Ability to sync Amazon/Major Retailer/Big Box order details [edited] (1 Merged Vote)

sasav

Having tested that app and many others upon the Mint shutdown, I can confidently say it does a large number of things well, and its interface was the best among all of the competitors I tried. That doesn't excuse that they're only available on one platform, which is ridiculous for 2024. It also doesn't change that censoring their name in this forum is very anti-consumer. I stuck with Simplifi for the price point, but there are features from two of the other big ones I would switch for if the price was right, and it's silly that we can't discuss the features that those competitors have.

RobWilk

You can ask for specific features. Even if you suggested "app x has this feature", it might be against copyright law for simplifi to go look at that other app and copy that feature exactly as they had it. Best to just ask for the feature and not mention where you saw it.

Braidedscull

All transactions from Amazon, Walmart, and eBay are categorized as "Shopping." in Quicken and Simplify.
Since these large online retailers are accumulating shopping activity across many different categories, correcting this activity requires a lot of manual effort. There are numerous problems in the process:
1) Subscription Fees are not easily discerned from shopping transactions
2) To correct the categorization, two separate screens need to be opened to identify the expenses against the purchased items
3) Transaction costs do not match the list on the online retailer since
3a) Taxes are not listed in the order history
3b) Multiple items may be purchased within a single order
4) When multiple Items are purchased, the transaction may require a cost-split

I am sure your users have experienced several other hassles, and the security/legal agreements to patch this problem are not minuscule. However, please add the appropriate API links to synchronize purchases from the large online retail shopping aggregators with spend categorization.

skadauke

I would also love this feature. I understand that sometimes the way Amazon splits things up doesn't make sense, and splitting things up automatically could be tricky.

What I think would be easy and already incredibly useful would be if Simplify added to the Note a listing of all the items that are part of the relevant order or part of the order, without trying to do any automatic splitting or merging.

Thanks for considering!

LongMeadow

Sorting out amazon/ebay/walmart expenses is by far the bulk of my time I spend on manual data entry on Simplfi.

I would gladly give Quicken all my passwords and let them harvest my shopping data if they could write an API to get me out of this time suck! I would also consider migrating my data to another expense tracking platform if someone else develops this feature first, but I don't want to go through all that trouble if I don't have to. Please consider this feature request, Quicken!

fightmilk

Upvoted. This is a must have for me to switch back from competitor.

I want to see product details imported into the notes section of each Amazon transaction it matches to. One competitor utilizes a community made extension to accomplish this.

Simplifi's advantage vs competitor would be that you can actually view notes as a column in the transaction table, instead of hovering over a tooltip or clicking on the transaction itself in the transaction list.

I really just use the net income feature and then browse through transactions, so this would be a huge help.

asheroto

If the Simplifi devs would open up the API for access, there'd be rapid feature enhancement like this. They would not necessarily even have to develop the functionality themselves because the Simplifi developer community could help create it. 😊

Coach Kristina

Hello @asheroto,

There is an existing feature request for a public API. If you haven't already done so, you may want to take a look and add your vote. Ideas that get enough votes may be implemented in the future!

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/683/public-api-edited

Thank you!

SRC54

Part of the fun of my week is decyphering Amazon charges. 😁 It is fine if they just charge the total to your credit card and you can download the invoice but sometimes they split it into 2-3 charges and you have to figure out how much is sales tax and to which charge the points were credited! It is almost as if Amazon loves to puzzle us.

That said, it seems lately they are getting better at not doing that. I guess we should complain more to Amazon.

SomeVashonFolks

Connecting our Amazon account to Simplifi would help immensely for those like me who mostly shop online. Simplifi could then accurately categorize most of the purchases.

Amanza

I agree - adding auto-categorization could greatly help - Amazon is the second largest retailer and accounts for 60% of all online purchases, so at least automating things here would apply to a lot of people and purchases and likely most of the work related to purchases given most other things are already automated.

FS1

[removed] has this ability. Would be great to have it here.

FinTechMan

+1 Very interested in Simplifi getting connected with bigbox stores and online retailers to pull in their transactions.

Katsei

It’s s been a long time waiting for Quicken to classify the Amazon purchases. For all the other robust features that Quicken has in place, they are missing a core piece for their consumer’s financial literacy. I buy enough from Amazon it is making me think it’s time to find an alternative to Quicken if they cannot get this feature in place. It makes the software look antiquated. Quicken can you post an update? When can we see this update released?

Leousnl

[Removed - 3rd party software] does it… and has a nicer way of (automatically) showing transactions and categories. Come on Simplifi… spend some time and money on this. And add a copy feature. And when you split transactions the ability to make some a transfer and not include in reports (like mortgage… interest (reportable) and mortgage payoff (not an expense but transfer to lower the mortgage principal).

indolering

While I have seen this feature at a competitor, it never worked. I know of another competitor that offers a browser extension — which means something is going on with Amazon to make this difficult.

Still, a scraper would be better than nothing. My wishlist:

Amazon

Costco

Walmart

Shopify

Adding any of these would make my life much easier.

Gibsongirl547

in other budgeting apps, they’ve had a plug in that shows the details for each Amazon transaction so one can quickly see the purchased items and vendors plus easily split the categories based on the item level transaction data. Is this in the pipeline?

jenniferh

So much of my time spent on the app is categorizing my Amazon purchases so this would be an absolute game changer! Please make this happen

TiggerTrainer

This would be amazing, but I recognize that this is complex. Really it is just an Amazon account reconciliation that would reconcile all Amazon transactions on their website to the transactions in Simplifi. Allowing easy identification and splits for activity.

SRC54

I have an Amazon and a Walmart account, and wish so I could be free of both of them. 🤣

Max1223

I used to think this was a nice to have until I used another product that does this. It's a really nice feature to have.

Bmax1985

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/62196#Comment_62196

[removed - no soliciting]

Max1223

Sorry, but do an internet search, this board will redact if I write the competitors name. fyi it works, but a little spotty, but I'll take over nothing.

Flopbot

I’m finally breaking down and voting for this. I spent 20 minutes earlier today trying to reconcile 7 Amazon transactions versus my wife’s Amazon account; I could only figure out 3 of them. Amazon has to be there worst company when it comes to the way they charge you. Once we bought one (1) shirt in one (1) transaction. Amazon split it into two (2) payments. It was as if we got charged separately for the sleeve. ANYTHING would help.

EL1234

when it gets really complicated I go into amazon's account settings and request an excel file of my orders and charges. That helps me figure out the weird stuff.

Flopbot

Good idea @EL1234 . I never thought of that.

EL1234

It takes a few minutes to receive the file but it has proved very helpful when my detective work fails! I try to stay on top of my transactions (categorizing them 2-3 times a week) so that it doesn't build up, that really helps also.

Max1223

There is another ask in a different string about the ability to scan receipts in this forum so not proposing in this string. While this doesn't really help the Amazon problem, scanning receipts DOES work and is a huge time saver. I've used this on a different platform. It creates actual splits and add notes to each split. QS would have to consider to implement both or consider a different method of receipt scanning.