Planned Spending Transactions Not Adding Up

VermillionSands · October 12

Hello,

Category Groceries shows 5 transactions for the current month.

-Two using Debit Card

-3 Using Visa Credit

Transactions show up with amounts positive (prefix of +) for Visa, in black (debits) for checking account the debit card is for.

Planned spending shows the difference of the positive (3) and negative (2) transactions added up - providing a number that is the difference. What I would expect is all the transactions to be added so my total spend is shown for this [Grocery] category - but this is not what I see.

I am guessing the recording of these debits and credits has something to do with the prefix (either black or a plus sign) - I get that. But in planned spending, I would expect the the total to reflect the amount I have spent - ignoring the category of how I spent it (checking, credit, etc.)?

I'm stumped as far as how to make this reflect reality, so hoping somebody can shed some light on this for me - thank you!

John

DannyB · October 12

@VermillionSands

Are you talking about a Planned Spending category?

As far as I understand you shouldn't be seeing any distinction between expenses paid with a credit card or atm card.

Would you be willing to share a screenshot of what you are seeing?

VermillionSands · October 13

So based on above, something changed in August (we added a new credit union to our accounts)…but the math got weird after July..

The transactions (5) above are these:

If you add the checking & visa entries up, then subract one from the other, you get the "Spent" shown (where you would expect them all to be added so the sum is all these treated as positive numbers added together).

SRC54 · October 13

@VermillionSands When Danny gets up in the morning, he will continue helping you, but all of your purchases whether by a credit card or debit card should be in black. So Simplifi is adding correctly. Check your Visa account to make sure purchases are negative and payments are positive. Is it possible you set up Visa as an asset account instead of a credit card account? Also make sure Groceries is an expense category although it appears to be so from your posted screenshot.

When you pay your Visa account, the payment should be in green either as a Credit Card Payment or as a Transfer (probably from your checking account, and then the payment would be in black in the checking account.)

Judging from the progressive drop in your grocery spending since May, it looks like the incorrect positive signs in Visa started in June/July.

DannyB · October 13

Yeah, @VermillionSands that should not be happening! For some reason your .visa transactions are being reversed from charges to credits in your Spending Plan.

This appears to have happened to others, for example:

MACU Credit Card Transactions come across as a positive transaction, should be negative. — Simplifi (simplifimoney.com)

I'd check the things Steve points out, but this may need to be escalated by one or the coaches for deeper troubleshooting.

VermillionSands · October 13

Hi Danny,

I did verify types of account [ visa: credit-card; checking: checking] for both appear correct] when I checked under settings>accounts>details on both.

The timing is when I added new accounts (began transition from one organization to another) but the accounts appear to be the correct type. This explains the trouble I had logically reconciling what I was seeing until I just could not pretend it made sense any longer!

I'm not sure of the "coach-escalation" process, but I will open a technical support ticket - at a minimum, it can help provide more evidence to other cases experiencing similar behavior. Again, appreciate the review of this issue.

John

SRC54 · October 13

@VermillionSands Are you downloading the transactions first and they are coming in as positive numbers? That is what it sounds like; can you not just edit them in your credit card account and reverse them? I've had that happen on occasion (not lately thank Goodness), and that is what I do. Of course, I mainly manually add my transactions and then let Simplifi match the downloads. Simplifi is designed to just download them first and let you clean them up afterwards with friendly Payee Names and fix any errors in categories.

Also what happens when you pay your Visa card; in order to make the balance work in the account, it would have to do payments as negative numbers? Is your balance correct in your Visa account?

I probably wasn't any help but I couldn't sleep at 1am this morning. 😁

VermillionSands · October 13

Working with support.

Reset of accounts did not change anything…

Log onto bank and interestingly, they categorized all spends on the visa as DEPOSITS! (even green in their display of transactions). I assume the aggregator on Simplifi-side is simply trusting when they say it is a deposit and honoring that as the transactions are ingested :-)

Interestingly, my bank shows and states my payoff as a credit as well (I expected it would flip it and call it a charge to offset things.

Support opened a ticket and I need to call the credit-union on Monday and ask what General Accounting Rules ( :-P) they abide by :-) Once I get clarification from the institution, they either fix things or I revert to support on the ticket and go from there. I'll keep this thread updated in case others might run into this. I was surprised to see the error seemingly originate at the credit-union. In the future, I will not blindly assume records are correct on the bank side, but double-check. Never had this happen before so certainly out of the ordinary..

SRC54 · October 14

That is plain weird about your Bank's Visa. Is it tied somehow to your checking account and they pay it off for you?

You should be able to fix downloaded transactions as Simplifi won't redownload them (well, I say this because it is the usual behavior but I've had duplicates come back in; I just delete them). You'll need to go back and change the past ones because even once you get this fixed, it won't fix any from June or July. I doubt it will fix any of them frankly. Best to hope for is that it stops downloading the new ones wrong.

Thanks for updating this because it is fascinating to me. Others have had this problem and so have I on occasion but I never had it persist and only had to change one or two transactions. Good luck, @VermillionSands.

DannyB · October 14

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/42123#Comment_42123

If you have already opened a ticket to work on a fix, that is the escalation I was thinking of.

QS can only work with the data as your bank sends it. the reversal of charges treating them like credits is something that your bank is doing for their accounting purposes I guess. I know that if you use a Watchlist to track income QS will show it as negative because of the function of watch lists to track expenses. Also, the cash flow for credit cards in QS track charges as positives, again due to the way cash flow is set up to show balances for credit cards. None of this helps with your issue and I hope you can get this straightened out.

VermillionSands · October 16

[Monday was a Holiday]

I spoke with the credit union today and after getting past the "blame the other software" discussion, I was able to get a manager there to duplicate what I saw (namely on the online statement, any activity, be it charges or payments, are classified as deposits). She agreed that was odd and was going to call the people who provide that service (by the sounds of it, it may not be a quick-turn-around). I have my fingers crossed but have a strong suspicion I will be opening a card with another institution. That part is easy. It's all the auto-payments I just completed changing over that I will need to do again make me feel like a beat horse! (my issue - I mean not to vent on the forum :-) )

Cheers!

DannyB · October 16

Very interesting… though indeed a real hassle. Hopefully, the credit union will find a solution… or the contractor they work with will find a solution. I can't help but wonder if this is affecting more CU customers and how it hasn't come up as an issue at the CU. Seems like this would really mess up their accounting.

Planned Spending Transactions Not Adding Up

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