Question on the intended way to use recurring transfers.

RockLee

I'm confused on specifying recurring transfer series. Given this common scenario I have checking account CHECK1 and credit card account CARD1.

• A Monthly Transfer is made from CHECK1 to CARD1
• When you create these accounts Simplifi will create transfer sub categories for each account. Lets call them transfer→CHECK1 and transfer→CARD1

What is the intended way to specify the recurring series?

• I'm assuming I should create just one series. I suppose I could create two, one for each side of the transaction, but that seems complex.
• A Recurring series requires two fields 'Account' and 'Category'. How should these be set? If I set 'Account' to CHECK1 and 'Category' to transfer→CARD1, then this seems to mostly work, but it creates two reminders, which may be technically correct, but looks cluttered. I'm also having trouble getting Simplifi to automatically link my transactions to the series, I don't know if my settings are related.
• Another approach is to set the series's 'Category' to 'transfer' (no sub category account). This creates one reminder, but it only affects one side of the transfer, so cash flow only reflects the series in CHECK1 but not CARD1.

What is the intended way?

UrsulaA

Yes, you are correct in assuming you should create one series.

For the credit card payment scenario, I created the series by using Checking Account as account and Credit Card 1 as category.

Yes, you will have two reminders for both sides of the transfer. When the transactions download, they will link to the series and the reminders will go away.

I rather have two reminders rather that not having an estimated credit card balance after payment.

https://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/5142302-how-credit-card-payments-and-transfers-are-handled-in-the-spending-plan#h_b450d0f8ed

RockLee

Thanks for confirming…. I agree that I would rather have the two reminders and the cash flow be correct on both sides. Maybe two reminders is technically correct, but it seems redundant coming from one transfer series. and a little cluttered, but not a huge deal.

EL1234

I find that when I mostly look at reminders when I'm looking at my cash flow, which I mostly do by clicking on my checking account on the sidebar to filter the transactions list. (When you're just looking at one account, you get the cash flow chart at the top.)

Then, since I'm just looking at the checking account side, I only see one reminder for each transfer.

UrsulaA

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/25743#Comment_25743

I do the same thing. When I want to look at my credit cards balance, I navigate to the account. I look at my checking account more often.

RockLee

@EL1234 It's a good point, All my transfers come out of a single checking account, so that works.

I'm leaning though toward setting the series as a 'Transfer' so that I just get the one reminder, and I have to manually connect the credit card side of the transaction to the series. I have several credit cards I use for different purposes, like allot of people. For my usage of Simplifi I see the dashboard and the overall transaction list the most, and in these places there are limited slots for reminders (mostly 4). Getting duplicate reminders pushes out other reminders. Maybe manually setting the transaction to the series will start to bug me in time and I'll revert.

Off topic kinda: I wish transfers and a nice visual indicated in the transaction list. Either a different color, or an icon. I know you can tell by the category, but all the transactions look the same when glancing over 10s of transactions.

Also, It would be great if the reminders for credit cards would reflect the balance due. I know this is a topic of discussion, but Simplifi has a nice cash flow diagram, and correct reminders would really complete this functionality. Oh well.

EL1234

Yup, I agree. What I did is set up the recurring bills as $1 and then every so often I log into my credit card accounts and update the reminders to the correct amounts (or delete the reminders if that CC didn't have a balance that month). It works fine but it's a bunch of extra steps to keep my cash flow diagram accurate.