Introducing Investment Transactions -- Share your feedback here!

Coach Nicole

We're excited to announce that we will be gradually rolling out a new feature to some of our Early Access users: Investment Transactions and Performance Over Time. While we are super excited and anxious to get this feature out to all of our users, it is still in its early phases, so we're only rolling it out to a small percentage. Additionally, Investment Transactions are currently only available through the web version of Simplifi. 

Simplifi presents Investment Transactions in a similar layout as banking transactions. You can even add columns or adjust the register row height as needed. When it comes to the transactions themselves, you can add, edit, and even link transfers across accounts (i.e., checking to investment transactions or investment to investment).

As we navigate through this early phase, there are a few limitations on Investment Transactions. But fear not, as we're already working on enhancements, such as adding the ability to add attachments or even opt to include them in your Spending Plan and Reports.

While you familiarize yourself with Investment Transactions, we'd love to hear any feedback you may have to help us improve. Good or bad, we appreciate hearing from you!

jsy42

Glad to see new features and investment transaction support emerging.

Some initial observations...

1. Only a subset of transactions are available - Not sure if this is intentional with the Early Access, but I'm only seeing transactions from December 2020, Jan/Feb/Mar 2021, and Feb/Mar 2022. I have actual transaction history available at my investment account providers prior to and after those dates.
2. Transaction Action - The Transaction Type for every transaction is 'Payment/Deposit' across accounts and actual transaction types (bought, sold, reinvested, dividend received, etc.).
3. Security/Payee - The Security Payee for every transaction is a long description of the transaction (example: "You Sold ACME Corp (ACME) (Cash)").
4. Missing Qty/Price/Fee - Data for qty, price, and fee are missing for every transaction across all investment accounts.
5. Transfers - Can now create transfers between banking and investment accounts. This is a long-awaited capability. However, it now highlights the very limited support for Transfers in the Spending Plan, Reports, and Goals functions. This much-needed Banking/Investment Transfer functionality will be minimally useful until we can use them across those other functions.
6. Value Over Time - Lost access to the value over time charts. I definitely need those back. 

DannyB

These new features are great to see.  Thanks to the Development team for their work on this module in Simplifi!  Look forward to diving into these new features and will give feed back after I've explored using them. 

I do have a question but will create a new post under "Using Simplifi" so as not to plug up this string.

DannyB

Yesterday (9/12) I started working with the new investment features recently released in earnest.  Here's some feedback:

1. Was able to go back and update all previous transfers from checking accounts to my various investment accounts.  I was using a couple of "dummy" manual accounts to hold those transfers but those dummy accounts are now gone.
2. I'm having to edit each transaction in all our investment accounts to assign correct info for each column in Simplifi.  All transactions default to: Action Column, "Payment/Deposit"; Security Column, description of action taken; Description Column defaulting to "Uncategorized";  Qty, Price & Fee Columns show a "-" (these last are expected for non purchase transactions, but would expect these columns to be populated for purchases.)
3. I use "default" but not sure if this is actually Simplifi's "default" for investment imports or if this is due a mismatch between how Simplifi handles the data and how my investment institutions are exporting the data.
4. Simplifi downloaded data back to August 11, 2022 in all accounts. More historical data is available naturally, but not sure I want more historical data in Simplifi if I have to manually update each transaction.
5. Duplicate transactions when account is refreshed after updating existing transactions.

RichD

I have seen duplicate transactions after update.

SRC54

I have found the same things that Danny et al. have posted.  I have a manual cash account and should have liked to move those to my Brokerage account, but cannot so I have to enter every one separately.  Nor can I do an import with CSV.  Ugh.  

I miss being able to see holdings from the account register. (I know I can see them in Investment report view.)

It is definitely annoying that buys and dividends are all marked as Payments.  I am changing them.  I don't know why Simplifi only downloaded Feb, March and August transactions. Weird.

I am glad that IRA dividends don't show up in Spending Plan.  They do show up in Reports and as yet no way to stop that as far as I can tell.

SRC54

Update:  @Coach Nicole  

Saturday, I downloaded my Fidelity Brokerage dividends and changed them to Income Dividend.  That worked well.  It redownloaded them Sunday but I just deleted the second download and that seems to do it.  I changed my IRA dividends to Reinvest Dividends and I had to enter the price, quantity etc myself.  I deleted the extra transaction (One dividend, one buy).  On Sunday, they all downloaded again but I just deleted the second download and all seems well.  I also went to Account Settings and set my IRA so that reports ignores them so it won't see these dividends as income.

I spent the weekend re-entering my Brokerage transactions from 2021 and 2022.  Then I deleted the old manual account I had.  I had already moved all the transfers to Brokerage.  That way I only had unnecessary duplicate dividend transactions that were deleted with the account. It all seems to be working well.  There are some things missing, which I assume will be added later such as making a transaction pending.  Right now they are all just cleared.  I did find that doing the transfer transaction from a bank account did get it entered in Brokerage as pending, and it updated to clear when I downloaded it earlier this morning.  There is as yet no way to mark investment transactions as reviewed.  Probably not needed but have gotten used to it in other accounts.

I won't bother to enter past IRA transactions since I don't pay taxes or think of that as income until I start withdrawing it.  Besides, it is depressing to pay it much attention right now.

There are some erroneous categories in some of the downloaded investment transactions that get left in place when you change it to a Buy or Reinvest Dividend.  To get rid of them, you have to fix it first when it is listed as a Payment/Deposit and then make the switch to a Buy or Reinvest Dividend.

I am glad that Simplifi ignores these transactions in the balance as it makes it less stressful to work on the account transactions.  I was able to see I had it right by selecting all transactions and checking the balance that way.  It was correct!!!

bobluck

- Need option to remove/hide news. It looks out of place and to have been inserted as an after thought.
- Customize columns

Flopbot

I’d like to see the addition of a GREEN “Reviewed” checkbox…but only if it’s green…not soul-sucking black!    This would allow me to do a mock-reconciliation of sorts in the same way that I do when I receive my checking account’s paper statements.

Jonathan

a mess has developed. all the investment transactions, whether buys, sells, dividends, etc., have received a category of “health insurance.” I kid you not. Simplifi now reports $59K+ in health insurance in my account for 2022!! I want to withdraw from the investment program beta test group and have all those mistaken transactions removed from my account. I will continue just to depend on the total account values posted to my account. I do not need the transactions entered. Can you do this for me or guide me on what to do to fix this mess. I have put in two requests to receive a call back “which I will receive in seconds.” Well, it’s been minutes and no call! 

Coach Natalie

Hello @Jonathan,

Thank you for sharing your feedback regarding Investment Transactions with the Community, although I'm sorry to hear of the trouble you experienced. 

To disable beta testing for Investment Transactions, you'll want to disable Early Access under Settings>General. Please note that doing so will also disable any other features that are currently in Early Access. 

Alternatively, you may consider just deleting all of the transactions by following the steps listed here under Delete a Transaction>Or you can delete multiple transactions at a time. You should be able to easily bulk delete all of the transactions pretty quickly. 

Let us know if you have any further questions or feedback!

-Coach Natalie 

DannyB

@Coach Natalie I've been seeing the same issue - Description/Category defaulting to "health insurance".  It would be better if the default is "uncategorized".  I find this to be the case in all of my investment accounts and the switch from "Uncategorized" to "Health Insurance" appears consistently between September 27 and September 28.  

Coach Natalie

Thanks for letting us know, @DannyB!

Very strange! I forwarded your comment to the Product Team (they are the ones monitoring the feedback posts).

-Coach Natalie

bobluck

The investment page, would look more professional without the news feed. Perhaps it could be moved to it's own tab. Alto it forces the table of holdings to be less than screen width, truncating some of the info. Since columns can't be customized or resized this is an annoyance. Thanks 

DannyB

@Coach Natalie 

Don't know if this string is being monitored, but I have a couple of questions.

We make a monthly contribution to one of our accounts and the contributions for October and November still show as pending.  When I click on Edit transaction for either of these there is no way to change the status from pending to cleared in the transaction window.

1. Is this an oversight or by design?
2. If not an oversight, how do I move these two transactions out of pending and into cleared in the appropriate month?

Investment register:


November check register:


October check register:

Coach Natalie

Hello @DannyB,

Thank you for reporting this!

I'm also not seeing an option to mark an Investment Transaction as 'Pending' or 'Cleared'. Additionally, I'm not seeing a 'Status' column in my investment account registers. I'd be happy to make sure the Product Team sees your comment (they're the ones monitoring the feedback posts for Early Access features), however, more information would be greatly appreciated.

First, to clarify, are the transactions in question Transfers to a different account? If so, is that what the 2nd and 3rd screenshot you provided above is showing? Also, if this is the case, what is the status of the transactions in the corresponding account register, and have you tried marking those transactions as 'Cleared' to see if doing so affects the status of the linked Investment Transactions (if applicable)?

Next, do you see the 'Status' column in your investment account register when viewing the Investment Transactions in question? Providing a screenshot with a larger scope that shows the column headers in the account register would be helpful to have. 

Thanks in advance!

-Coach Natalie 

DannyB

@Coach Natalie

When I first started using Simplifi I set up and used dummy account to "track" these transfers. When Simplifi released this feature to early access users I changed the recurring series so that these transfers went to the actual investment account and all past transfers showed up in the investment account register as expected.  These two "pending" transfers occurred after the beta release.

The 2nd and 3rd screenshots in previous post are from the same checking account and both transfers have cleared and are marked cleared in that checking account. I have double and tripled checked, 1) the recurring series; 2) the "status" (Cleared/Pending) for checking account side of the transaction; 3) Payee and Category on both sides of the transactions.

Here are some expanded screenshots showing all available column choices for both the checking register and the investment register.  I'm also including screenshots of transaction details for both transfers as they pop up in the checking account register followed by the transaction details that pop up in the investment account register.

Checking account register with all columns selected to show:


Transaction detail in checking register.


Investment account register with all possible columns selected to show:


Transaction detail in Investment register:


Digression: This is a total aside, but why does the "Status" column show "Pending" for pending transactions but not "Cleared" for cleared transactions in the bank and credit card transaction registers?  I suspect I know the answer, but just wondering.

Coach Natalie

Hello @DannyB,

Thank you for providing the requested information! I forwarded your comment to the Product Team and I'll let you know if they request any further info. 

When it comes to cleared transactions not showing "Cleared" in the 'Status' column, although I'm not sure why this is the case, it does appear to be by design. Honestly, I don't recall ever seeing "Cleared" in any of my account registers in Simplifi, so I think it's always been this way.

-Coach Natalie

DannyB

Hi @Coach Natalie hope you had a satisfying Thanksgiving!

Thanks again for your help and input.

I don't remember seeing "Cleared" either and until looking into this issue with the "Pending" deposits in the investment transaction register never gave it any thought.  

My suspicions are, (1) since there is a way to mark each transaction as "Reviewed" that takes the place of needing a selectable "Cleared" option and (2) "Pending" is an auto function depending on whether a financial institution downloads pending transactions to Simplifi and once the pending transaction clears at the financial institution, Simplifi moves the transaction into the cleared part of the register and (3) being able to select "Cleared" would be a function of providing a reconciliation feature in Simplifi which is not offered due to how Simplifi works as pointed out in the many "ability to reconcile" conversations in this forum... and that's all I have to say about that. Of course, I have no idea of the thinking of the designers and developers of Simplifi so all of this is pure speculation with no basis in reality.

CorgiCash

I keep my "goal" accounts in investments in Betterment. I would like to be able to classify transactions into these accounts as contributions towards "goals", but I can't. For the time being, I've just removed all the goals from my Simplifi account, but I'd love to be able to use them as intended in my spending plan. 

Coach Natalie

Hello @CorgiCash,

Thanks for the feedback!

I'd suggest adding your vote and feedback here for the ability to contribute to Savings Goals from investment accounts. 

-Coach Natalie

Coach Natalie

Investment Transactions are now live for everyone, and are also available on the Mobile App! 

With that, a design change will be coming to the Web App -- when clicking on an investment account to view your transactions, you will be directed to the Investments page just like before, however, there will be an additional tab for "Transactions". This change should be effective as of the 3.74.0 Web Release. 

Let us know what y'all think!

SRC54

I've been using this feature since it came out.  One thing I don't understand is why dividend income is still being downloaded as payments/deposits instead of dividend income and buys or even better reinvested income when that's the case.  My Fidelity IRA does this as dividends and buys in Quicken but it isn't done right still in Simplifi.  I have to manually change them and manually enter the number of shares.  Then for a day or two, Simplifi will redownload the transactions again (as deposits/payments).  Of course I just delete the redownload.

So this still needs to be fixed.  Also as people have mentioned, we still cannot accept as reviewed Investment transactions.  Otherwise, I like that I can see the transactions now in Investments.

SRC54

I note another change this week in how investment transactions are listed.

It used to be that you would enter a dividend for fund ABCDE and it would enter as ABCDE-Acme Some Sort of Fund.  After a few days, it would just say ABCDE in the Payee window.  That was fine.

Now my latest transactions show both the fund symbol and name in the Payee Window.  

Coach Natalie

Thanks, @SRC54!

I sent your feedback to the Product Team to make sure it's seen. I'll let you know if they need any further info from you.

-Coach Natalie

Jeff C

Please add the ability to import historical transactions for brokerage accounts.  Love everything else about Simplifi.

SRC54

[removed] and others.

After re-doing all my Spending Plans going back to Nov 2021, I noticed that my brokerage income no longer shows up in them. This is because I had a manual Fidelity Cash account I used to report them.  Once I switched to having them in the Fidelity Brokerage account with the beta downloads, I see that by default and without allowing us to change them, Simplifi excludes all those dividends from Spending Plan / Reports.  This is correct for Retirement Accounts/IRAs as all of these monies are on hold until you withdraw them, but it isn't really correct for Brokerage Accounts, which are normal income and taxable.  In my case, I actually spend of that money, so I need it reported in the Spending Plan.

When will Simplifi allow us control over whether to include/exclude investment transactions as it does with all other transactions?

For now, my work around was to add all those dividends back to a Fidelity Cash Account.  They are in the Spending Plan twice now, once in the Brokerage Account (ignored) and in the Fidelity Cash Account (included).

jdharmon

Displaying the current weight of each fund in the portfolio would make the Investments feature useful for monitoring and rebalancing.

AlexB

The system is categorizing investment transactions improperly. They are “Uncategorized” and this is used even for income transactoins, for example for dividends. Any (even income) transaction that is not able to be put to specific category is “Uncategorized" BUT in Simplifi Uncategorized as actually a category and it's Expense category.

What that means? Each investment income that is Uncategorized is REDUCING my Expenses in my expense report. It's not increasing Income but instead it's reducing Expenses this way ruining reports. I've noticed this behavior in:

• 401k deposits
• Dividend payouts

You treat INCOME transactions as Expenses. Your programmers think this way "ok, we can not categorize this and it doesn't matter for Investments so let's mark tham as Uncategorized. They forgotten simple fact, using Uncategorized now makes this transaction EXPENSE and going to EXPENSE REPORT. That's a bug, very simple bug. You need to start treating Uncategorized Income separately from Uncategorized Expense.

Coach Natalie

Performance Over Time is now available on the Mobile App for Early Access users!

Diver4242

I keep fixing uncategorized with my reinvestment info and it reverts back! Please fix this