Using splits (multiple categories) in Recurring Transactions (4 Merged Votes)

DryHeat

@RetiredGuy1952

I understand your frustration. I feel it too. This idea was "submitted for review" at least 3 years ago and has huge user support, but there has been no feedback from the development team (at least to us users) giving any hint of when, if ever, it might be acted upon.

A number of new features (Mileage Tracker, Estimates, Tax Planner, for example) have been released lately, but there has been no indication of progress on this basic feature. To be fair, they might be making progress on it for all I know. But nothing has been said to indicate that.

OldTimeQuickUser

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/50661#Comment_50661

Where do we leave feature requests like this .. this should be a standard feature

TiggerTrainer

@Coach Natalie and @Coach Jon,

With 363 upvotes for this feature, this is a very important and basic functionality. This would be a huge crowd pleaser and would allow for many different things to take place or be enhanced as a result.

What is needed for this to be considered with the Simplifi Dev group and management?

TiggerTrainer

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/60778#Comment_60778

[removed - unofficial product info]

DryHeat

@TiggerTrainer

"no work has been done on this topic yet."

That's encouraging (not).

Given the various complexities people have pointed out, I think this issue is going to require a lot of work.

Pharoiste

@TiggerTrainer

Are you familiar with the film "Tora! Tora! Tora!" by any chance? It's a dramatization of the events leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. As is also historically true, there are two men assigned to a mountaintop to operate a newly-installed radar system. When they get the first blips "on their radar" from the approaching Japanese aircraft, one of them calls it in to report it. The lieutenant tells him that what the two privates are seeing "on their radar" is probably just an incoming flight of B-17s from the mainland. So he tells the two men to disregard what they are seeing "on their radar". The private up on the mountain shrugs and hangs up, he tells his partner that they've been directed to disregard what's "on their radar", and they both leave to have breakfast.

Having something "on your radar" means only that you know that it's there — not what you intend to DO about it. Thus far, Quicken has said only that the feature has been "submitted for review". That doesn't mean that they are performing such a review. It doesn't mean they have a time frame for when that review might start, or how long the review might take once it begins. It doesn't even mean that they intend to perform such a review at all.

After six years, I would say that in all likelihood, we are now more likely to see competing applications implement AI-based features where you will be able to tell the application in plain English that you expect such-and-such a transaction once a month, and when it arrives, you want it to be split in a particular fashion — ChatGPT, for example, already has features that are similar.

Simplifi is becoming the Eudora of personal finance apps.

Swenawds

On their radar after 6 years? Will their radar go dark in 6 more years with still no action?

TiggerTrainer

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/60854#Comment_60854

You make a good point. If Simplifi does not make the choice to catch up, they will be left behind. That said, within the last year I tried several competing products and while they all have their positives and negatives, I like the Quicken (Both Classic and Simplifi) infrastructure. If they could just implement a few things they likely would grow their customer base much more.

krames

It has been 6 years, if Simplifi/Quicken is interested in honest open communication, they really should give us an official update on this.

I suspect since it has been 6 years that the chances of this being implemented is approaching zero.

Pharoiste

I know. All of the personal financial apps have weaknesses. You have to decide which ones are more tolerable for you personally. Right now, I’m using [removed competitor mention]. While I do consider it superior to its competitors, I would never say that it’s perfect! :-) I give it about a B, maybe a B-plus. That’s not great, but I’ve tried several others, and I wouldn’t give any of them much more than a C.

DryHeat

The basic idea of showing splits in Reminders has gotten tangled up with the more radical idea of treating splits as full transactions (with their own dates, notes, attachements, exclusions, whatever). I think all those ideas have been brought up in this thread at one point or another.

If they just include splits in Reminders they might be able to get it done in a reasonable time. But if they take an "all or nothing" approach my guess is that the necessary restructuring of the app's data structure would be significant. So we will likely end up with nothing.

I hope I am being too pessimistic about this.

TiggerTrainer

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/60869#Comment_60869

I think for me, my confusion is that if splits are available for new transactions, then the data structure should allow for reminders to just use the same interface and data retention. I know I am making things too simplified, but if you keep it simple I am unsure why it is so hard.

DryHeat

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/60875#Comment_60875

Sure… The point of my previous comment was that just adding splits to reminders shouldn't be too hard. But it will require some changes (to the Reminder and Recurring Series data structures and creation/editing interfaces, for example). And those changes will have to be implemented in a way that does not disturb existing data — which is always a challenge. So… It's not nothing, but it's a discrete and doable task.

But, as mentioned above, implementing the other suggestions that make up much of this thread (basically, that splits should have all the attributes of a full transaction) would require more significant changes. Including changes to the transaction data structure.

Which is why I hope they handle the Reminder-Splits issue on its own.

RobWilk

I had long since voted for this, but now I have a good reason to want to use this for one particular recurring transaction.

(1) My monthly main income, which always arrives before I wake up, ALWAYS downloads before I would otherwise manually enter it.

(2) That income has a deduction - which i get reimbursed, which I would like to separate out in a split, thanks to @SRC54 showing me how that works via direct message earlier. As it stands now, I would have to look up the paystub (online or whatever) to see what that income was before deductions and add in the split for the deduction.

Having the split auto-filled (even if it needed to be periodically updated) would be helpful.

Also, I totally understand if this feature required an 'exact' dollar amount match (rather than auto or range) since the splits are specific.

Beltifi

Today I was reminded again why splits need to be treated as individual transactions. Apple is now billing multiple subscriptions together, and I have reminders set up for each one. But I can’t actually use them because I can’t assign the bundled charges to the individual reminders. Now I’m stuck with gaps and mismatches since the bundling is random.

This isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have. This is basic functionality for an app at this price.

EL1234

I had a similar issue last week, deposited two checks at an atm. Each check corresponded to a certain planned income. There's no way to attach each split to the series, so I had to just dismiss one of the reminders, connect the other reminder to the deposit, and then set up the splits. (If you do the splits first and then connect the transaction to the reminder, it wipes out the splits.)

Quite annoying since it means I can't rely on looking at the series history. To see the income history for that job, I instead need to search for the payee name (and I have to put both names into the "Payee" of the deposit).

Swenawds

@Beltifi is precisely right on the nose:

"This is basic functionality for an app at this price"

TiggerTrainer

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/61177#Comment_61177

"This is basic functionality for an app at this price." Agreed. Hopefully they will be able to address this soon. I would be interested to pull together a listing of functionalities that we expect to be in the app at this point. Not that it will change anything, but it would be interesting to see things together.

I love Quicken, but Simplifi needs to catch up.

TiggerTrainer

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/98/using-splits-multiple-categories-in-recurring-transactions-4-merged-votes

This is very exciting to hear that this is setup for a future release. Hopefully soon.