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Ability to have pending transactions count toward Projected Cash Flow while using 'Bank Balance'

bob303727

Idea: Make Cash Flow reflect all known pending activity

Currently, Cash Flow only accounts for recurring items and refunds. User-entered pending debits and A2A transfers are ignored unless the view option "Balance with Pending" is selected,* which can break accuracy for some accounts. This means your Cash Flow can "change" depending solely on the balance display setting.

Proposal: Cash Flow should include all known pending activity, regardless of the display setting, so that projections reflect actual upcoming cash movements.

* Details: Certain banks report balances to Simplifi that already include posted-pending transactions. These banks require users to use the "Bank Balance" balance type, to avoid double-counting transactions. However, under this setting Cash Flow ignores user-entered pending debits and A2A transfers in Cash Flow. There is no reason why these should be treated differently from a recurring utility bill--they are all known pending activity that should appear in Cash Flow.

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Comments

DryHeat

As I understand it, this problem occurs only in a specific set of circumstances. The following situation is an example of where I think it will come up:

Your bank balance without counting pending transactions is $10,000.
Your bank already takes transactions that are pending at the bank into account.
There is a $900 transaction pending at the bank showing up in your Pending section.
You have manually entered a $500 pending transaction that your bank does not know about.
So your actual balance, all non-future transactions considered, is $8,600. ($10,000 - $900 -$500)

What Balance Type should you select? As I understand it (I could be wrong, of course):

If you select "Bank Balance (default)" your balance will show as $9,100 (because the bank will subtract the $900 transaction pending at the bank from the current balance of $10,000 and report $9,100 to Simplifi). Your manually entered $500 pending transaction will not be counted.

If you select "Balance with Pending" your balance will show as $7,700 (because the bank will still report $9,100, but Simplifi will subtract both the $900 transaction pending at the bank and the $500 manually entered pending transaction.) Your $900 transaction pending at the bank will be counted twice.

There doesn't seem to be any way around this, other than future-dating the manual pending transaction. But maybe one of the coaches will have an idea.

bob303727

@DryHeat has understood the problem correctly.

I can confirm that this is exactly what happens. For users with accounts at such banks, their cash flows under both balance types are incorrect.

Now, replace @DryHeat's "manually entered $500 transaction" with, say, a $7,000 Simplifi-initiated account-to-account transfer — and then the dangers of the situation become much more clear.

bob303727

@DryHeat - Future-dating manually entered transactions does work.

However, I have found no workaround for Simplifi-initiated A2A transfers.

Coach Natalie

@bob303727, I would recommend leaving your experience regarding the A2A Transfers in the official feedback thread for A2A so it can be reviewed by our product team:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/10400/account-to-account-transfers-a2a-share-your-feedback-here

Doing so may help get better visibility on that particular aspect, as well as allow our product team to be aware of what's going on. Since A2A is still in the "testing" stage, I think your experience is definitely something they should hear about.

Thanks!

bob303727

It's there! Posted it last week.

DryHeat

@bob303727

Ability to have pending transactions count toward Projected Cash Flow while using 'Bank Balance'

The current system works for pending transactions that are downloaded from the bank. By selecting the correct Balance Type you can tell Simplifi to consider (or not consider) those pending transactions depending on how your bank calculates your balance.

The problem is with manually entered pending transactions. I'm not sure I've thought this all the way through, but I don't think there is any reason for Simplifi to ever leave those transactions out of the calculation. Is there?

If there is no reason, I would suggest that Simplifi differentiate between manually entered and downloaded pending transactions (which it can already do) and always consider the manually entered ones when calculating the balance — regardless of which Balance Type is selected.

Would that work? Or am I missing some problematic scenario?

bob303727

@DryHeat I belivee that would work. Personally, I can't conceive of a reason why Simplifi-initiated account-to-account transfers or manually-entered pending transactions ought to be treated any differently from recurring transactions.

Ultimately, Cash Flow should always reflect the ground truth of what your projected balance will be on date X based on all information known to Simplifi, regardless of view options. In a perfect world, changing the Balance Type view option would change your balances without changing your projected balance in Cash Flow.