Manual Transactions on Connected Accounts - Projected Balances

SyriltheCPA

Hi everyone - new user to Simplifi. Looking forward to your input.

Scenario: I have a checking account and credit card account.  I make a credit card payment from my checking account today.  It gets brought into Simplifi a couple minutes later from credit card. I link it to my checking account.  The bank hasn't seen the transaction yet so the bank balance reported is representing the latest cleared and any other pending the bank sees as pending.

Question: My preference is to see in my bank account in Simplifi the projected balance to consider the manual transaction.  This will help me make sure I see all future impacts: planned spending (upcoming) or non-planned especially as sometimes my bank account can take a few days for the credit card payment to hit.  Simplifi's feedback so far is that it is not designed like this.

Am I crazy for wanting any pending transactions I manually enter to be included in the projected balance versus ignored?

Coach Natalie

Hello @SyriltheCPA,

Thanks for posting your inquiry and feedback to the Community!

When testing this, I am seeing that manually entered transactions, both future-dated and with today's date, are reflected in my Projected Balance as expected. If you're referring to the balance displayed for the 'Today' line, this is based on the current balance for the account, plus any applicable Recurring Reminders. 

With that said, if the transaction isn't "pending" in Simplifi, it won't be counted towards the balance that the bank is reporting, and could therefore not be properly included in the Projected Balance for the account. To resolve this, you'll want to mark the transaction as "pending" until it actually clears the bank. 

More details on how Simplifi calculates your balance can be found here. Please let us know how it goes!

-Coach Natalie

SyriltheCPA

Thanks @Coach Natalie.  I think the issue here is I'm actually referring to manually entered "TRANSFERS" vs just transactions on their own.  Transfers do not seem to be included in the calculated balance.  I think one of the behaviors I've seen is when they've been entered, it automatically changes the status to CLEARED.  I would like to see this behavior switch to allow me to choose to include or not in projected balance.

Coach Natalie

Hello @SyriltheCPA,

Thanks for posting back with additional details!

When testing this with a "Transfer" transaction, as well as a "Linked Transfer", I am seeing that the transactions are properly calculated into the balance for the 'Today' line of my Projected Cash Flow as long as they are Pending. I am also seeing that I am able to successfully create the "Transfers" as 'Pending' transactions.

With that said, are you entering the transactions in question into a manual account or a connected account? If the former, transactions entered into manual accounts will automatically default to 'Cleared', however, you can change the status to 'Pending' from the Create Transaction window before saving the transaction. 

If the issue persists, please provide us with a timeline of what exactly is occurring, such as what type of 'Transfer' you're using, whether you're able to status the transaction as 'Pending' at the time of creating it/them, at what point the transaction becomes 'Cleared', whether the manually entered transaction gets matched to a bank downloaded transaction, etc., so we can get a clearer idea of what's going on. 

Let us know if you need assistance with finding any of the requested information! 

-Coach Natalie

SyriltheCPA

@Coach Natalie Thank you - that is not the behavior I've been seeing.  I will review again and I'll come back with details.  Appreciate your followup!

SyriltheCPA

@Coach Natalie. I have been able to confirm that on accounts that are not manual, this works as you described.  What is the logic on manual accounts automatically being marked as cleared on a transfer?

DannyB

Hi @SyriltheCPA

I'm simply a user of Simplifi, but here is my guess at why manual account transaction entries default to "Cleared".  Since a manual account is not connected to an online account with the financial institution all your entries have to be managed manually and thus you would have to manually have to change the pending transaction to cleared at some point.  As Coach Natalie points out, though, you can mark them pending if desired, but you would then need to change them to cleared once they are processed at the bank.  I imagine the logic is to save someone using a manual account that one step of clearing a transaction at a latter time... again, just a guess. 

SyriltheCPA

Thanks @DannyB, I have that same impression. I would prefer the option of choosing how that works.  I don't have many manual accounts and the ones I have are low volume.

Coach Natalie

Hello @SyriltheCPA,

Thanks for confirming the behavior!

Although I'm not certain why transactions in manual accounts default to 'Cleared', I completely agree with @DannyB's logic on this. I also wanted to point out that this occurs with any transaction entered in a manual account, not just Transfers. 

Since you can manually change the status from 'Cleared' to 'Pending' from the Create Transaction window before saving the transaction, I'd suggest doing so if this is your preferred method. Otherwise, you can create an Idea post requesting that transactions entered into manual accounts be statused as 'Pending' by default to see if other users vote on it. 

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/998/creating-and-voting-for-ideas-in-the-community

We also have an Idea post available here requesting the ability to change 'Cleared' transactions to 'Pending' that you may be interested in adding your vote and feedback to. 

I hope this helps!

-Coach Natalie