Why are pending transactions that I create with a date in the future automatically added to Bills

Hi @Philk

I'm a user of Q-Simplifi. I am not a program designer or programmer and have no link to Quicken-Simplifi beyond my being a user. So, take my attempt to speak to your question for what it's worth and not as an official technical statement… and I too will probably fail to address what you are asking, but here are my thoughts anyway.

Simply put, I would say the "defect" you are curious about is by design. Q-Simplifi is not designed to be a full-fledged accounting package. Q-Simplifi is, instead, an app that is THIS MONTH focused and is designed to help one keep spending in alignment with income in the current month. Q-Simplifi is a tool that gives me a platform to capture all my recurring income, fixed and flexible expenses both non-discretionary and discretionary including saving goal contributions and shows me where I'm at and how much I have available (or not available) for any extra spending or saving I want to do in a given month. And IMHO, Q-Simplifi does this very well.

As a result of the THIS MONTH focus of Q-Simplifi it makes perfect sense that bank account registers in Q-Simplifi serve the Spending Plan and not vice versa. Again, without claiming to know the minds of the designers, it is apparent that a bank register centric app was not the intention of Q-Simplifi.

That a manually entered future dated transaction would become a reminder rather than what it seems you are asking for is a result of the Spending Plan centric nature of Q-Simplifi by design and not a defect.

What you seem to be asking for is indeed part of the conversation in this forum as exemplified in this extended discussion following on a feature request to add a reconciliation feature to Q-Simplifi:

@Philk

I will point you to these support articles that may provide further

I’ll be interested to hear if these articles help you further understand Q-Simplifies relationship to bank account data.

I believe your main issue, if I’m hearing you right, has to do with entering future dated transactions into your account register and one of these articles clearly states that only transactions dated for the current day or past dates will affect the bank balance.

@Philk I’m glad to hear I’ve been able to help clarify things. I’ll take the point of view that “their” theory is not misguided The way Q-Simplifi is set up and functions works better for me than all the other finapps I’ve used or tried over the years including Q-Classic which I used for about 20 years.

Remember, Q-Simplifi is Spending Plan centric. The accounts list and associated account transaction registers deal only with bank provided data. You can make manual entries for the purpose of keeping the current bank reported balance accurate but but they are simply not set up to be nor can you use them as fully dynamic registers.

The “Balance with pending” feature is strictly a way for Q-Simplifi to deal with pending transaction IF, and ONLY IF, the bank includes pending transactions at the bank. It is not a feature that turns on or allows user entry of future dated transactions. Turning that feature on or off has to do with what the bank includes in its data downloads. For example, Wells Fargo does not include pending transaction in my account at the bank in its download data. This is the Banks decision for whatever reason. Thus I have the “Balance with pending” feature turned off for my Wells Fargo accounts. The balance that Simplifi shows me in this case is my actual bank balance with no pending transactions at the bank included. When I log into my WF account and look at the data for my accounts I see two balances. My actual balance and my balance taking into account any pending transactions. But when Q-Simplifi reaches out to WF to update my account data, Wells Fargo only sends out the first balance along with ONLY transaction that are fully processed and paid. I certainly can go ahead and manually enter the pending transactions listed by WF to see in Q-Simplifi my balance with pending, but I have yet to see any advantage to this. As far as future dated expenses go, these are all included in my Spending Plan - I’ll come back to this below.

On the other hand, Citi does include pending transactions in their data downloads for my Citi credit card (the only account I have at Citi) and so I have Balance with pending turned on for my Citi account thus telling Q-Simplifi to expect my balance to include pending unpaid charges sitting in my account waiting to be paid. Either way, Q-Simplifi provides me with an accurate rendering of my current account balances as of today.

The account registers in Simplifi are not dynamic registers, for lack of a better term, as they are in Quicken Classic. Q-Classic bank registers act more like the old time paper checkbook register in which you could do all the calculations you wanted and then when your statement arrived complete with all your processed physical checks you could do your monthly reconciliation to make sure what you have as a balance in your checkbook matches what the bank says you have in your account. Q-Simplifi’s registers are not that.

The action in Q-Simplifi takes place in the Spending Plan. In my Spending Plan I have listed all of my fixed expenses including funds I set aside each month for various non monthly expenses and some long term goals. I also have all of my expected income listed. Finally I have created pools of money I expect to spend on my flexible expenses. All of this is FUTURE DATED at the beginning of each month and for all future months out to one year. If I’ve built my plan honestly and throughll, I have a close to reality view of my personal financial state for the month. And beyond this month for 12 months into the future. It is here that I can make adjustments and track how well I’m following my plan. For me this is fully acceptable and makes perfect sense for how this finapp works in alignment with its stated purpose.

If you really want a dynamic account register that allows full flexibility, you will probably need to stick with Q-Classic or try some of the other finapps that are available and more account register centric.

@Philk You'll need someone from Q-Simplifi to answer that question.