Vent - time consuming over time

Mrsterry

This is just a vent for the more veteran simplifi users, and maybe someone will have suggestions, b/c frankly I'm too tired to search the community for workarounds to basic functionality expectations. I joined over 2 years ago and loved it - at first. But over time, as rules piled up, and banking transaction descriptors changed, and we added additional accounts (four banking and two credit cards) it's all gotten so complex and nothing seems to be properly classifying.

I check simplifi every other month and expect it should only take an hour to 'clean up' uncategorized transactions and see an overview of where we're spending…but it's taking MUCH longer and I get incredibly frustrated. I get that perhaps for some people weekly or even daily 'check-ins' to adjust transaction classifications are possible, but that's not my lifestyle or workflow.

My main complaints are:
* Returns classify as income - I would LOVE if simplifi would recognize that a $35 amazon purchase and a +$35 amazon return go together and cancel each other out. Instead I have to remove them reports and spending plan manually (and not to mention the 1/2 second lag after each adjustment and the lines skipping around on the page that cause irritation)
* Transaction renaming and auto-classifying - simplify can't seem to recognize a key word in a mixed string (is this called wildcard searching?) so I have to manually change 20 transaction catagories a month from our daycare facility b/c it can't recognize the facility name in the numeric string. And that's only one company of several dozen we transact with monthly as a family. (and again, all those 1/2 second lags after each category change AND having to 'X' out the request to create a rule)
*Creating a rule pop up - OMG, do not interrupt my workflow to ask me to create a rule for something that has 0 other occurrences. I have to X out that dang box every time I'm reclassifying the transactions above!
*Increasingly my bills aren't automatically linking to the transactions when they come in, so I have to seek them out and link them. Honestly, I'd like to delete all my bills and subscriptions and start over, but I'm afraid that will kill all the tracking history and make it harder for me to look at trends over time. Could I look this up and figure it out in this community? Probably, but I've been at this 3 hours already today, have only cleaned up one month, and am not spending more time to figure out how to fix it.

So if anyone took the time to read this, thank you. I'd just love to hear "yeah, that drives me nuts too" or "go ahead and delete all the category rules and recurring bill rules and start over next month, it won't ruin your look-back" or "hey, if you only want to check on a system every other month, try XXX instead" or "adjust your expectations, no banking system works well unless you check it daily". LOL.

I'm about to blow the whole thing up, cancel my subscription and go back to good old excel LOL.

EL1234

Hi! I'll admit to being one of those who categorizes / reviews transactions every day or two, I find it a lot easier since I usually remember what I purchased vs having to dig up receipts etc. It also keeps me more on top of things so if there's a charge that needs to be looked into I'll catch it much sooner.

In terms of classifying returns as income, are you manually "excluding from reports and spending plan" each time? What I do is instead give the return transaction the same category as the purchase. That way it subtracts that amount from my spending plan for that category (eg: if I buy shoes, that's Clothing, and if I return them, that's also Clothing so it turns out that I didn't spend that money on Clothing at all). That works out better than just ignoring the return transaction.

Since Simplifi learns over time (I don't know how the magic works under the hood, but it does seem to work), I usually only have to do this once or twice per store, which means that reviewing transactions gets faster over time.

Regarding the Creating a rule popup, I'm pretty sure that if you uncheck the "Create a rule to also use this category for future transactions" BEFORE you choose the new transaction, it won't ask you in the future until the next time you check that box. It remembers what you chose last. (I'm pretty sure there's an idea you can vote for to always have it unchecked, but since I rarely use it anyways, keeping it unchecked works out great.)

Bills not linking to transactions - I find that happens once in a while but not too often, but if you have one specific bill that never links to the transaction, you could try deleting and recreating just that one to see if it helps going forward, instead of spending all the time doing it for all. I've done that here and there and it hasn't affected my look-back at all since if I'm going to look for the history of a specific bill, I search or filter based on the payee or category, not based on the series itself.

I'm using Simplifi since some time in 2020, it took me a while to work out a system that works for me but now I'm very happy with it!

DannyB

Hi @Mrsterry

3 hours!!!! I'd be frustrated too.

If you only need to check in on your aggregated accounts every two months maybe there is a better app available out there somewhere.

I've been using QS since January 2022 and like @EL1234 I usually check in daily so not a big deal to make any corrections or adjustments that might crop up, but I don't really experience the issues you mention. I spend a minute or two daily with an occasional 5 or 10 minute "deep dive" into the reports. Otherwise, it's pretty much on automatic.

As far as those pesky refunds for returns, I use the "Refund" feature or if I miss setting one up, I do like EL 1234 and use the same category

I do know that the development team is getting ready to add an Amount Matching feature for Recurring Transactions that may help out with identifying your recurring payments in addition to key words.

All in all, I don't have any suggestions about your situation, but understand the need to vent if you are spending several hours making corrections, adjustment, etc.

OK, yeah, I can think of one suggestion - check in more often? 😏