Spending Plan Linking to Transaction Issues.

RonH2K

Help, PLEASE?! I've messaged support and even spoke to one support person and the "solutions" offered simply do not work.

ISSUE: I have two items on my Spending Plan… "Vet Visit Cats - $200" and "Vet Visit Dogs - $200" (Examples). I took all of the furry creatures to the vet in ONE visit, generating ONE credit card transaction. Simplifi does NOT allow you to Link multiple Spending Plan items to a single transaction.

GOAL: I want "clear" the Spending Plan items, so they show with a Paid status by linking them to the appropriate transaction or however to get them to a Paid status.

SOLUTIONS OFFERED: The first support person wanted me to simply delete my existing Spending Plan items (Series) and create a new one with everything in one Spending Plan item. This doesn't work for me as next year I want to be reminded about these expenses in my Spending Plan and will very likely handle them separately.

The second support person recommended that I create manual transactions to link to the separate Spending Plan entries. This sounded like it might work, however when I try to Link the transaction, the manual entries don't actually show in the list for transactions to select… no matter what I do to try and find them. (I've marked them as Cleared, everything.)

How can I get these two individual Spending Plan items to show at Paid???

Thank you!

Coach Natalie

@RonH2K, thanks for reaching out to the Community!

To clarify, a single transaction downloaded from the bank, correct? If so, I would personally do the following:

1. Link the single downloaded transaction to one of the Recurring Reminders in the Spending Plan so it shows as "Paid".
2. Delete the other Recurring Reminder since it does not apply.
3. If you want to track the individual expenses in the transaction, you can create Categories for each of the items (one for Vet: Cats and one for Vet: Dogs): https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/4378958-managing-categories-and-subcategories#h_40fd563b84
4. You can then split the transaction to the applicable amounts for each Category: https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/3348103-managing-transactions-in-quicken-simplifi#h_51a8de7322

This will allow you to have the reminder show as "paid" in the Spending Plan with the final total amount, where the amount for the 2nd reminder will no longer be counted (or showing as past due) since it was removed. Splitting the transaction will allow you to track the individual expenses. Deleting a single reminder instance will not impact the Recurring Series itself, so the next instance will still take place as scheduled. And this method will reflect what happened in real life.

I would not recommend creating a new Recurring Series and messing up your originals, or creating manual transactions to link to the individual reminders. I definitely suggest trying to keep things as simple and close to real life as possible. However, if you do want to keep the manual transactions to link to the reminders, they have to be linked from the transaction directly, which is why you don't see them in the transaction list: https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/4436514-linking-transactions-to-reminders#h_1200fab18f

If you go this route, though, make sure the manual transactions aren't left as "pending" or they will impact your account balance: https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/4202003-how-to-resolve-balance-discrepancies#h_eb8aefc16b

Let us know what ends up working for you!

RonH2K

Thank you so much, Coach Natalie! I ended up taking your advice to link to one of the Spending Plan items and then simply delete the other. I think I was getting hung up on what the value of the Spending Plan items really were… they are just reminders, really. I had already Split the transaction to appropriately "track" the spending "buckets", so I was good there.

Of special note, thank you for pointing out that the Cleared manual transactions would throw off the account balance. I hadn't caught that and promptly got those out of there and ended their reign of havoc. LOL.

Thank you, again!

DannyB

Hi @RonH2K

Sounds like you have this resolved! I'm wondering if another solution would be to change these expenses from recurring series bills to (a) Planned Spending category/categories. I these are set monthly amounts, I can see using a recurring series. If the amount spent each month varies, the Planned Spending section would be another solution.