My pending transactions for multiple credit card accounts are showing as positive amounts instead of negative amounts (for charges) and negatives instead of positives (for payments). This wouldn't be a problem as they do eventually post correctly, except when using the "Balance with Pending" option to get a more accurate picture of account balances.
For Example, a credit card account with a $1000 posted balance and a $10 pending transaction shows $990 account balance instead of $1010 as it should when Balance with Pending is turned on.
On a checking/savings account with a $1000 posted balance and a $10 pending debit transaction shows $1010 available instead of $990 as it should when Balance with Pending is turned on.
Once the transaction is fully posted, the positve or negative is corrected. It is only incorrect while the transaction is pending.
Some affected accounts are major banks (ie: CitiBank) and some are from a small credit union.
Simplifi has always done this way - from the first day I subscribed.
Support asks, "Do you have rules that would change categorization to an [expense/deposit] that would affect the amount? No. Rules are accurate and categorize expenses as expenses.
Support says there is no way to fix this, and advises to turn off "Balance with Pending" or users must go in and change the + transaction to a - for the balance to calculate correctly.
This, in my opinion is a significant bug.
Quicken Support points fingers at the bank: "There isn’t a way to change how pending transactions are displayed if they download as positive amounts; this is based on how your bank sends the data. To avoid your balance being thrown off by these pending transactions, you can switch your account to show the “Bank Balance” instead of “Balance with Pending.” This will exclude pending transactions from your balance and should prevent the incorrect display from affecting your totals.
The official answser from Quicken is to turn off a feature that is extremely useful. I am now regretting my decision to move from Quicken Classic to Simplifi even more.
Support confirms, "Unfortunately, if your bank sends pending transactions as positive amounts, Quicken Simplifi will display them that way until they post. This is due to how the bank shares data, not an app issue."
But if millions of customers of CitiBank, of Chase, of Bank of America, and of small private banks or credit unions have this same problem, is it really a Bank problem? With that question, I pushed back a little. "I understand what is happening, but I'm hoping that Quicken Simplifi can change its behavior to show the amounts correctly - even if the bank sends them as positive amounts."
Support responded again, "Once the transactions post, they’ll display correctly as negative. The display sign during pending status is a limitation of bank data formatting, not a calculation error."
I agree that they do post correctly once they are no longer pending, but why not correct the problem with the way pending transactions display instead of giving incorrect balance information in the app (BTW, that is an APPLICATION problem because the bank's balance with pending transactions is accurate on their website). I cannot imagine that the big banks are going to change how they send their data. Anyone want to call CitiBank and the other banks who send data this way and tell them they're wrong? Instead of offering a glint of a solution, Quicken continues to blame the banks.
My response to support was: it just seems that there should be a "reverse the sign on pending transactions for this account" setting somewhere. Why isn't there a way to correct this, either in the application settings, or on the back-end, that this behavior couled be corrected bank-by-bank.
Support replies again - "Yes you are right" and then after following up with antoher team, says "this is how the bank sends the information and for this type of issue, we just recommend to not modify the pending entries until they clear…. with the pending entries, we recommend you just to change it as bank balance only."
Why even have a financial management app in the first place if you can't see correct totals? My bank website is now more accurate than Quicken Simplifi and does not cost anything. But I like Simplifi. I want to use it. I pay to use it. But Simplifi must be accurate and it is not.
I get that this is complicated software/application development. I'm 100% ok if this doesn't have a solution today. But it would be great to have it logged as a bug fix request for future attention.
The multiple responses from support simply blaming the banks are really unfortunate recomendations. Some basic functionaliy doesn't work for all the customers of mutiple banks. I'm guessing CitiBank has 100's of thousands to millions of customers worldwide - and they would all be affected. Other banks and credit unions have many more thousands to millions of customers who are all affected the same way.
It suprises me that Quicken's corporate response is to place blame on the bank and tell customers to turn off app functionality, (even though it is true that the bank sends the pending transactions reversed) instead of perhaps understanding the full impact across Quicken Simplifi's whole user base and working on a solution.
This issue has been documented already in the community and on other forums such as Reddit. See here and here and here and here and here and here and here. This leads me to believe it is one of those "little things" that has a negative affect suscribership to Simplifi and drives customers away.
Back to the solution: I understand the advice given, and already have turned off the balance setting, but was hoping for a fix to the bug (or an offer to post it as a bug report) rather than effectively saying "kick rocks and live with broken functionality."
My frustration is not critical of the support agent who helped me - she was professional and efficient, but I am frustrated that the default response of Quicken (and the product team that the support team reached out to) said to turn off functionality and just live with the bug. There was not even an offer to create a bug report. Only after I pushed the issue was this response:
I totally understand and you are right, I truly apologize this is something we cannot fix right now but I can gladly provide the feedback to our support team. Although if you can also post it as on our community, it will be truly appreciate it, the more we have the better
https://community.simplifimoney.com/
So here I am. PLEASE allow the millions of users of CitiBank and other financial institutions to treat pending transactions correctly so the BALANCE DISPLAYED IN YOUR APP WILL BE ACCURATE. Provide a switch, or a setting, or allow a place for us to report such banks so the data can be corrected on the back end while downloading. Or something. This is one more frustration that I believe adds to the users who come, subscribe, and then do not stay.
Thank you
