Missing transactions and a frustrating Help Center interaction

pst

I have been trusting Simplifi as the one pane of glass for all my financial transactions for years, now. Recently, I realized that some transactions appeared on my bank statement but they were missing from Simplifi. Furthermore, the recurring transaction reminders for these transactions had disappeared. Out of 3 transactions on a checking account with the same date and same amount, only one was visible on Simplifi.

(because reminders disappeared, my hunch has been that the transactions once made it to Simplifi but were then erroneously deduped!? into a single transaction)

I reached out to customer service. The first level of AI-powered discussions was not helpful. I then got hold of a Coach. Their first instruction was to add the missing transactions manually. This struck me as missing the point. Then we checked that the bank connection was working (it was, I had just reset it on my own). I tried a few times to help the coach realize there was a problem but it came down to this:

• if missing transactions, add them manually
• if connection doesn't work, reset connection

No matter how hard I pushed for an investigation of why my transactions were missing, it wouldn't happen. No escalation, no explanation. I did however get the feeling that the conversation was over before we even got to a common understanding of the situation.

I have to confess, if I can't trust Simplifi to show me all the transactions or at least to have some level of ownership as to what transactions might be missing and why, I'm not sure if I can trust the app. If I can't trust my central financial app, what's the point of paying for it?

So, how has been your own experience? How do you deal with this? Do you use another service to centralize your account transactions?

Am I naive in thinking I can trust this service?

pst

I have to add: the mystery of recurring transaction reminders was never looked into. Two problems. No resolution.

SRC54

Hi @pst. Well I wouldn't trust any application 100%. I tend to trust but verify. 😀 I admit I download my transactions daily and for the accounts I have that are not connected or don't download pending transactions — they are legion — I enter those transactions manually. I then check periodically to make sure they have cleared. Normally, if they don't clear in a day or two, there's been a mismatch and I hunt it down.

I am retired so I have time to do this. Before I retired though, I would spend Saturday morning reviewing everything and fixing whatever needed fixing. With my main checking account, I use the bank site to verify as well since that is my account with the most transactions. I check it daily.

One thing you can do with your accounts is when you get a statement, you can choose the transactions for that timeframe and Simplifi should show you the total amount. You can then check it with the statement. It should equal. You can also choose all the transactions for an account and the sum should equal your balance. It's a bit cumbersome, but in your case, it might be worth doing.

With my connected accounts, I almost never end up with a transaction that didn't download. That happens once or twice per year. (It was American Express last year.) So if this is happening more often, it might be something with a particular bank and its connection. If this is primarily one account, it might be worth looking into another bank.

I know for busy people, Simplifi has the promise of making this much more automated and quicker so you can get on with more important things. I think AI is only going to get better (and perhaps more dangerous in the future).

Very little of this probably helps. Hang in there. I imagine you'll get some support here in a bit, and it may take some time, but they'll track down the problem. Good luck.

Coach Jon

Hello @pst,

Thanks for reaching out! To better clarify how our resolution process works, when looking to resolve/investigate an issue, we generally need to be able to see that the issue is currently ongoing. In the case of the missing transactions, if it is not continually happening, I can see why a support representative would suggest adding the missing transactions manually in order to fix the current problem of the transactions not existing within Quicken Simplifi. We would generally start investigating into the issue further when we can verify that this is an ongoing issue with missing transactions.

As for the recurring series, if you go to Bills & Income > All Recurring, are they not visible there? Let us know!

-Coach Jon

DryHeat

@pst

I check my QS transactions every few months to see if they total up the same as the bank. (I calculated and created a "Starting Balance" in each account when I moved to QS so that I would be able to do this.)

This time I found that QS was $100 off. Going back through the transactions, I found that a $100 ATM transaction from April 22 was present in the bank's records but did not show up in QS.

Nothing is every 100% certain, but I'm pretty sure I didn't delete any such transaction. I have no idea why it wasn't in QS. I added it manually, but there is little else I can do.

pst

Thank you everyone for your help.

@Coach Jon , if I go to Bills & Income > All Recurring, the series is there. The bar chart shows that May doesn't account for what was expected but there is no iteration of the series that is waiting. It just says there's an upcoming transaction.

Coach Jon

Hello @pst,

Thanks for confirming! It sounds like the missing recurring transactions may have been linked to the transactions that are missing as well. Since the series itself is still there, you should be able to just recreate the transactions manually, and then I would suggest keeping a lookout going forward for if this occurs again, and to let us know if it does, so that we can establish a pattern if there is one.

-Coach Jon