Ability to disable the automatic linking of Transfers (edited)

SidKa

[removed] - is there any way to turn off Simplifi's automated linking of transfers across accounts? Very often, Simplifi gets it wrong (e.g, a $105 debit in a banking account is linked as a "transfer" to a $105 sell trade in an investment account, even though it's pure coincidence that the amounts are the same). Worse, it appears to be applied retroactively without any obvious trigger (e.g., transactions in December got incorrectly linked even though we're in January)

Coach Natalie

@SidKa, thanks for posting your inquiry to the Community!

The ability to disable the automatic linking of Transfers is not currently available in Quicken Simplifi, so I have gone ahead and turned this into an Idea post so other users can vote on it and our product team can review it.

With that, since Quicken Simplifi is designed to learn over time, hopefully the manual intervention you're doing will help improve things for you down the road. Otherwise, if you'd prefer to do some troubleshooting on this instead of having it be a feature request for the ability to disable the automatic linking of Transfers, let us know and we can turn this back into a Discussion.

I hope this helps!

-Coach Natalie

ejs

I agree that Simplifi's handling of transfer linking is very problematic. It is especially irritating that Simplifi will override manual changes that I've made when it mistakenly links transactions together — for example, I might manually recategorize a transaction into a specific category, and then some time later Simplifi decides to retroactively link it to unrelated transaction coincidentally having the same dollar amount (undoing my recategorization, and, assuming I notice the error and unlink the transactions, requiring me to go back and recategorize the original transaction again, which at that point has become uncategorized altogether).

In addition to (or instead of) the suggested feature of being able to turn off automated linking, I think it would be a good idea for Simplifi to ask for user confirmation before linking transactions together. If Simplifi thinks two transactions should be linked, it could prompt the user to confirm that they should indeed be linked before it does so (or reject the suggestion if the transactions shouldn't be linked).

ejs

I just had an instance of manually entering a transaction, which I manually categorized as a transfer and which Simplifi (accurately) matched to the other side of the transfer. Simplifi handled this by popping up a box suggesting that the transfers be linked, and asking me to confirm that I want to link the two transactions in question. So it appears that for manually created transactions, Simplifi is already doing what I suggested above. In my opinion, Simplifi should do the same thing (or something similar, allowing the user to confirm or reject the linking of transactions) for automatically synced transactions.

RobWilk

I'm not sure how I feel about this one — a little too often, when I enter a manual transfer, it has linked to the wrong transaction on the other end (ideally, it should have just created a new transaction to link to in these cases). But for automatic, I can't imagine how it would 'ever' link linked transfers if it didn't do it automatically.

ejs

I'm imagining that it would work exactly the same way it currently does for manual transactions. If Simplifi thinks two automatically synced transactions should be linked together, it would generate a prompt informing the user of that fact and asking for confirmation that those two transactions should indeed be linked.

ejs

The problem of Simplifi mismatching transactions is becoming increasingly frequent for me. Admittedly, I have an abnormally high number of unrelated transactions that have identical dollar amounts, so the potential for mismatching is higher for me than most users. But having to identify and correct these mistakes is becoming a nightmare.

Sometimes, when I "unlink" transactions that Simplifi has mistakenly linked, the software will attempt to delete one side of the transfer instead of simply changing its category to Uncategorized. Is this a bug?

For example, today I tried to change the category of a linked transfer that Simplify got wrong to the generic category "Transfer" and received this message:

"You are editing the transfer transaction 'Ally Bank' to no longer be a transfer. This will also delete the other side of the transfer in account [CapOne - 360 Checking]"

coltrane

I am not sure this is a new feature I would vote for but I did want to echo that the apps linking and merging logic is very problematic. It is linking things that have very little in common and scarily, merging with transactions way in the past. Also it is deleting downloaded transactions for an unknown reason.

I really like this app but this issue is very frustrating

Coach Jon

Hello @ejs,

Thanks for letting us know! I would suggest maybe creating a new discussion on the issue you are facing so that we can keep this thread focused on the idea post here. This way other users experiencing the same issue can contribute to your new discussion you create.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/8/how-to-post-to-the-community

Thanks,

Coach Jon

ejs

Ok, thanks, I started a new thread about that specific issue.

SidKa

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/27572#Comment_27572

2 specific ideas:

1. Simplifi would prompt before linking, so I have a manual ability to agree/disagree with the automatic linking. It does not do the prompting today for all linking
2. If I chose "No" at the prompt (or corrected a previous incorrect linking), Simplifi would accept the decision. Instead, it "secretly" goes back and re-links older transactions today, messing up my historical finances

dudgeonc

As others have mentioned, what drives me crazy is when Simplifi goes back to older transactions to update to re-link transfers. What I would like is if I have marked the transaction as "REVIEWED" that this locks the transaction. This way Simplifi cannot make edits automatically and changing the category to link the transfers. If Simplifi does automatically update a transaction as a transfer, linking it to another and changes the category, it should also uncheck it as "NOT REVIEWED". Then when I look at the transactions list, I can see that something has not been reviewed yet and may need edits. Otherwise I'm assuming that everything is correct as how I set it. Currently the only I noticed something is wrong when I look at my spending plan (I like to put my savings/investments into my spending plan/budget even though it's just a transfer). 

Jenny T

I continue to have transactions incorrectly linked when adding manual transactions or editing existing transactions. Quite often the only common denominator is the dollar amount and account. For example, I was adding a new transfer manually over the weekend between a manual account and a downloaded account. I added the transaction in the manual account dated 8/16 and it incorrectly linked to a transaction of the same amount dated 7/27 in the downloaded account. When trying to fix it by deleting the manual item, it prompted as if it would have deleted the downloaded transaction. Luckily I realized the issue, canceled the action, and corrected the downloaded transaction details instead (which deleted the manual account’s new transaction). I was then able to add the transaction from the downloaded account first and get it correctly linked to the manual account on the other side. It’s concerning to me that transactions I’ve already verified could so easily be modified or deleted due to lack of transparency with the background linking automation. This could affect historical reporting and raises concerns about data integrity.

I think having a prompt to confirm linking (with transaction details) when manually adding or editing transactions would solve most of my issues, as I don’t typically have issue with newly downloaded transactions linking incorrectly.

SRC54

I recently changed the category back to Transfer (after experimenting for about a year using an expense category) in my Possessions account, and Simplifi attempted to match these transfers going back 4 years! I was careful to look for the very small blue print at the bottom right, Don't Link. I have learned over the years to be very careful. It wouldn't hurt for Simplifi to have bolder language such as

"Simplifi can attempt to link these transfers if you wish: YES or NO".

Simplifi was correct on some of them and wrong on others. It's one thing for Simplifi to attempt to link one new transaction but to attempt to link dozens going back years is fraught with danger.

So I upvoted this although I think instead of blocking it altogether that we could just have clearer language and stop it at the beginning.

Dick_Davis

@SRC54 , that question before taking the action would remove some of the "mystic" from the linking and put the user in control of the action with a simple yes or no.

wombatstew

Alternatively, you could allow manual linking where a transfer can be selected from the alternate account rather than just hoping simplifi finds the right transaction.

I have been managing this by changing the amount I transfer. if I have automatic transfers between accounts, I will use 399.99 and 399.98 instead of 400.00. even dollars seem more intuitive till you have multiple $400 transfers from the same account.

Dick_Davis

@Wombatstew, I would be much better and more intuitive if Simplifi knowns that the tranactdion is being paid from a checking, savings, etc. account and creates the other side the transaction. That makes it all much easier as well.

Wise_1

This software is insane. It creates new transactions and deletes existing ones. I had several $20k transfers among accounts, and it took me hours to figure out what the software was doing. And, even then, I think it has bugs. For example, it linked two separate transfers to the same transfer transaction on the other side. I know this because I went in and meticulously labeled the paired transactions with symbols. The send would have a * and the receive would have a * - and so on and so forth - using different symbols for each matched pair. I would rather just turn off the automatic matching. Even when I get it all set up manually, Simplifi goes in and changes my manual entries. This programmed behavior - along with what I suspect are a few bugs - is making me not want to use the software. Let's see if the company can get this right. Please fix this!

Wise_1

Where is this separate post?

Dick_Davis

@Wise_1 , I can totally agree and understand. Here is a thought that hopefully gets move foward. IF the Qucken Business and Personal (which is webased) is to having these issues, then why not use that as the base code and then work from there. One place for the modules and then one area of implementing change. As this seems to be separate set of program code that at times has no logic. I have not read any issues as you have described with Quicken Business and Personal.