Brokerage Accounts transactions should not automatically be ignored by Reports or Spending Plan

SRC54

I posted this in February and never got a comment or response. I think it is a bug.

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 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).

DannyB

Hi @SRC54

I'm certainly not qualified to answer or address this issue at the depth you need, but off hand, I wonder if this is a result of how Simplifi currently "treats" investment accounts more along the lines of "tracking" rather than fully integrated into the app.

It seems that the trajectory for investment/brokerage accounts is toward better or fuller integration and this sounds like an issue to be addressed.

SRC54

That may be so @DannyB but they certainly need to integrate it fully. They no longer consider it beta. As I say, 401Ks and IRAs, I just want to track but a brokerage account is a regular taxable account. Many people use them as their checking accounts as well. I've thought about it but the interest rate isn't good enough.

Coach Natalie

Hello @SRC54,

Thanks for sharing your feedback with the Community!

Investment Transactions being excluded from Reports and the Spending Plan is by design at this time. The only types of Investment Transactions that can be included in Reports only are ones with a "cash flow" type, such as 'Payment/Deposit"; this is outlined in our Support Article here. Our Support Article also states: "Note: The ability to include Investment Transactions in Reports, Watchlists, and the Spending Plan, as well as Import and Export Investment Transactions, are currently not available. However, we are working on adding these abilities!".

Additionally, it looks like your comment was originally posted on the Investment Transactions Feedback post. To clarify, the Feedback posts for new features are intended to provide feedback to our Product Team on the new feature specifically, and are not necessarily for reporting bugs. However, if a bug is reported on a Feedback post, I'll send it over to the Product Team so someone is aware; if they need more info, they'll let me know or they'll reach out to the user directly. Regardless, responses will typically not be provided on these types of posts. However, what you posted about is not a bug, so you actually posted in the right place originally for our Product Team to review your feedback.

Sorry for not having better news for you when it comes to including Investment Transactions in Reports and the Spending Plan, but I hope this helps!

-Coach Natalie

SRC54

@Coach Natalie

OK, thanks. I understand that they are working on this ability, but it has been a long time without any changes in Investments. So what is the timeline? And while we are on the subject, what happened to the feature timeline that was promised last summer?

Coach Natalie

@SRC54, there is no timeline or any additional information to provide. Once information becomes available on either of these features, it will be added or updated in the applicable threads/resources.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/3788/introducing-investment-transactions-share-your-feedback-here

http://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/6540220-managing-investment-transactions?q=i

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/3510/simplifis-roadmap

We appreciate your patience!

-Coach Natalie

SRC54

@DannyB @Coach Natalie

I replied to this yesterday, I thought, but it has disappeared (or I misplaced it) so will repost and amplify. I notice the changes in the Spending Plan yesterday, and it caused some weirdness with my Investment transactions (the ones I had done as Dividend Income or Reinvest Dividend). The were showing up in my Other Spending category for my May spending plan and earlier months. I don't know if this was a bug or not, but it set me thinking and I was able to kill two birds with one stone.

First, I decided to redo my Brokerage dividends switching them to Payment/Deposit. By doing this, they now show up in my Spending Plan as income, which is what I wanted. I just record the dividends as tax free or ordinary or tax deferred. I already had those categories defined. Now I know my taxable income for income taxes and also how much I owe on my tithe. I guess the reason I had been entering them as Dividend Income was because that was how it was (is) done in Quicken. But with Payment/Deposit, I have control over whether to include it in Spending Plan/Reports. Perhaps it was ever so, but I didn't catch onto that at first. (This is where experience with other financial programs can be a detriment.)

Next, and more interesting, were the ghost entries from my IRAs in the Other Spending part of the Spending Plan. They had not been there before yesterday's Web update. For most months, it was 0.00 though I could see it but in some months, for one reason or another, some of those transactions were not being ignored. At the same time, I discovered the new Transfers and Credit Card Payments section of the Spending Plan, which gave me an idea. The transactions for Dividend Income and Reinvest Dividend in Investments don't use a category but it is there. Unfortunately in Investments, one cannot access it directly, but I found if I chose those investments using the registry, I could edit them as a group and change the category from uncategorized to transfer. That had the effect of having them all ignored as I wanted for the IRA accounts AND moving them to the Transfers and Credit Card section of the Spending Plan where I can see them, but they are ignored. Again to me an investment trade is just another kind of transfer, exchanging money for a security, and indeed in other software I have used, I was able to create a trade category under transfers. I don't think one can do this in Simplifi.

Anyhow, this may not be how Simplifi wants me to do it, but it works, and I am happy.

Coach Natalie

Hello @SRC54,

Thanks for posting additional feedback!

I hate to break it to you, but Investment Transactions will no longer be displayed in the Spending Plan at all as of the 3.76.0 Web Release, as this is a bug.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/4958/new-6-1-23-investment-transactions-are-showing-in-other-spending

As mentioned above, including Investment Transactions in the Spending Plan, regardless of the Type, is not supported at this time. The only types of Investment Transactions that can be included anywhere are the "cash flow" types as you mentioned, however, you'll only see them in Reports as soon as this bug is fixed.

Sorry for not having better news!

-Coach Natalie

SRC54

LOL @Coach Natalie Oh, I figured it was a bug, but I liked the bug. I hoped the bug had helped me to find a workaround for the Brokerage transactions. We shall see. I can always go back to my previous workaround or I can just pretend my Brokerage account is a bank account. I'm an expert at workarounds for something like this.

Every transaction in Simplifi has the option of ignoring in reports and/or spending plan, and even in Investments, the ignore boxes are there. They just aren't user selectable. It's your program's unique paradigm, but for some reason your programmers have decided to break it in this one case. I just hope that sooner or later they will implement it.

It's always an adventure!