Update next reminder amount for credit cards automatically using the account balance (edited)

ZacB · January 4

I'm a new Simplifi user, former Mint and Quicken Classic user. While I understand Simplifi's approach to treating credit card payments as transfers, I would like to echo what others have posted here about the convenience of knowing the total amount of credit card payments due each month in order to know how much money to move into the checking account. With the availability of high interest savings accounts now, we all want to keep our money in those accounts until the last day possible before transferring to a checking account to pay bills.

Additionally, if we have 5+ credit cards, and we want to abide by the 6 transfers out of a savings account per month limit (which is currently not always being enforced, but could return on the whim of banks), it's best to add up all the credit card balances due and make one transfer to the checking account for all (assuming you need to make other transfers at different times of the month for rent/mortgage, car payments, investments, etc).

Thanks and keep up the great work!

EL1234 · January 4

In response to the last part of your question, it may be helpful to ask the credit card companies to move your statement closing dates around, to consolidate the payment due dates to once or twice a month. Personally, I have a lot of fixed expenses around the 1st of the month and get paid twice a month, so I arranged for the credit cards that get most of my spending to be due a couple days after the 15th. This simplified my cash flow a nice amount.

MTcoug · January 4

At @UrsulaA's suggestion, I found this post and upvoted it.

I had a similar suggestion over here

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/6809/mint-refugee-frustrated-by-bill-connect-and-lack-of-connection-to-bank-of-america-and-citi

I kind of cross threaded two issues in my post, but I think they are related.

Want a SIMPLE approach of just pulling account balance and due date from Accounts, and show it somewhere in Simplifi
(without the hassle of setting up a recurring transaction and bill connect)
1. I think this is the same spirit as what @y11 and everybody else are asking for.
2. This would make my next request moot
If not that … at a minimum, support the same set of vendors in Bill Connect that are supported in Settings > Accounts
1. For me, I can't Bill Connect to Citibank (Costco Visa) or Bank of America (Alaska Visa), but I can set up "accounts" for these credit cards to pull all transactions.

y11 · January 4

Hello, it's me again! Kind of glad to see this request is getting some traffic. If it helps, I got used to NOT seeing this information. I became less dependent on simplifi or any other mint alternative budgeting tools and got to be aware of credit cards and their payment due back in my mind. I use maybe 5-6 different cards actively any given month, and I get paid semi-monthly. So I need to be aware of which 3 cards fall into the first paycheck period, and which 3 cards fall into second period — and just pay them when paycheck comes in. For all other cards I use seldomly, I GROUP them by NAME ORDERED so they are placed into their own section where I can identify any unusual activity (forgotten recurring payment, unauthorized purchase, returns, etc.)

Just so that I don't forget, I do maintain excel files with those 5-6 cards due date and payment (along with paycheck schedule, mortgage and car payments due) so I keep track of forecasted balance for next two pay check period.

Hope it helps and happy new year budgeting!!

Charlie H · January 4

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/24862#Comment_24862

This approach is possible for you because of your semi-monthly payroll schedule. For the more common bi-weekly payroll schedule, pay dates change month by month and the schedules of paychecks and CC due dates don't align month to month.

Simplifi needs to adopt mint's feature and fix this properly.

y11 · January 4

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/24863#Comment_24863

Yeap. I cannot agree more. I actually added a bit information to the message where I track them manually using excel. But yes you are absolutely right it would be so nice if Simplifi can step up and help us out. Just wanted to share my 2 cents in case it can help anyone with same issue.

y11 · January 4

Ah one more. I did have another trick setup if it can help anyone. Instead of trying to see the future and plan out everything perfectly:

On pay day, pay anything that is due that are before next paycheck.
transfer all remaining money to high yields saving or money market. don't think twice and just do it.
if anything comes up and next paycheck cannot cover the following payments due
retrieve money back from saving account and pay them. no big deal. :)
rinse and repeat.

Let's face it, I don't think this feature will be implemented anytime soon and we do need something in process to fix our own problem.

ZacB · January 5

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/24866#Comment_24866

I'm doing precisely this.

Also, I was thinking about how I could track the money I save after each month, vs. the money that is temporarily in the savings account while it waits to pay bills. Simplifi helps create a budget so you can easily balance income with expenses, but the spending plan doesn't track the money you didn't spend.

What I'm going to try doing is creating a generic Savings Goal in Simplifi with an arbitrary goal amount and no target date. I'll then "move" the unused amount in my savings account at the end of the month to the Savings Goal's virtual account. Theoretically, this amount would match the unspent amount of the monthly spending plan, but since credit card payments for spending in one month happen in the following month, it should lag behind a month or maybe longer. In any case, I'm hoping this will provide a clear picture of total unplanned savings over time.

ktrachy · January 6

+1 We need this too. My wife is pulling hair out and wants me to switch systems because she needs to view statement amounts and due dates of the statements. (not running totals). Please advise as to when this is expected.

nnmask · January 8

Can Simplifi track the due dates and due balances of each credit card? As a user from Mint, I use that regularly to check upcoming bills and move funds to my checking account to cover the bill. It would be fantastic if Simplifi can support it too.

(The correct bill connect doesn't work because it doesn't connect to even major credit card companies)

MtnCreed · January 8

@Coach Natalie You bring up a fair tactic of automatically updating the upcoming credit card reminders based on the statements you get, although it would still be nice to have an automated means. I pay off my full statement balance each month. Since major banks like Chase don't support syncing bills for credit cards anymore, I'd hope that there's a way to update the reminders based on the balance already in Simplifi.

EL1234 · January 9

That's what I do. It's a bit of manual work and also means that I need to make sure it's updated or my cash flow ends up looking too good, but it's definitely better than nothing!

Etch44 · January 9

We definitely need a feature that shows the credit card statement amount and due date in Bills & Payments. I 100% agree with those that say this should be automatic after connecting a credit card account. Why does the credit card company have to support some additional "Biller" service? They're already providing all the data. That being said, allowing us to specify the statement date and due date in order to let Simplifi know what balance to show for the bill is an acceptable workaround.

Mikepurple · January 13

I'm honestly shocked this feature is missing. How can an app purport to track my bank account balances if it has zero idea what my bills are. When I found that for some reason I had to setup manually I thought that was weird but fine until I found you're missing Chase and Citibank, not exactly small banks. Mint was able to do this without any special setup so the info is there. I guess I have to keep using mint until it dies in the hope that you get a basic feature.

On a similar note your app doesn't seem to understand that the thousands of dollars coming in the same day biweekly is my paycheck and makes me set each as income manually no matter how many times I set all recurring as a paycheck. This is less annoying as I'd have more money if I manually forget to fix this but again when the whole idea is warning me about my funds having the app have zero clue what my income or bills are makes it next to useless even with the free deal coming from mint.

asdfme · January 13

+1, this is a fundamental feature I used heavily earlier on mint. Please help add this feature

NOC · January 18

I searched this thread out and seems I’m as frustrated as everyone else. Can I make this “simple” for Simpify?

PULL THE PAYMENT DUE AMOUNT AND DATE IT’S DUE FROM THE CREDIT CARD ACCOUNT, NOT THE TOTAL BALANCE. Thats it, that’s the tweet, that’s the request. This is just poor software engineering. Seeing a negative balance at the top of my accounts when it’s not really negative makes this software useless for anything other than spending category reports. How hard can this be?

madmoondog · January 19

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/21102#Comment_21102

exactly like you described.

MintRIP · January 22

Glad to see i'm not the only one perplexed this app doesn't have this feature. I miss mint so much :(

eman · January 23

Hello - came over from Mint.com and one of their best features was that my synced credit card accounts would alert me when a credit card bill would cut, what the minimum payment due amount is, and what the minimum payment due is. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE add this feature so I don't have to log in to all of my credit card accounts to see this.

I know you can set up manual bill reminders and I also know this is technically a "transfer" but most American's see this a recurring "Bill" until they pay it off. PLEASE add this feature.

UrsulaA · January 23

This feature request already exists. It is better to start with more than one vote to be considered by the product team.

[removed link to merged thread]

SciKickChef · January 23

Is there any update to this? The cash flow forecast is useless unless you can create some future payment for credit card. In my case, I have 3 CC and I pay them in full every month, but without this feature, Simplifi is just a categorization tracker for your expenses.

EL1234 · January 23

I agree that credit card payments are a crucial part of cash flow forecasting. What I have set up is something that was mentioned elsewhere on these forums. I have a recurring bill for each credit card, on the date that the payment is due, with the amount of $1. Every so often, I go to my checking account's cashflow and I scroll through the month and find any reminders that are listed as $1. I log into my credit card accounts and adjust the amounts accordingly (or delete the reminder if the card has no payment due this month).

It's a little tedious but it does work, but I'd love if Simplifi could get this info in automatically.

llamafilm · January 29

I pay off my credit card in full every month. In Simplify, I several monthly bills and subscriptions on this card, and I also have a monthly bill series for paying it off. In order to make the cash flow projection look correct, I have to make sure that bill series is exactly the right amount, matching the sum of all the subscriptions and bills. So every time I add a new subscription, I must also edit the credit card payment to keep it matching. This feels like a chore, and I think it could be done automatically. Essentially just a checkbox saying you always want to pay off the credit card every month.

UrsulaA · January 29

Your request sounds like this one. Requests with more votes are more likely to be considered. Vote for the request below.

[removed link to merged thread]

jperro · January 29

This feature is a must have for cash flow management. [removed] has it and it’s a free offering like Mint was, so it can’t be that difficult — but I’m happy to pay for Simplifi if they’ll add this. Until they do, I’m canceling.

grey · January 31

Is anyone from Simplifi going to comment on this missing feature and if/when it will be implemented? I'm about to seek out another service and I won't be back. Simplifi is missing a golden opportunity to grab thousands of Mint customers and I would love them to do so because the bait and switch from Intuit deserves they go bankrupt. However, a basic feature like this SHOULD have been implemented by an intelligent company seeking to capitalize on the demise of Mint. There must be one out there.

Flopbot · February 1

@grey

Just managing expectations with this reply. Typically, the Simplifi coaches don’t get involved in these discussions unless the basic idea needs a little bit of further explanation/clarification, an Idea Post hasn’t seen any love for awhile, or it is going to be implemented.

Right under the current number of votes, is the place to check to see what the current status of an Idea Post is (getting votes, implemented, etc.). There’s no real expected timeframe for ideas to get implemented…there are LOTS of ideas…not so will be implemented…that’s why we vote.

Aggie1968 · February 7

Credit cards and their due date and due amount (this amount will be updated in credit card company once a payment is made). I cannot believe this feature is still unavailable yet while mint has this for a long time.

birdy718 · February 7

For all the former Mint.com refugees, loving Mint.com features of able to let us know what the upcoming bill payment due date and amount for credit cards, that is a missing feature that is lacking in simplifi.

The best that can be done is that Bill Connect is only able to link at most 1 Amex credit card to show that information not all my Amex credit card.

UrsulaA · February 7

This request is already open with 67 votes. Vote for it below. More votes increase the chances for consideration.

[removed link to merged thread]

Update next reminder amount for credit cards automatically using the account balance (edited)

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