Ability to mark Recurring Reminders as "Scheduled"/"Paid" in advance [edited] (19 Merged Votes)
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To give you an idea of how absurd it is not to have this feature, the only solution that I can come up with is to create a spreadsheet (yes, can you imagine paying for Simplfi and still having to create spreadsheets to accomplish very basic tasks?) that includes all my credit cards, bills, their due dates, statement balances, minimum due, and have a cell for status (due, paid, etc). Then manually review that spreadsheet once a week and schedule any payments that aren't automatic (of which there are many).
Are you not ashamed that your software is forcing your users to create external spreadsheets and manually review them just to make your software meet their minimum needs? Actually - that reminds me that there's something called "Tiller" that's a bunch of spreadsheet templates.
I might as well go look at that and see if it will work for me because it's obvious that Quicken doesn't have any plans to provide this basic functionality that all these customers have been requesting for over 4 years now.
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@Frustrated406 I feel your pain… I have been waiting for this for a long time. In fact, this month I accidently paid my gas bill twice. Not the first time. Perhaps every user that follows this thread should post when they have an issue that is cause by not having this capability. @Coach Natalie mentioned a long time ago that they were looking into how to implement this capability, not sure how difficult it is to add a green check box, on the current month transaction GUI, that says, "Scheduled". The check box would have no other functionality and the box would be updated manually by the user. Maybe the developers are over thinking this request.
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I have not had this experience since I started using Q-Simplifi. It had happened to me a few times in the years before I made the switch.
But then, I use a green flag to identify transactions that have been paid. It's quick, easy, and foolproof.
Anthony Bopp
Simplifi User Since July 2022Money talks. But all my paycheck ever says is goodbye0 -
The green flag would be a fine workaround except that it doesn't appear on the "Bills & Payments" screen. If it's already entered as a transaction that's been downloaded from a financial institution, what's the point of setting a flag on it if you're using the "Bills & Payments" screen to… You know… MANAGE BILLS AND PAYMENTS? LOL…
Even having those flag options available on the transactions listed on the bills & payments screen would go a very long way toward addressing this issue, especially as a temporary workaround. Since the colored flags aren't used to link/alter transactions, it wouldn't change any functionality that might damage other components.
It would be an unelegant but acceptable workaround. At the very least, we wouldn't have to be double-paying bills, as @daganbit2000 has experienced repeatedly as mentioned in this thread. If the result of a design oversight that the company has been "looking into" for over 4 years now is that your customers accidentally double-pay bills or, even worse, miss a payment, then I would hope that Quicken would do whatever it took to address this.
PLEASE COMMENT AND UPVOTE THE ORIGINAL POST IF THIS IS AS BIG OF AN ISSUE FOR YOU AS IS FOR ME. Thanks.0 -
I am still using another software to flag my bills as scheduled so I don’t overpay or miss a payment.
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Thanks, Idlehand. May I ask what software you use to manage your bills on top of paying for Simplifi? Do you find Simplifi's "Bills & Payments" screen helpful? If not, what are your biggest complaints about it?
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I am currently on the free trial as a Mint user. Only really used Mint to track credit card purchases but my main goal is to have a 12 month forecast of my cash flow.
I use a software called Balance Forecasting App. It’s not perfect but does the job and only $20 a year.
I have been looking for an all in one solution to keep a budget, reoccurring bills, connect with all my accounts and have an accurate cash flow. I have yet to find a software to accommodate my needs. I can’t be the only one that needs simple functionality.
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Thanks, idlehand. Mint wasn't perfect either but wow - they really had the bill pay feature dialed in (along with credit cards). Previous Mint users are all over the place trying to find a suitable replacement and it's obvious that there isn't one. I don't mind paying a company while they develop their product but I've been absolutely baffled that this most basic of functions with financial management doesn't exist in any of them!
As far as I can tell, it's going to be a race between Simplifi and Monarch to see who can roll out (what I would consider) the very basic features that people loved in Mint (the ability to mark bills as paid, credit card balances, min. payments, statement balances, etc).
I don't know who will win the race. Simplfi is a bigger company, but since Simplfi has been ignoring this request for over four years, I suspect that I may switch to Monarch. Then again - maybe not. I don't have any loyalty to either company yet but I'm paying for both and using both to see which is the best of many imperfect solutions.
I can tell you that from the amount of complaints on Reddit, etc., that whoever ends up rolling out these basic functions first will likely dominate the market and win the millions of Mint customers who are about to be booted from Mint when they finally pull the plug.
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I'm probably missing something obvious, but if I'm paying something manually (rather than an automatic debit) I've always considered it a best practice to add the transaction to the Transactions list and link it to the spending plan item as soon as I cut the check.
Anthony Bopp
Simplifi User Since July 2022Money talks. But all my paycheck ever says is goodbye0 -
Manual one off checks is exactly how you explain it. My challenge and many others is what about the monthly bills that vary month to month. Take your electric bill, if last month it was $150, and this month is $175. There is no way in the spending plan/bills & payments to let me know the amount is correct or if I paid/scheduled it.
That is my biggest gripe with Simplifi. It should be the core of a financial budget software.
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The method I described above would seem to me to do almost exactly what you want. This process would make immediately obvious in the spending plan if it's paid or not, based on whether the amount is the approximate budgeted amount or the precise month's bill. I do this monthly with my utility bills even though they are automatic payments, but if they were manual payments then I would immediately know whether or not I have paid it.
Anthony Bopp
Simplifi User Since July 2022Money talks. But all my paycheck ever says is goodbye0 -
Exactly. If I wanted to use a checkbook registrer with a #2 pencil, I am perfectly capable. The whole point of paying for software is that it's supposed to make life simpler through automation. While there are many things I really like about Simplifi, and even prefer over Monarch or any of the many other options I've tried, this particular feature set is the one that has me (and most previous mint users) going in circles and pulling their hair out, creating a spreadsheet to manually update, etc.
Here's a small sample if you haven't done a search engine deep dive on this issue lately: https://www.reddit.com/r/mintuit/comments/17p4t6c/what_app_shows_credit_card_bills_due/
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I'd much rather just pay the bill through whatever bill payment method, then mark it as paid and let the software do the linking. What's the point of manually creating transactions and linking them when the software is perfectly capable of doing that? It's just another several steps in the process that could easily be eliminated with a simple fix.
The software is called Simplifi, not Complicify. ;-)
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I don't know how it can create and link a transaction that it doesn't know exists yet, and cannot know about until it downloads it from the bank. I think that's what you're trying to address - trying to make the app aware of something that not even the bank knows about yet - that a particular payment was made.
Just FYI, this idea post has my upvote (for "scheduled," not paid when something is not, in fact, cleared by the bank). I'm just trying to point out that there's a painless way to achieve what you want without waiting for the dev team to implement a largely extraneous function. Yes, your way would allow you to do this the way you're used to in other software in addition to the way you can already do it, but some here are acting like the result cannot be achieved in Q-Simplifi.
Anthony Bopp
Simplifi User Since July 2022Money talks. But all my paycheck ever says is goodbye0 -
We’re talking about recurring bills and credit card statements, not things that “don’t exist yet.”
I’ll give your suggestion a try - thanks. Credit cards and statements are another animal that your suggestion doesn't resolve but i appreciate that you’re trying to suggest a solution.0 -
See there? That's exactly what I mean about missing something obvious. I was proceeding under the impression that we were talking about making sure we pay bills on time, or don't pay them twice.
Given that presumption, my feeling is that the place to go to see if you've paid something is Transactions, not Bills and Payments. The Bills and Payments area is where you define what needs to be paid, when, and how often. It's not well-suited to track what you actually have paid, even if it's kind enough to give you the basics on that for the current month. But the final word on whether or not a transaction exists - which will not exist until you either tell Q-Simplify that it exists, or the bank does, is in Transactions.
All that being said, if my current understanding is correct, what is really desired is that in the Spending Plan, there should be a third option for this
and that that third option should be "Pending," just as it is in the Transactions section.
That is an idea I could get on board with, though it wouldn't be my highest priority. Seems like there are bigger fish to fry at the moment *coughwatchlistscough* For the moment I'm perfectly happy myself to use the Transactions area for what it's intended for.
Anthony Bopp
Simplifi User Since July 2022Money talks. But all my paycheck ever says is goodbye0 -
I actually had a long chat with support about this when I first signed up (specifically credit card payments due). They basically said that what I was looking for wasn't possible and that it wasn't on a roadmap. I'll look again at the spending plan as you suggested and see if it's possible to make it a logical dashboard for paying/marking paid upcoming bills. I may be wrong in thinking that it will create many extra steps and be more laborious than it should be. Maybe it will be more efficient.
Honestly, I'm pretty burnt out on trying demos of different products just to discover awful weaknesses and shortcomings that make me cancel and move on. All my bills are paid for the next two weeks and I'm probably going to step away from all this for a few days and just take a break.
Thank you for your suggestions - I'm looking forward to trying them out.
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I would this ability; I have a lot of bills that get paid in various ways, automatic payment (which I setup through the payee's portal), bill pay (which I use through my bank account to send a check to the payee on a certain date for a certain amount). Today, any bill that is going to to be automatically withdrawn from my bank account has an "Autopay" label in the name. Which isn't ideal. The bigger problem is bills that I have scheduled for bill pay through my bank account. There is no way of marking a bill as "going to be paid via…whatever" when I see it due in 3 days. I would love this feature!
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i vote for a function to show bills paid or mark as paid
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