Question - "Past" Recurring Bills

Flopbot

Greetings,

What is the best practice for handling this situation in Simplifi?  Under Recurring Bills, I have two CC's with a $0 balance this month.  Do I just leave them showing "Past" or do I delete or skip them somehow.  I could have a balance next month on them, perhaps so I don't want to cancel them altogether.

The OCD portion of my really gets annoyed at seeing "Past" on ANYTHING because my brain immediately interprets it as synonymous with Past Due.

Will leaving them showing Past (especially when they show a balance), somehow negatively affect reporting, registers, balances, etc.



From a larger big-picture perspective, which of these was Simplifi's original intention with Recurring Bills/Subscriptions?

A.) That us users log in there throughout the month to keep an eye on them doing things with them in advance.  Things like primitively skipping individual transactions, adjusting amounts, etc.

B.) That us users set them up once and then pretty much ignore them throughout the month.  When a transaction downloads that matches a bill/subscription, then Simplifi matches it up and processes it accordingly.

Coach Natalie

Hello @Flopbot,

Thank you for taking the time to post your inquiry to the Community!

In regards to Reminders that don't apply to the current month (such as a $0 balance credit card bill), you can definitely skip these by deleting the single instance of the Reminder. You'll want to be sure to delete the Reminder only, not the entire Series; more info on this can be found here. 

Leaving the Reminders as 'Past Due' won't impact Reports or Balances, but it will affect your Spending Plan and Projected Cash Flow, so it definitely wouldn't hurt to delete them (especially if the Reminder has an amount), so that you have a more accurate projection of your upcoming bills.

I personally have a Recurring Series for each of my credit cards with the minimum amount due as the amount of the Reminders, and if I don't have a balance on the card for that month, I'll just delete the associated Reminder. That way I not only know that it doesn't need to be paid, but it's also not deducting the amount from my Spending Plan. 

In regards to Simplifi's intentions with Recurring Bills and Subscriptions, these are designed to help keep you on track with your bills, build a budget, and have a projection of what your finances will look like. In regards to managing your Bills and Subscriptions specifically, although Simplifi does its best to automatically match Transactions to Reminders, etc., and does learn from your actions over time, we do definitely suggest keeping an eye on things to make sure everything is downloading/matching/being categorized properly. Our goal is to make managing your finances as simple and easy as possible, however, financial management does definitely require some maintenance.

I hope this helps, but please let me know if you have any questions!

-Coach Natalie