Missing pending transactions that are included in the balance is messing up cash flow (edited)

tsnyder91

I'm in my trial and I can find numerous posts here asking about why pending transactions are double counted in the projected balance chart and balance numbers.

The "workaround" is to disable counting pending towards the balance entirely.

Why is this not in the known issues list? 

It is clearly still a problem and routinely confuses people.

I recently got everything setup and I noticed that my mortgage payment came out twice in the projected balance. This causes the projected chart to show as going negative despite it not being the case. The pending transaction MATCHED to the series but it was ALSO taken out of the balance again off the top. 

If a pending transaction matches to a series entry, it seems pretty clear to me that you don't need to count that twice. 

I want this pending balance calculations to work  so that I can see pending transactions in the ledger.

Today I noticed that even with Pending with Balance marked as on, it still double counted my paycheck so now the projected chart is useless as it shows twice the increase that it should. 

I'm certain that the transactions are objects in the code, please add a field "projected_balance_applied" with a default of false. When calculating balances before subtracting check that it's false, subtract, and set it to true.  This way the next time you see the same transaction come through, you don't subtract it twice. 

I'm evaluating moving  from Quicken to Simplifi and this double counting bug/issue is my biggest frustration so far and I've only used it for two weeks. 

EDIT: This didn't go to the right category and I was not given an option to change that when posting, and cannot move it to a better category either. 

Coach Natalie

Hello @tsnyder91,

Thanks for providing the info that was learned from your bank!

Unfortunately, there's not going to be anything further that can be done from our end at this time. Since a balance discrepancy isn't present, and since the missing transactions are not displayed on the bank's website and therefore would not download into Simplifi, we won't be able to escalate the behavior. 

With that said, however, I have passed your comment along to our Product Team so they are aware of the situation and can further look into Fiserv if deemed necessary. In the meantime, I'd definitely suggest manually entering the missing transaction(s) and then linking them to the Reminder(s) to resolve the projected balance issue. 

Sorry for not having a better answer!

-Coach Natalie

RobWilk

As I understand it, the 'workaround' is changing how pending transactions 'from the bank' are handled...  In other words, some banks include pending transactions in the balance, and some do not - and depending on your bank, you might need to toggle that setting.  Either way, your pending transactions will affect your simplifi balance.

Your simplifi 'connected account' balance either:
       1) Starts from the bank balance and adds 'manual' transactions (manual may be pending but not matched to bank) or
       2) Starts from the bank balance adds pending transactions and adds manual transactions

Depending on your 'balance with pending' setting it does #1 or #2 - some 'bank balances' include pending, some don't -- and the balance on your bank website may be different than the balance it gives simplifi

tsnyder91

Robert, your explanation does make sense in theory, but it seems in my case whether the 'balance with pending' is on or off it double counts pending transactions.  It double counted when I set up a couple of weeks ago (feature was off) with my mortgage payment, and still does even though the setting has been on for over a week.  Today it double counted a paycheck for example, but it could be literally any transaction. Once the transaction posts all is well. 

My bank does include pending transactions in the "available balance" online. I'm not sure I've ever encountered a bank that doesn't do that behavior to be honest.  Having moved around the country a lot, I've used an above average number of banks too. To my knowledge, I've not encountered any other cloud based finance app that has such a 'feature' to enable or encountered this particular problem.  They all have their own quirks that left me disappointed though.

I'm trying hard to find a replacement for the Quicken Desktop app that is simpler to use and supports more accounts. It's baffeling to me that the Quicken department doesn't supliment their account support with what simplifi uses. Literally the same company.

Overall simplifi fits the bill, with the exception of building an inherent distrust to the projected balance feature.

It's rarely accurate due to this double counting issue.  As it stands right now. I actually pull up the Quicken Desktop app to see the projected balances for what it really should be, and use this for the rest.  I have through the end of this month to decide if this issue ends up being why I decline to pay going forward.

And the only response I've seen, even when folks say it's still a problem, is to turn on "balance with pending".

RobWilk

I can only share that 'for the most part' that doesn't happen for my accounts right now.   The 'most part' exception is chase on weekends (or non-banking days) has a similar problem, but they're actively working with chase to get that fixed (and I've been credited free subscription time from Simplifi while they're working on this).

I cannot offer you a fix, I do not work for Simplifi, I was just trying to offer insight based on what i know of the service.  I think @Coach Natalie typically shows up around this time for the day, so maybe they or another user can help.

tsnyder91

I appreciate that @RobWilk.  I suspect what might be happening is that my bank sometimes has a delay in updating the available balance with the posted and pending transaction data sets.   I suspect thats also what is happening with your Chase account.

ie, I can check it and the available balance may say 1000 but the transaction that would be pending transaction that would bring it to that balance does not show in the transaction list for a few minutes.  Since we cannot trigger account updates, if simplifi checks my bank during this time period, it ends up in a quasi state for hours if not days.  At times it feels like this app doesn't update my accounts but once a day or less. 

I also recently found that despite the community frequently asking for it, having a running balance is not something Simplifi was designed for. They literally just display raw transactions and take whatever the bank says as the balance amount, even if mathematically it's not possible.  They give some bogus reasons that do not stand up to actual reasoning, but it is what it is. 

I will have to weight if having less control and less basic features than Quicken is enough to keep me. @Coach Natalie this should have gone into the feedback category, I'm honestly not sure how it got put here. 

RobWilk

I think if you see a running balance show up, it will be 'based' on the current bank balance and 'step backwards in time transaction by transaction' to figure out past balances --  which may still not be what you're looking for, @tsnyder91

tsnyder91

A running balance starts with an opening balance account balance and then decrement/increment from there. The banks stated balance online would then be somewhat irrelevant but could be compared to the current running balance of today.  Which is where reconciling comes from.  The issue, and why I think they really don't want to support it, is because they at a fundamental level only display pending and posted transactions by date, and the stated banks balance. The only math that is done is for the projected balance charts, which likely works as you stated, take current banks balance, go backwards a few days to populate that part of the chart with those transactions and go forward with series transactions amounts.

As designed, Simplifi doesn't actually need to keep a ledger in it's true form.  It only needs to store the raw transactions and can display those by date ranges, And then just use the banks stated balance as the "now" point.

This is a design flaw as we are finding out that the stated bank balance is not always up to date with the transactions list when they pull it.  This leads to using incorrect base numbers to base projected balances off of.  A proper running balance would actually correct this issue, but at a technical level would require a pretty decent engineering lift to redesign core setups.

RobWilk

Some Simplifi Users (possibly myself included) will tell you not having to reconcile is the beauty of simplifi.   I don't think in reconciling a balance anyone has successfully challenged a bank's balance, at best they found one or two transactions they forgot to track.

tsnyder91

I hear ya on that @Robwilk, I don't actually reconcile anymore either, even on Quicken Desktop.  It is to make sure that you have all the transactions or even put them in with the right amounts.  I don't think reconciling has ever been to challenge a bank, but to make sure your own records were accurate. 

My existing use case on Quicken Desktop is to download transactions from my bank, and to match those with the bill series that I have , track my balances of various other accounts I have like retirement and credit cards and use savings goals. I don't actually use any of the other features it provides me. Sounds like Simplifi doesn't it? 

Simplifi appears on the surface to do all of that and support more banks/financial institutions. Except that it has been flat wrong on my balances 3-4 times in two weeks. Complete with naggy notifications about account balances going low or high as a result.

It seems Simplifi really shouldn't even allow for manual transactions as if you transpose a few numbers, the downloaded bank transaction wouldn't match it. And now you don't have a running balance to help you find those issues too. 

But in double counting of transaction scenarios if I make any sort of financial decisions based on projected balances, I want that number to be accurate.

I think what I'm understanding more and more by reading the various other responses to feature requests that would improve it and handling issues like this double accounting of transactions is that Simplifi "simply" does not value accuracy in the projected balance feature and a good amount of the UI including low balance notifications are simply wrong at least a few times a month.  And somehow, the Simplifi team, and perhaps even the community of users as a whole, is just "OK" with that. 

I want/need to know exactly how much money is left over till my next check, not a rough guess or estimate.  I guess I'll finish up my trial and continue on my quest to find replacement for Quicken.  Simplifi simply fails at basic math at a fundamental design level.

RobWilk

@tsnyder91 - In my opinion, this app has potential - though there are some bugs (like I said with the chase issue, which affects balances for me)...  Even if you cancel after the trial, I wouldn't rule out coming back to the app after a year or so, things are getting fixed.  i.e. if they offer another trial try again in the future.  Just my opinion, though.  It might depend how much free time you have to set it all up again.

tsnyder91

@RobWilk I agree it has potential. But looking at how the product team treats a decent number of feature requests lead me to the opinion they are shortsighted or designed the app to not be able to get out of this current state.  I routinely, every 6 months or so, pick a few online finance tools in the hopes they can beat out Quicken Desktop for MY use cases as stated above.  Simplifi is so close but many of it's shortcomings are actually because they refused to build it with a running balance/ledger and continue to refuse to do so now.  None of the alerts are accurate for me thus far because it's basing the alert logic on faulty inputs.  

It really has everything we need, except being fiscally accurate in it's calculations.  I suppose I could turn off all the alerts/notifications but if I have to just disable half the apps functionality to use it, I can't justify paying it's asking price. Quicken is only about 10 bucks more a year and it's accurate.

Interestingly enough, Quicken desktops online webapp is an absolute disaster and ALWAYS corrupts my local file with erroneous transactions.  But I can turn that off and still have a working, accurate, personal finance app. I can't turn off the online portion of simplifi and still work. @Coach Natalie @Coach Nicole etc Feel free to reach out for further feedback if desired. and Ideally move this thread over to the feedback section. 

Coach Natalie

Hello @tsnyder91,

Thanks for sharing your feedback with the Community!

Simplifi is designed to count pending transactions toward the balance reported by your bank. Since most banks provide Simplifi with a balance that does not include pending transactions, we want to ensure that we're providing you with a true reflection of your balance. This applies to both manually entered and bank downloaded transactions that are in a 'Pending' state. This is not a known issue or a bug, it is by design. 

However, sometimes banks provide a balance that does include pending transactions, which causes Simplifi to double count them; or maybe a user doesn't want pending transactions to be counted toward the balance displayed in Simplifi. In either of these scenarios, you'd want to disable Simplifi from counting pending transactions in the balance. More details on how Simplifi calculates your balance, as well as how to disable the 'Balance with Pending' feature, are outlined in our Support Article here. 

We also have an Idea post available here requesting the ability to see both the bank-provided balance and the balance with pending that you may be interested in checking out and adding your vote and feedback to. 

I hope this helps to clarify!

-Coach Natalie

tsnyder91

@Coach Natalie unfortunately it does not. It double counts with the 'Balance with Pending' feature on or off.  As mentioned, my banks balance number DOES INCLUDE pending transactions, so I need that on or it will double count as you state. But what happens here, I believe, is that my financial institutions balance gets updated ahead or behind the transaction list. 

This means I can check my banks own website and the balance available will differ from it's own running balance and transaction list on the screen.  Simplifi, since it does not use a running balance on purpose/by design for some reason, has no way to handle this accurately and ends up double processing a credit or debit based on the balance the bank gives in projections and alerts/notification thresholds. Simplifi does not have access to the transaction because it is delayed on the financial institution side and is literally not in the transaction list you downloaded yet, but IS reflected in the balance. 
This scenario happens with both my local bank as well as a big name Credit Card/Bank. 

As an aside, the article you linked has steps to enable or disable globally. "Disable Pending Transactions From Being Counted for All Accounts"  My UI in chrome on a Mac does not have the "three dots mentioned at all. Where that should be only has an "+ Add" link  So I had to do it manually for each account. 

Edit:  And because the updates are "4-6 hours" apart, but in my observation, over a day and a half in some instances, I get peppered with alert balance notifications and a highly inaccurate predicted balance graph/table.  I've decided to complete disable all notifications around account balances at this point because they just are not accurate.

Coach Natalie

Hello @tsnyder91,

If I understand correctly, the balance being provided by your bank already includes pending transactions. But since those pending transactions have not actually been entered or downloaded into Simplifi, but there is a Recurring Reminder for the transactions, the Projected Balance is off for the account, as it is counting that item twice (once in the balance provided by the bank, and once via the Recurring Reminder) -- is that correct? 

If so, the 'Balance with Pending' feature would not impact this in any way. The 'Balance with Pending' feature only applies to transactions that are in the Simplifi account register in a 'Pending' state, whether manually entered or downloaded from the bank. 

For the issue with your Projected Cash Flow, is this occurring with Chase, by chance? This sounds quite similar to what @RobWilk is experiencing here with Chase. Regardless of the bank, we can certainly escalate it to see if anything can be done to correct the behavior. 

Please let me know if I'm correct in my understanding of the issue and I'll let you know what info we need from you for an escalation.

-Coach Natalie

tsnyder91

Sort of, It happens with Chase, CapitalOne, Citi, and my local bank, which I'd rather not disclose publicly. 

An Example scenario that I think is happening is as follows:

1. Mortgage Payment ACH executes at lender side
2. Bank updates available balance to reflect
3. Bank does NOT show the transaction in the pending column yet.
4. Simplifi says "Hello bank, I'd like your current balance and transaction list, thanks!"
5. Bank provides a balance that includes the mortgage payment
6. Bank provides a transaction list that does NOT include the mortgage payment in pending or posted status
7. Simplifi says thanks! and uses the balance info to begin "projecting future balance chart/table"
8. Simplifi see's that a mortgage payment is in the series transaction list and applies it to the balance given by the bank that ALREADY includes that mortgage payment. 
9. Simplifi notes that now your bank account is projected to go NEGATIVE!! Alert!!!
10. Simplifi releases the hounds to my inbox and phone with alerts saying I'm now going to go negative because it effectively doubled up my mortgage payment and I intentionally keep my checking account on the low side (< 500 dollars)
11. The alerts go on for 24 hours or more, I assume every time simplifi syncs with the institution
12. Mortgage payment shows up in pending transactions in my bank finally on the 1st of the month.
13. Simplifi gets it and matches it to the series, and correctly adjusts the balances and they become accurate again.
14. The hounds go silent
15. Repeat this with other series based payments regardless of account type (checking, credit card, etc) I've had this happen at least 3 - 4 times in the two weeks I've been using Simplifi

"Balance with Pending" Is on as it needs to be because the pending transactions do count toward my balance

Assumptions here, I think these are pre-pending transactions, meaning they are sent to the paying account 24-48 hours ahead of time with the date they should come out.  In this case the mortgage payment is reflected in my banks balance, but not in the transaction list 2 days before the 1st of the month.  Paychecks often reflect in the balance, but not the transactions list as pending up 12-18 hours before pay day  This sort of scenario is fairly common I think with ACH auto pay setups.

I genuinely do not see a way around this without building a running balance and using that to base projections on but I'm happy to be escalated to see if there is something that can be done.

Edit: I'm trying to make heads or tails of why this just isn't working right, I did open a support request about this a week or so ago and all I got was, "That's interesting, I'm going to copy/paste this to our engineers, thank you for the report" So I don't really think first level support is a good spot if you do escalate.  I did offer then to jump on a call or chat with someone to figure out it.   Like I said, Simplifi literally fits the use case of how we use Quicken for Desktop, supports more financial institutions, but this projection amount issue and the ensuing alerts that get triggers erroneously makes it hard to continue use.

Coach Natalie

Hello @tsnyder91,

Thank you for clarifying the behavior!

Based on your description, I'm not sure that anything can be done from our end, unfortunately. If the balance being provided by the bank matches the balance you're seeing in Simplifi, we would not consider it a balance discrepancy. Additionally, if the pending transaction(s) aren't available on the bank's website, then they won't be able to be downloaded into Simplifi. It can take up to 4 hours from appearing on the bank's website for a pending transaction to download into Simplifi, but it does need to appear on their site in order to do so; more details on this can be found here. 

As you mentioned, it may be how the banks handle ACH payments, and you might consider contacting them directly to see if anything can be done from their end. You may also consider manually entering the transaction in Simplifi while the payment is processing, and then link that manual transaction to the associated Recurring Reminder to resolve the projection issue. When the transaction downloads from the bank, it will match to the manually entered transaction as long as the information is the same. 

Let us know if I'm mistaken and the balance in Simplifi does not match the balance with the bank. Otherwise, I hope these suggestions help!

-Coach Natalie

tsnyder91

@Coach Natalie

Thank you for the response. I did have a parallel inquiry to my bank on why this happens to begin with.

However, to be clear, this same issue happens with Capital One, Citi, and Chase, not just my bank. So I don't really think it's my responsibility to reach out to each of them to try and "fix it" on their end.

That, in my view, is Simplifi's role in this.

My bank called me today to explain this though.  They use Fiserv, Inc which a large number of financial institutions utilize.

The software complies with the recent ACH rule changes and as a result there are THREE balances the bank tracks now:

Current balance - Balance without pending - supported by Simplifi

Adjusted ledger - Current Balance including pending transactions that have todays date - supported by Simplifi

Current collected - Current Balance including pending transactions that have todays date AND future pending transactions that are dated for some date in the future. Per my bank, they are required to use this one due to recent Federal ACH rule changes and simplifi doesn't appear to support

This is the one where transactions go where the transaction is for a future date but arrives early. ie mortgage payment request hits my bank on a tuesday but is marked to not come out till thursday. My bank displays this one to me for the balance, and is what simplifi see's as well. but as of yet, it does not actually display the accompanying transaction in the transaction list as it's a few days out.

It's possible Fiserv may adjust this and start showing future pending transactions in the normal transaction list and then my bank would have to implement it. 

This does seem like something Simplifi should be on top of and figure out how to support, honestly. I highly doubt I can single handedly fix this issue with all of my financial institutions.

RobWilk

Based on what you shared, If they would switch CHASE to "Current Balance" a.k.a. "Balance Without Pending Transactions" that might solve the problems with my chase connection --- Simplifi already knows enough to apply local pending/manual transactions to that balance.  Because as it stands, on weekends (and possibly outside of banking hours in general) the bank balance updates but new transactions in that period may not be downloaded.  I think we're describing basically the same problem.

tsnyder91

Appreciate the wrap up comment.

Unfortunately manual transactions would not address this problem at all unless they are the opposite of the transaction being "doubled", ie a debit to counteract the double up credit, or a credit to counteract the doubled up debit. Once the real transactions show up and simplifi matches them to the series, the counteracting transactions can then be deleted.

This issue will only get worse as more banks and financial institutions become compliant with the three balances required at a federal level. And start showing the third balance type 'Current collected' to their customer as the "available" balance. And the bulk of simplifi will be less accurate or useful over time. ie, projected blances, alerts, etc. 

What is interesting is that a running balance would solve for this 100%, something simplifi is oddly vehemently against especially when the reasonings and assumptions used to deny the feature have been proved insufficient entirely in the face of these three balance levels required to be utilized now and banks using the new'ish third balance type as the available balance.

I'll come back in a year or so if and only if simplifi supports all three balance value types. 

Thanks for working through this with me!

I learned a lot about how banks work and how Simplifi operates both at a software level and an org level. 

I think this can be closed for comments now if you'd like.