Refunds Show Up In Spending Report

ajbopp

I've been going back and forth on whether I want this or not, so I'm asking for input from the community on their thoughts.

If I get a refund of $1000 from a car dealership because I've backed out of a car deal, that transaction shows up on the Spending Report as a positive number.

On the one hand, all this is technically accurate, I suppose.

On the other hand, if I want to know how much I actually spent in a given month, the actual amount of money that I laid out is offset by $1000, and I'm inclined to think that's a distorted number, particularly since refunds rarely show up in the same month that I spent the money (at least in my experience).

I would rather see refunds be included in the Income Report with a Refund category. To me that logically makes more sense and would seem to offer a more accurate picture of how much money I received this month vs how much I spent.

What do others think?

RobWilk

I leave refunds in original purchase category, mark the true date of the refund in description or notes, but change the transaction date to be about the same date (or month at least) as when the matching purchase took place. This results in net-zero change on the spending report for the month in which the purchase was made.

Just be aware if you edit the dates before the transaction clears, it may change back to the cleared date.

This might not work for every situation, but it's what i do.

ajbopp

I'm not sure that would work for me @RobWilk . Following some other posts at well, it seems like you a lot of tweaking and fiddling with transactions of various kinds - changing dates, deleting this, adding a duplicate of that.

I'm a set it and forget it kind of guy. The first 6 months I used Simplifi I tried the sort of manual interventions you suggest above and in other posts, and ended up with a big mess. I started over in January and try to do as little manual intervention as possible. There are some inconveniences, like the subject of this thread, but overall I'm much happier (and spending a lot less time in Simplifi!)

RobWilk

In terms of duplicating and deleting, that's because Simplifi doesn't support my bank (I bank with a small institution in my state known as JP Morgan Chase Bank). Simplifi offers a connection to my bank, but quite frequently the balances are significantly off (I can't rely on them). This is due to duplicating of some transactions at certain times of days or certain days. On a bright note, I got six free months on simplifi as a result.

The official response I received on that issue when they contacted Chase to try to resolve it:

"This is proving to be a difficult issue. We are still going back and forth and we may not be able to resolve it. I am sending a follow up request on my last email and hope to get some good news. Thanks again for your ongoing patience, and I will follow up when I hear back."

Officially, I'm only supposed to be getting support on this via e-mail (out of public eye), but I am posting (without response from support here) to share progress in case anyone else banks with the same small bank i bank with.

Coach Natalie

Hello @ajbopp,

Thanks for posting your inquiry to the Community!

I personally track refunds by using the same expense category as the original purchase. I leave the dates as-is and it doesn't bother me if the money comes in during a different month. Although I do budget on a monthly basis, I look at my expenses and income as an overall (yearly), and I have money in savings to cover expensive months, whereas I put any leftovers from other months back into savings, so it all evens out for me (and I usually have extra money saved up by the end of the year). So, if the expense money came out of one month, but the refund came back to me in a different month, I'm a-ok with that, and it's a true representation of my money flow.

Just my two cents. 🙂

-Coach Natalie