Need some Mint Import Clarifications Please
Hey all, anyone happen to know what's going on with these by chance? Any help is appreciated!
I followed the directions and exported one account from Mint and imported using the Mint option. Here's my initial questions:
- Does Simplify only import the Original Description? Asking because of my 12 years & 25k+ transactions, 99.9% I've renamed :-(
- I'm seeing that rarely it does use the Description over the Original Description. How is it deciding? It's an import so there needs to be some sort of logic that does it. I thought it might be special characters but that's not the case based on what I see
- A transaction I renamed in Mint: My naming in Mint is: *Slim Chickens - Maria's bday lunch", the statement name is "SLIM CHICKENS 15602 QS", and then Simplify used "*slim Chickens - Maria's Bday Lunch"
- A transaction I renamed in Mint: My naming in Mint is: *Slim Chickens - Maria's bday lunch", the statement name is "SLIM CHICKENS 15602 QS", and then Simplify used "*slim Chickens - Maria's Bday Lunch"
- Why does Simplify change description to something different than what they're importing? Anyone know the logic being used? Is there a different "as-is" import option available? Unsure why they're trying to clean up transactions we've already cleaned up? Examples:
- Capitalization: MTA is now Mta. NYC is now Nyc.
- Renaming:
- A transaction I renamed in Mint: My naming in Mint is "*Brooklyn Pizza - Stef", the statement name is "TST* BROOKLYN PIZZA PA" and then Simply changed it to "Pizza Pa"
- A transaction I did not rename: Mint name is "LOWES #03040" but after import, Simplify changed it to "Lowe's", even added an apostrophe.
- The more I look, the more I get confused on the logic being used:
- *CVS.com - Antibiotic is my name, Simplify made no changes to it outside of putting it in lowercase, "*cvs.com - Antibiotic"- kept the website, asterisk and dash
- "*ShopDisney.com - Maria's Tigger Figureine" is my name, Simplify changed it to "Disney Maria's Tigger Figureine" - so it renamed the website to just Disney, removed the asterisk and dash, but kept in my spelling error lol
- When creating a new manual account to import into, it asks for the current balance. But then after I do the import, the balance is off based on what was imported. $3,313.67 is the current balance. After import $5,209.41 is now my balance. What do I need to do to fix this? Does it mean transactions are missing from the import? Though not sure why it asks for the current balance if it's calculating that using previous transactions you're importing? Asking as this account only goes back 15 months. I want to import another one that has 12 years of history.
Comments
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@WolfieGirl, thanks for posting!
Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of insight to provide as to your specific questions. I think your best bet would be to check out this existing topic and add your feedback regarding your experience accordingly:
As for the issue with the balance, it sounds like you're referring to the balance field when adding a manual account. This is so you can give the account a starting or opening balance. If you're planning to import transactions that go back further than the current balance for the account rather than starting fresh from that point, I'd suggest not entering a balance when creating the account and then letting the transactions determine the balance.
Manual account balances are determined by the transactions that have been entered, so when all of the transactions are imported, Quicken Simplifi will calculate them to determine your balance. This may not end up matching the balance on the bank's website if perhaps something is missing, or if the opening balance transaction is wrong, etc. I'd suggest looking for the opening balance transaction on the account and adjusting it accordingly. If an opening balance transaction doesn't exist, you can also create one to give the account a balance adjustment.
Let us know how it goes!
-Coach Natalie
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@Coach Natalie Thanks for the reply. Is there someone I can reach out to to get answers to my questions? With over 25K in transactions to import, I'm sort of stuck not being able to move forward without the information. The import logic is coded so someone should have the info somewhere :)
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@Coach Natalie Also, what's the best way to get answers for a number of other questions I have? These are ones I couldn't find answers for in the Community or Help sections. Some are functionality, some are strategy. The app asked me if I wanted to set up an appointment and took me to a web page, but the page just says no appointments are available. Is that something I can set up? Feels like I'd bombard the community with newbie questions :)
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@WolfieGirl, you're posting to the right place to ask your questions. Alternatively, you can reach out to Chat Support with your inquiries. As for a getting started appointment, if it says there are none available, that may be the case. However, you can contact Chat Support directly to receive more advanced assistance with scheduling that.
Please note that regardless of the route you take, you're reaching out to the Care Team so we won't have answers to questions about coding and logic. What we have available in our Help Center is the data that we make available to our users. I'm not sure that coding and logic would be revealed by our product team regardless of the situation.
I hope this gets you pointed in the right direction!
-Coach Natalie
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Thanks @Coach Natalie
Sorry if I didn't word it the best way. I'm not looking for anyone to share coding with me. I just want to understand how Simplify changes my data around when I do an import. I would think that that is something I have the right to know? If I have data, and import it into the system, it should be transparent how you're going to change it.
Or alternatively, is there a way/method for me to import transactions as-is without your system changing anything around?
By your system modifying my already cleaned up data, that means I'll need to go through 25k+ transactions and fix all of the changes you make. :-( You literally strip out extremely important info in the transaction names during import, or make changes that make the transaction name illegible.
If I know what "rules" the data needs to follow before I import, then I can clean up the data in the file myself before importing, rather than going one by one for 25K transactions within Simplify. For example, if you have a character limit, I can shorten anything too long. If you don't allow the @ sign, I can remove them and use something else. That sort of thing. I tried to figure out how to clean up the data on my own to avoid your system changing things but can't figure it out.
So I guess that means my question is, how do I import transactions without Simplify changing the data?
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@WolfieGirl, I'm not aware of any rules or limitations that need to be followed when importing transactions, though I'm sorry to hear that you're not having the best experience with this. As far as I know, Quicken Simplifi applies a renaming and categorization logic to transactions when they're downloaded, and I'm sure the same renaming logic applies to imported transactions, but I'm not sure what that logic is or how it works. Our support article here states the following for categorization, which may provide some insight even though you are importing and not downloading:
Quicken Simplifi will automatically categorize most of your downloaded transactions for you. Using a combination of crowdsourcing, nearby payees, and simple logic, we can categorize most transactions correctly the first time you download! Still, there may be times when Quicken Simplifi doesn't categorize a transaction properly or leaves it uncategorized. In those instances, you'll need to recategorize your transaction.
That's about all we know from a care perspective. One thing I want to suggest is maybe creating Transaction Rules in Quicken Simplifi. before importing. They say that Transaction Rules don't apply to imported transactions, but I've seen it work personally, at least for the Category. Since you're importing from Mint, you should be able to match the Categories in Quicken Simplifi to the ones in Mint to get those to import and assign properly. Otherwise, your Mint Categories will be imported into a separate section as outlined here.
Sorry for not having the answers you're looking for, but I hope this helps!
-Coach Natalie
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@Coach Natalie First, thanks for the dialogue. I appreciate it.
I’m not sure how we detoured onto categories. My post doesn’t mention those. My post is about transaction descriptions. During import those are mangled and highly modified. Is this how the application is designed to work? I can’t find any mention that Simplify will change the actual transaction names/data around during import.0 -
@WolfieGirl, I mentioned Categories because the linked support article is the only content we have regarding "logic", so I wanted to share the info in case it was insightful. The "renaming" part of my comment is referring to the logic that is applied to Payee names, though we don't have any content on that specifically. For my suggestion regarding Transaction Rules, I have seen these work for the Category when importing transactions, so you can try Payee Rules if you'd like. I apologize for the confusion.
Maybe providing some additional examples would be helpful, as your originally provided examples appear to be following Quicken Simplifi's design, which is to clean up the Payee name. For example, my transactions that come in from the bank as "WM SUPERCENTER #3094" get renamed to "Wal-Mart"; this is a Payee name cleanup and is to be expected.
Perhaps you are looking for something along these lines, which seems to be a trending topic for transitioning Mint users:
Thanks!
-Coach Natalie
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Yes, Simplifi's "design" of "cleaning up" the Payee name is a problem. How can we even create rules if you change the original data? The post you shared explains the issue perfectly. Though I have only seen the issue during Import since I'm new, looks like you do it for all live incoming transactions as well. So there's no way to import our data as-is? Not sure why Simplifi would mess with raw data without a user's permission. I do not want my transaction data "cleaned up". Just import it as-is and I'll clean it up as I see fit. @RobjWill718 gives a great example, I use Zelle all the time. By you truncating it, I have to do research to figure out who it was for/from. And then I can't use their name, which you cut off, to create a rule to categorize them. Is this something on the roadmap to change/fix? Maybe make it an optional setting you can turn on to automate cleanup?
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I also want to add my experience for context here. I just imported all of my transactions from the CSVs Mint exported. I didn't modify them at all. Examples of weird description changes:
"Venmo Cashout" to "Ve Cash ##out"
Something to "##rb" (So messed up idk the original)
"DFAS Navy Act" to "D ##fa ##s Navy Act"
"Pershing Brokerage" to "Per ##shing Broker ##age"
"Transamerica" to "Trans ##ame ##rica"
"Venmo" to "Ve"
"Verizon" to "Verizon * * * * * * * * * * * 0001 Ach Withdrawal"
The list goes on for HUNDREDS of transactions. For some it seems to take the original description column data for others it seems to take the description column data and then I can't make sense of the random #s and shortening/deleting of characters.
This doesn't make sense, the import process should not have this many bugs and if it's not fixed shortly I'll simply go with another company instead of Simplifi. I'd say a work around would be to go through and make rules to batch modify them but the random characters and deletions make it too difficult to find key words that are workable and the rules capability is not capable enough to allow me to filter on things other than the description (amount, account, etc.)
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I also wanted to add my experience to share the issues I've had with trying to transfer everything over from Mint. I posted this comment hours ago via my phone but now it's not showing on my laptop (sorry if this ends up double-posting). I just imported all of my transactions from the CSVs Mint exported. I didn't modify them at all. Examples of weird description changes:
"Venmo Cashout" to "Ve Cash ##out"
Something to "##rb" (So messed up idk what the original was)
"DFAS Navy Act" to "D ##fa ##s Navy Act"
"Pershing Brokerage" to "Per ##shing Broker ##age"
"Transamerica" to "Trans ##ame ##rica"
"Venmo" to "Ve"
"Verizon" to "Verizon * * * * * * * * * * * 0001 Ach Withdrawal"
The list goes on for HUNDREDS of transactions. For some it seems to take the original description column data, for others it seems to take the description column data and then I can't make sense of the random #s and shortening/deleting of characters.
This doesn't make sense, the import process should not have this many bugs and if it's not fixed shortly I'll simply go with another company instead of Simplifi. I'd say a workaround would be to go through and make rules to batch modify them but the random characters and deletions make it too difficult to find keywords that are workable and the rules capability is not capable enough to allow me to filter on things other than the description (amount, account, etc.)
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Having a similar issue. When I import Mint transactions it seems to use a combination of the "description" field (the one I've meticulously maintained in Mint) and the "original description" (the one from the bank that Mint imported). On top of that, there is random capitalization and random characters inserted into them. I would just like it to import the "description" field from the Mint CSV exactly as it is.
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I noticed this today. If the original statement field has a # sign, the description and original description field seem to combine or the original statement takes priority.
Simplifi User Since Nov 2023
Minter 2014-2023
Questionable Excel before 2014 to present
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I have tried the new Mint upload process after it was updated in web version 3.95.0 and everything seems to be working much better. Transaction names look to match how they were edited in Mint and categories, tags, and notes all seem to be coming over as well.
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