Fidelity Download Saturday Morning changed all Past Payment/Deposits to Excluded from Spending Plan

SRC54

I am not quite sure what happened but after I downloaded my monthly dividends Saturday, I noticed they were correctly categorized according to my rules as payment/deposits but excluded from Spending Plan and Reports. This is taxable income that I spend each month. At first, I thought no problem, I'll just change them to Included in Spending Plan/Reports. Then to my horror, I discovered that every single one back to Dec 2020 had been changed to Excluded.

So now I wonder if this really had to do with the download from Fidelity or was something that QS did with one of the updates this week (Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc). I know that so many on here want all the investments to be excluded although this only makes sense for IRAs and Retirement Plans (which you can exclude in Settings:Accounts anyhow, which is what I do). Regular brokerage accounts are income and need to be in Reports especially the tax reports.

Anyhow, I started trying to see if I could do a bulk edit of all these brokerage transactions. At first it wouldn't work. I would choose the transactions, then the Exclusion box. Since it was already unchecked, I left it unchecked. Nope. Didn't work. So frustrating. In desperation, I kept trying things and finally hit upon, choosing the boxes to exclude, then clicking them again to un-exclude, and that worked! So what would have taken a lot of time ended up taking only a few minutes. Here's a few screenshots of just some from this past month.

Now maybe everyone already knew to do that, but it wasn't intuitive to me, and I searched the Knowledge Base and didn't find anything. I haven't done an exhaustive search of posts here to see if this was mentioned. Is this a bug? It seems to me once you choose Exclusion and you leave the boxes blank, it ought to change them without you clicking them and clicking them again. But at least it works.

As for the mystery of why 4 years of data got changed, I'm stumped. But if it happens to you, here's what you do.

Coach Natalie

@SRC54, thanks for posting about this issue!

Having all of your Investment Transaction Exclusions reset is strange behavior indeed. I wonder if the account itself is set to be excluded from Reports and the Spending Plan. https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/5160316-how-to-exclude-accounts-from-reports-and-the-spending-plan

I'm glad you figured out how to bulk un-exclude! As for having the ability to bulk un-exclude transactions built into the 'bulk edit' options, it doesn't look like this was part of the design —

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/8074/ability-to-bulk-un-exclude-transactions-from-reports-and-the-spending-plan-edited

I hope this helps answer your question!

SRC54

Thanks @Coach Natalie I only changed the ones that are payments. My IRA is set to be excluded but not the Brokerage account. But it does work but it defaults to exclude. I hope this doesn't happen again.

RockLee

Yes, I fumbled across the fact that exclusions have to be toggled twice for the bulk edit, and there is no UI indicator that somehow this is different than before the toggle. They really need three states, no-change, exclude-on, ,exclude-off.

SRC54

Yes. I am stubborn and kept at it trying to find a way. I think others were wanting this so wanted them to know it is possible even if not obvious.

SRC54

@Coach Natalie I checked this evening, and you were right; somehow my brokerage account had been changed to exclude transactions from Spending Plans and Reports. I didn't make this change so I am at a loss to explain it. Needless to say I have changed it back to Include my dividend income in the Spending Plan.

I am a firm believer that ONLY Retirement Accounts should be ignored by default and NOT Brokerage accounts.

Totally Weird! I shall keep a close eye on it.

SRC54

I think I figured out what happened, and it was my fault. I was reading about one of the users who has a Fidelity Cash Management Account and was having a problem with double entries being downloaded. I thought I might know what it was as I have a Fidelity Brokerage Account but I don't have it defined as a cash management account; so to see how it looked if I did, I changed it to Cash Management, and I could see who it treats it as a checking account. However, all my entries looked fine, probably because I clean up as I go anyhow.

So then I changed it back in Simplifi to a Brokerage Account as I prefer it in Investments and it would skew my cash accounts way too much, and I bet when I did Simplifi by default had it ignored everything in Spending Plan and Reports.

This was on Feb 28 and I noticed the change on Mar 1. I could test this, but I don't dare. LOL

Coach Natalie

@SRC54, that makes sense to me, and I wouldn't consider it a bug with the current design. Glad you identified the culprit!