Splits Redesign: Share your feedback here!

Please add notes and tags for splits as well. For example, I track a bunch of things under the "kids activities" categories, and then tag them with "summer camps", "sports", etc. When my wife pays for these, it hits as a lump sum when she pays her credit card every month. Its the best system we have; she isn't going to use simplifi. I peel off any big expenses she pays every month as a split so we can at least get eyes on it.

I guess I could do subcategories but tags seem appropriate because they're so flexible and categories can only have one sub-category.

Same for notes on splits. It would be helpful.

Thanks.

@Coach Marcus I don't believe what you're suggesting is what these people are after. Splitting one planned annual bill into monthly chunks for budgeting is fine, but it assumes that every transaction we make is perfectly controlled. Changing the date for the splits is for situations where reality gets in the way; e.g., my roommate was behind on utilities so they paid me for two months at once, I pay back a friend for the last few times we got food, etc. There are times in real life when two completely separate transactions are added together for convenience, and sometimes months apart. This is a common thing, especially for roommates, and there's no way to reflect it in Simplifi.

"Transactions that occur on two different dates would be 2 different transactions with 2 different split lines". Exactly. Make it so that splits actually create separate transactions, or add a new feature that does this. I currently do this manually. It's one of the features I miss the most from Mint.

I would like a date feature too. I paid a large auto service via check, now I want to treat that transaction as a "car payment" temporarily. Sometimes I post date and sometimes I date them in the future. But I rather I adjust my spending each month than see a big chuck removed from savings at one month…it's psychological but that's how I like to work in my budget software. There are some great features here. It was an important feature to me and splitting transaction was a deciding factor when I left Mint, but it was kind of late to change software once I discovered I could not date my splits. If this feature is not added it will be a deciding factor to leave.

@UrsulaA @Coach Marcus Being able to break up a recurring bill into monthly occurrences sounds great, but that's not the only use case for changing the dates on splits. As I said before, "there are times in real life when two completely separate transactions are added together for convenience, and sometimes months apart". Examples:

1. My roommate forgot to reimburse me for utilities, so he pays for 2 months at once.
2. I pay back a friend for coffee for the past few weeks.
3. I have two doctor's appointments a month apart, and I pay for both on the second visit. (Note: these are not recurring appointments, this is just how the practice bills patients)
4. I have a recurring appointment that repeats every 3 weeks, 6 weeks, or 3 months depending on the circumstances, but I'm only charged every 3rd appointment.

Without being able to backdate transactions, these really screw up past trends. I didn't pay double utilities one month, I just got reimbursed late. There's no way to reflect this in Simplifi.

I think the confusion boils down to different budgeting mindsets, i.e., budgeting based on the date of service vs date of transaction. When the transaction takes place on a different date than the service, which do you want your ledger to reflect? Simplifi only knows the date of the transaction, so it is biased toward that approach. I prefer a ledger that reflects the date of service, for which the current splits do not offer the necessary flexibility.

Another way to put it is that a single transaction can represent multiple services, which may have occurred on different dates.

@Coach Natalie - Agree with feedback from other posters that it's important to allow the date to be adjusted for the split transactions.

Simple use case: A tenant paid me 3 months of rental income up front or I paid 3 months of rent upfront. In both cases, the "right" treatment in Simplifi would be to split it into 3 transactions for month 1, month 2, and month 3.

Right now, Simplifi allows me to split the transactions but all 3 transactions are forced to be on the same date (even after the Feb 22 redesign). This doesn't work.

(Mint and Monarch allow this date-adjusting ability in their respective implementations. It's intuitive and useful).

Been thinking a lot about this all afternoon, so thanks to folks like @SidKa , @Oleksander and @UrsulaA for making me do some critical thinking on the point.

Here's where my mindset is.

The budget exists as a plan to reflect what is intended to be spent, when it is intended to be spent, and whether that amout is within an income level.

The register exists to show deviations from the budget. Was more/less spent then was planned for? Was it spent earlier/later than planned for? Understanding how these answers impact trends and budget is key to the register's purpose.

In this light, it seems to me that changing a transaction's date is just as destructive as changing its amount. It distorts reality, and provides less useful information on how to modify your budget in the future to better plan for reality.

Paying for two months' of doctor appointments in one month doesn't mess up historical trends; it defines them. That is absolutely the kind of thing I want to see when I look backwards, in order to plan more accurately for what's to come.

Here's another use case. Suppose I have enough medical expenses to qualify for a tax deduction. I get a bill in January 2024 that includes procedures from December 2023. I can't deduct those December expenses because I didn't pay for them in 2023, I have to wait for my 2024 tax return to deduct them. But if I backdate a split in the transaction as having actually occurred in 2023, I have a record that doesn't match what I'm going to be telling the IRS. That seems to me like a problem. Not an irreconcilable problem, but I will forever be burdened with a register that doesn't reflect a reality that I'm presenting to the IRS.

I used to use Mint for a few months. But it didn't take long for me to ditch Mint in favor of...nothing . Because I quickly realized that a tool that was doing things badly, or flat-out incorrectly - and teaching me bad habits as well - was worse than using no tool at all.

I think that if and when Rollover on Spending Plan is implemented, that might cover all or most of the use cases for separate dates on splits (though it wouldn't help for reimbursements towards Bills since those are separate from Planned Spending).

Personally, having separate Notes for each split and also having the ability to link a portion of the transaction to a recurring bill would be much more important than separating dates. I also agree that changing the date of a transaction is a little bit like trying to change history and rubs me the wrong way.

I actually have a similar situation with a monthly expense of which 50% is reimbursed, but the reimbursement usually comes for 2-3 months worth at a time. The expense is listed as a recurring bill and I haven't yet decided how to handle the reimbursements aside from leaving it as "negative spend" which will show up as Other Spending since there's no Planned Spending set up for the category (as it's a recurring bill). I guess I could set it up as a recurring income item to counter the bill but I don't know in advance when I will receive it or how often.

I wonder, but the reimbursement is for 2-3 months at a time so it would have to be applied as refunds towards multiple transactions. Does it let you do that?

@ajbopp Thanks for the detailed explanation, and for taking the time to consider our views. You make some excellent points that I have no rebuttal for. For the time being, I'll try following your approach and see whether I can adjust my mindset.

Regardless, I also agree with @UrsulaA that Simplifi should still offer that flexibility in some way. There could be dozens of other use cases for changing the dates that I haven't thought of, for all I know.

Putting aside the discussion on dates, here are my current thoughts on splits:

• Being able to expand the transaction to show the splits beneath it is a no-brainer, especially if it already exists in Quicken Classic!
• Everything should be separate between the splits: amount, categories, tags, notes, etc. It doesn't make sense to do bits and pieces. Even if I can't think of a use case for all of them, I prefer to have the option available.
• When filtering transactions, if any of the splits meet the criteria then the parent transaction should be shown. When expanded, any splits that do not meet the criteria can be greyed out.
• Splits should separately be able to be ignored from the spending plan and reports.
• Splits should be able to link to recurring bills/income.

This gives nearly all the functionality of having splits as separate transactions, but without the clutter and confusion. Thoughts?