Are scheduled refunds supposed to show up in Spending Plan before received?

DryHeat

I sent something back to Amazon and created my first Refund reminder indicating I expect a refund to my credit card 2 days from now.

A transaction for that Reminder already shows up as a positive number in the Spending Plan under "Other spending," even though Amazon has not issued a refund and there is no such transaction in my credit card account.

When I look at the Transactions list under "Other spending" it shows a transaction "Pending" on the credit card, but when I look at the credit card account in Simplifi the transaction isn't there.

Is this how it is supposed to work? Up to now, "Other spending" has only shown transactions that have actually shown up in my real world accounts.

DannyB

I use the Refund Tracker occasionally and don't remember this happening in the past, but I noticed this behavior when I set up a refund reminder for our a recent transaction that we are expecting a refund for. QS has created a pending transaction in "Other Spending" but as you point out, there is no actual transaction in my bank account for this expected refund.

The support article seems to indicate that when a refund is set up, QS will create a reminder for that refund and I'm not seeing the reminder in the Projected Cash Flow scrolling list of upcoming/(past due) recurring income/expense bar where I would expect it.

I'm wondering if this is a bug.

DryHeat

@DannyB "I'm not seeing the reminder in the Projected Cash Flow scrolling list…"

Weird… I actually do see the reminder in the Projected Cash Flow scrolling list on the credit card account where I expect the refund to land. Also in the combined list of Reminders above the Transaction Activity list under Banking and in the Reminders under Bills & Income.

In other words, it acts just like any other reminder in that respect.

Maybe this is "by design," as they say. Other reminders for bills that haven't yet been paid also show up in the spending plan. So maybe they are treating this just like a bill.

But… labeling it as "Pending" is a bit misleading. Usually that means it has hit the bank but has not yet been paid/accepted/whatever. This hasn't hit the bank and may never do so.

DannyB

@DryHeat

The reminder does show up on the Bills & Income/Overview page in the "All past due" section. I'm not seeing it listed as a past due reminder in the account it's set for though.

There was an incident a couple of months ago where I had a pending transaction showing in an account that I couldn't figure out where it came from or why it remained even though the actual transaction had be cleared at my bank and in QS. It turned out that I had a refund reminder that I had forgotten about and was still "active." When I deleted the reminder the pending transaction went away.

DryHeat

@DannyB

Well, the refund just came through on the credit card and when I matched it to the pending refund it worked as I would have expected. The refund went to the Completed list under Reports | Refund Tracker and the transaction shows up where I would expect it in the credit card account and in Planned Spending. All ok.

The only disconcerting thing is that, before the transaction shows up, the refund appears in the Planned spending list as "Pending." That makes it look like it has already hit the credit card account, but it hasn't.

It would be more consistent if they used the "Upcoming" label that they use for income, bills, and subscriptions that haven't been paid.