheReal702,
Thanks for the reply. Is this issue unique to a particular reminder or transaction, or do you see it with multiple? If you can provide screenshots showing the Transaction Detail view of the transaction and the Reminder you are trying to link, this would help too. Be sure to also get a screenshot of the Transaction Detail view once the transaction is linked as well so we can verify it is linked correctly.
-Coach Jon
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This is not unique to a single transaction, here is a screenshot of the 2 recent transactions I'm referring to in this post. They have now both cleared and are linked as you can see. If you need more info, please let me know.
And here are screenshots of the transaction details for both.
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Hello @TheReal702,
Thank you for the response. I would have you try a couple of things. First, I would see if deleting and recreating the recurring series works to resolve the issue with linking to the pending transaction. If that does not work, I would then have you wait for the transaction to clear before linking to the reminder to see if the cleared transaction is actually just a new downloaded transaction. This may be why the pending transaction is not retaining the link.
Could you also provide a video showing what is happening when you try to manually link if the steps above do not help?
-Coach Jon
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I'll give it a try next month when these and other bills come due.
But, the beauty of linking them from the reminder to the transaction when they populate as pending removes them from the reminder queue. If I wait for them to clear, linking them from the reminder to the transaction is broken. I can only link them from the transaction to the reminder, and then the reminder stays in the queue until its due date, which requires a manual change to the due date to get it out of the queue.
To wait for them to clear can take several days with BofA, but at this time that may be the only answer.
As for providing a video, man, I'm just not that savvy.
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Hello @TheReal702,
I understand. When you can try out those steps I sent let us know how that goes!
-Coach Jon
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Will do, and thanks for looking at this for me.
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I can confirm that this feature is broken.
I paid a few bills on the 1st. Each of them populated as pending during a refresh. I linked them from the bill to the transaction successfully. On the 2nd they unlinked, so I linked them again. On the 3rd they unlinked, so I linked them again. Today is the 4th and these transactions cleared overnight. They stayed linked.
I also deleted and recreated one of the bill series and it didn't fix the issue.
The issue for me is that bills don't stay linked while in a pending state when manually linked. Oddly enough, they seem so stay linked if they auto link. Another mystery is why some auto link and some don't?
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Hello @TheReal702,
Thanks for following up. I am glad they were able to link after all, even if not at first. It sounds like the cleared transaction has been downloaded as a new transaction from the bank. The next time this happens to you, can you please grab a few examples showing that they are unlinking while pending for us?
-Coach Jon
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I'll try to do that, but it may take some time for it to happen.
I realized over the weekend that I have had no issues with one bill that I have set up using the payees auto-pay feature. The payee debits my checking account on the due date, then shows as pending on my banks website, then populates as pending in Simplifi and links with the bill automatically. It will normally clear overnight and all is well. This is all performed like magic with no glitches.
For this reason, I set all of my bills to auto-pay as a test for the month of February to see if Simplifi will handle them the same way.
I'm not sure why, but I've been quite stubborn when it comes to auto-pay for bills.
Fingers crossed.
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